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Hosted by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. and Megan Hunter, MBA, It’s All Your Fault! High Conflict People explores the five types of people who can ruin your life—people with high conflict personalities and how they weave themselves into our lives in romance, at work, next door, at school, places of worship, and just about everywhere, causing chaos, exhaustion, and dread for everyone else.
They are the most difficult of difficult people — some would say they’re toxic. Without them, tv shows, movies, and the news would be boring, but who wants to live that way in your own life!
Have you ever wanted to know what drives them to act this way?
In the It’s All Your Fault podcast, we’ll take you behind the scenes to understand what’s happening in the brain and illuminates why we pick HCPs as life partners, why we hire them, and how we can handle interactions and relationships with them. We break down everything you ever wanted to know about people with the 5 high conflict personality types: narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial/sociopath, and paranoid.
And we’ll give you tips on how to spot them and how to deal with them.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict since 1988. How about 2008? I'm going way back in the past today.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Time flies.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
We're recording this on a Friday TGIN. So today is the final episode in our five types series and this is the five types of people who can ruin your life. This time we'll be focusing on paranoid high conflict personalities. But before we start, we just want to thank you for listening and if you're a new listener, we hope you'll learn a lot from our podcast. If you have any questions, please send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links. So Bill, before we dive in, I just wanted to ask you about a very interesting experience you had lately, recently you go on a lot of podcasts as a guest, but recently you were on the biggest podcast you've been on, which is Huberman Lab hosted by Dr. Andrew Huberman. So that just released about a week ago now and it's been pretty fantastic. So what was that experience like?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, actually it was really wonderful. He's a really good person to talk to about science things. He's really one of the top science podcasts in the nation, if not the top. So he's very interested in this topic and had read the five types of people who Can Ruin Your Life Book and was interested in some of the research background and the prevalence of personality disorders as well as the difference with high conflict personalities that they may have traits of personality disorders but not have personality disorders and that not everybody with a personality disorder is a high conflict person, but we just covered a whole lot of territory I was able to be on for two and a half hours. That's really rare. Most podcasts are half an hour to an hour and so we got into more depth than usual and he had some very good questions. And also it was an in-person, I was in his lab so to speak, and that made it easier for being conversational, although doing it virtually as we do now that we've got four years under our belts is pretty easy as well. But it was just a really good experience and I understand he is got hundreds of thousands of views already in less than a week. So if people haven't seen it, it's just hoberman lab.com is his whole website and you can listen by audio or watch on the YouTube.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, we'll put that link in the show notes,
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But we covered a lot and I think that's helpful because this subject is relatively new for people and complicated and also delicate because we're talking about people's personalities and we're not judging people. I see this alcoholics and addicts who are equal human beings with a problem. I think the depth was helpful. Interestingly enough, some of the comments that came in to the interview said things like perfect timing for the holidays. So I thought that was great.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Or how about for the election?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yes, I did talk some about polarization and that polarization continues because the forces driving it continue. So in a divorce, the divorce is just a speed bump in high conflict. The families are all still arguing and I believe day of election will be a speed bump in high conflict because all of the opinions and groups talking to themselves will just continue and we have to become more self-aware that we don't play a part in escalating those conflicts.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Very true. And I know I've intentionally had conversations with people who we don't agree on everything regarding politics and we've made it a kind of pact at the beginning to just not judge each other, not argue, and to just keep an open mind and allow people to have the beliefs that they have, that's fine and it's very doable. So we encourage you to do it, just don't get in a fight. Alright, well that was really exciting, bill, and I know we've had quite an influx of contacts since you appeared on his podcast and interestingly some from those who have said, Hey, I'm the high conflict person and I'd like to get some help. So we're going to be talking about that.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
That's one of the best things.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, it's great. And like Bill said, this is not something stigmatizing. I really see the work that we do as antit stigmatizing. We're attempting to help those who typically run into brick walls where they go, where they go because people dunno what to do and just how to do something differently and that's what it takes. So if we are all learning these skills, this helps bring everyone up to a level that is easier to manage their lives and have less conflict and keep the conflict smaller. So that's who we are. Bill, this is from the beginning. It's been about skilling people up so we can be more on the same page.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Alright, so let's get back to the topic at hand today, which is the final episode of the five types of People series and this time talking about the paranoid high conflict personalities. And what's interesting about the paranoid is that we can think of any of the five types as being paranoid. And I know I get this question a lot is well all of them are paranoid, but there's something maybe a little bit different about the paranoid personality. Is that right Bill?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And you're right that there's bits and pieces of all of these in all of us. And just to say momentarily, all of these personalities have characteristics that all of us have. The problem is that they're stuck. So when they're stuck in a narrow range of behavior, that's when they become problematic that people can't self-reflect, try new ways and change themselves. So yes.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, so you start the chapter with this type of high conflict personality is also known as a paranoid personality. You might think that people with paranoid traits would avoid conflicts and avoid other people, but a small percentage are also high conflict people. They are high conflict personalities. The underlying fears for paranoid HCPs are betrayal, deception or conspiracies against them. By those around them or by authority figures. They harm others because they think that others their targets of blame are trying to harm them. That's how you start that chapter.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
The idea here is it's embedded in the person's personality to be suspicious and mistrustful. The reality is in modern life there's kernels of reasoning to be mistrustful. There are some people who can't be trusted. There are some times people get together and do form conspiracies, but not at the level that paranoid personalities view. They kind of have a filter. It's like conspiracy or betrayal colored glasses. And so they view things with this mistrust. It's almost like a chip on their shoulder and it's part of who they are, part of how they see the world, how they think, and it helps to understand this personality. So you don't take it personally, it's not because you're betraying them, it's because they fear that you're betraying them. For most people, it can catch them by surprise. It's like I didn't do anything to make you mistrust me so much. Why are you mistrusting me? The reason why it's in their frame of reference, it's in their view of the world and they go from mistrust to mistrust and mistrust, which is a very sad place to be, makes generally unhappy because you're always mistrusting. You can't get the warmth and compassion from people because you mistrust them. And that's with all the personalities we're talking about. It's sad because their viewpoint interferes with really getting to appreciate other people and enjoy life
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Highly suspicious and expecting conspiracies everywhere. If we look at this in the workplace, the fear might be that people at work are whispering about them, conspiring about them trying to block their careers or just plotting to harm them in some way. We take this to the neighborhood or at home. In the neighborhood it might be the neighbor's children or the police or powerful government agencies. They just fear they're going to come and interfere in their lives. And then in a romantic relationship, what's this look like, bill?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Well, it looks like a lot of mistrust and it's often that you're having an affair. My partner must be having an affair. So they come home half an hour late from work and it's like, well, where were you? Well, you're having an affair, aren't you? So there's a lot of jumping to conclusions. The irony is this makes partners feel on the defensive all the time. And so they are maybe thinking maybe this relationship isn't going to work and maybe they should leave this person. And that makes the person more paranoid. They can sense the resistance and their maybe distancing and can't see their part in the problem. All of these folks don't connect the dots back to their own behavior, so they can't make the situation better. They don't say, honey, give me some feedback. Is there something I'm doing you don't like? No. They just say, honey, I can't trust you no matter what you do, I can't trust you
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No matter what evidence you supply. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah. I was late at work. I've got, look, you've got six people at work can say that I was at work. And so it's this kind of carried mistrust that makes relationships quite hard. Let me add, there is some domestic violence with this personality. Like we said before, all the personality disorders, the research shows have a higher involvement in domestic violence. I've had a case with this, I can talk about it when there's a good spot for it. But the idea is because of their fears, they may become violent to keep the person from leaving them or to punish them for what they think they've been doing.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Let's talk stats. You state that around four and a half to 5% of the general population based on the NIH study, national Institutes of Health study from 2008 with about 20 million people in the US have this disorder, paranoid personality disorder and the other disorders in this series. I've asked you, do you think that number still holds true these years later?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
That's a very tricky one because with our development since, what's that 15, 16 years ago? So with our technology, our high tech communications, since then, we see so much more concern about conspiracy theories, so much more fearfulness, the average child is more anxious today, the average adult is more anxious today than before. We had all this fast moving social media tells you the worst things to get your eyeballs and get clicks, but it also raises your anxiety level. And so people are more anxious and more concerned about who they can trust. There's mistrust of our public institutions, there's mistrust of the media, there's mistrust of dating. Some of the research on younger generations now say they really are leery of dating because they really kind of fear. There's a lot of fear out there. And we want to tell you that yes, there's problems in the world and there's reasons to be aware, but the world is nowhere near as best as people's paranoias are. And that's why we need to put things in a more accurate perspective and hopefully what we're doing, Megan and I, is trying to educate people so they can be realistic about what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of. I would say that there's more fear in the environment, in the culture. I don't know if there's more people with paranoid personality disorder, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
And what's the split between men and women from this study?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, what I remember, the numbers are that this is 57% female, 43% male. And again, that could change over the last 16 years as well. But what I get out of that is you can't make an assumption that's a female or male problem, that it's shared and not that it's within a 60 40 relationship.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So I want to go back to the mistrust, right? Let's say in the romantic relationship, because it sounds a lot like perhaps a relationship with someone with borderline personality disorder, right? Maybe some mistrust or would you say with borderline it's more jealousy and with paranoid it's more mistrust?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Well, I think with borderline there's that fear of abandonment. So they mistrust what the person's doing with other people. And in that way, very similar to paranoia because they mistrust what their partner's doing. So I think their jealousy and mistrust probably go together for both of those personalities. But borderline may be more specific to their partner, whereas paranoid may be more general. And there's some research that suggests that of the 10 personality disorders, that paranoid personality is the one more likely to sue their employer. So their paranoia, often they take with them to the workplace and it's ironic because they'll say people are whispering about me, I know it. And in fact people may be whispering about them because afraid to say things out loud, afraid the person will take it personally.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And so all of these personalities to some extent create the problem they're trying to solve and it's sad they can't connect the dots back to maybe I should try doing something different or maybe I should talk with somebody and talk it through. How are you feeling about me? How are you feeling about our work relationship? Is there anything I can do to improve? They're thinking they're way more suspicious than that. It's like that kind of talk they wouldn't even trust to have.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
You wrote in the book five types of people that their targets of blame are generally large institutions such as their employers, government agencies or the police. And we think about the current sort of talk about defunding the police. Is there any relationship there? I mean, I know this is a huge stretch that it just occurred to me with that I suppose that maybe some mistrust the police because of a bad experience perhaps or maybe something that someone else has told them. But with paranoid personality, what is it that makes them distrust their large employers, large institutions, government agencies or the police?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Well, I think what happens with paranoid personalities, they generalize from a bad experience that this is, like you said, maybe they had a bad interaction with the police and they generalized that all, but police can't be trusted. All police are out to get you all police are cruising the streets to pick on you. That's the kind of paranoid thinking. What's interesting is our culture, it's hard to tell the interaction with culture and personality disorders because I believe personality disorders influence the culture. And there may be leaders of groups saying like defund the police or the other side of that is fund the police more that you may have paranoid people on both sides of issues kind of driving it into a more all or nothing space. And what's interesting does that idea came out during the George Floyd protests and there's posters and signs, people carrying defund the police.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And what was interesting is the minority communities are saying, no, no, no, don't do that. We want the police, we need their protection. We just need them to be better at it. And not, there's certain individuals that may be dangerous, but most police really are helpful and want to be helpful. The paranoid personality quickly goes to an all or nothing perspective. And the political culture quickly goes to an all or nothing perspective. So I think there's some interaction there. The culture reinforces paranoid personalities and paranoid personalities partly drive the culture. So one of the biggest things with all of this, we've got to learn, put things in perspective and not find all or nothing solutions or views of things if we're going to really get along in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
So true. So Bill, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Alright, we are back. And I wanted to start Bill talking. There was one phrase in that chapter of your book that says, yes, they ruin other people's lives because they're suspicious that others are ruining theirs. And there's that piece you're talking about that they just don't connect the dots back to themselves. And so it ends up in self-sabotage. So they're expecting these conspiracies, they're fearing people or whispering about them lying up to them or about them. And you also say many paranoid HCPs feel much more comfortable targeting people on the internet where they can be anonymous.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Fascinating, right?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yes. And that's been said because I think of the internet as kind of the wild west as it's become a playground for high conflict people. Because you can blame people without even saying who you are. You can spread rumors that without worrying there'll be consequences. So until the internet gets reigned in the wild west, got reigned in, we need a sheriff in town, the internet and all the media on the internet all need a sheriff that says, Hey, you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, that's interesting because it gets into the free speech thing and we're not going to debate that here. But I think what I've seen recently is at least on X, formerly Twitter, that they've added community notes so that anyone can write. If someone puts something, posts any type of statement, then others from the community, meaning anyone who's on X can say, Hey, here's the actual facts about this. And it may be an image that is photoshopped someone else's face. I mean, this is common now. So maybe doing things like community notes helps us get to the facts and can be that sheriff, I'm not on any other social media, so I don't know if others are doing that as well, but I think that can at least give people, shove them into more flexible thinking by realizing, okay, there's more than one way to look at this, or there's more facts to be had here.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
So you can kind of see with really any of us, we can get that bias in our minds and start believing things that we're reading, especially if we're following someone and we think, wow, they're absolutely posting something that's truthful. But if you have someone with this paranoid personality, I conflict personality where they're just becoming highly suspicious and then they want to bring others in as negative advocates to help them in their battle against someone or a group they believe is conspiring. So you can see how this can just build and build in ordinary life and then you add this to the mix and it can be huge.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, I think so. And I think paranoid personalities to some extent are driving some of the cultural mistrust and people don't realize, wait, is this person accurate? And one of the biggest things is getting your information from multiple sources because I believe we're talking about 10% of the people with these personalities, high conflict personalities. And so 90% of the people are fairly reasonable and fairly trustworthy. Nobody's perfect, but I believe the vast majority of people, when you listen to them, you get a much more accurate view of things that are going on. But that kind of leads back to what you said with the internet. The internet has allowed people with these personality difficulties to dominate. There's some research that says that we're not necessarily seeing everybody becoming more high conflict on the internet. What we're seeing is the small percentage of people who are dominating the discussions and a lot of the discussions, reasonable people just drop out of the comments and such.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So it's hard to know how much is more people with these disorders and how much is a few people having a bigger reach and making more noise. And that's where talk to other people get other points of view, really be what I call healthy skepticism. Have a healthy skepticism, especially about what you see on the internet because it's not research. I like reading the news. So I think I get five newspapers in my iPad. I love reading these different points of view because I know in many cases that they've triple checked them before they've published them. What big publishers have to do is they have to double, triple check things before they put them out there. So their information's much more reliable than just what's multiplied on the internet.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I frequently will look at the news from other countries, whether it be Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, Europe, and that's when you start to get a real perspective of what news is reaching those different areas from the us you see a lot of what the realities are. Anyway, we're getting into non paranoid personality discussion here, which I can talk about all day.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I think the culture and personalities do interact so much and perhaps this one in particular because paranoia has become part of our culture and we really need to reign it in the world is not as bad as it sounds.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Right, right. Yeah. Check things out, like you said, maintain a healthy system
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And go for a walk. Go out to towards, get away from all the news.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yep. Get your feet in the grass. Just spend some time in nature. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about what you can do. So if you have someone like this on your team at work, what's a good way to handle this?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well, I think just privately talking and with all of these personalities is it's much more effective to talk privately, especially if you're a supervisor and you have an employee like this or you have a coworker like this is try to connect with them. It comes back to the cars method, connecting, analyzing, responding and setting limits, which is discussed in the book. And that is try to connect with them and say, I notice you're not part of the group at lunchtime. You may want to join us, we'd be happy to have you if there's a problem if to try to find out, give me some feedback. Is there something I'm doing you're concerned about? Because I can clarify things when I do mediations and like divorce mediations and I say to the parties, I think it would help if I meet separately with you now for a few minutes. And if I think someone has some paranoid traits, I'll really emphasize I'm the mediator, so I don't make the big decisions you do. So when I meet with each of you separately, don't worry. I'm not taking one side or the other. My job is to facilitate your communication. So kind of reassuring people what you're doing, what you're not doing for lawyers, reassuring their clients that there's procedures, there's policies. I'm not picking on you, the law says we have to do this thing. So kind of clarifying more what's going on and that can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
How about romantic? Like a marital relationship?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah, so I think if this is present as an issue in a marriage, that one is couples counseling to try to clarify things. And the other is try and encourage your partner to get some counseling. Now, when I was a therapist really for 12 years, I don't remember having anyone specifically that I would say had a paranoid personality disorder where I did have borderline and narcissistic actually and histrionic, but not, is it because
Speaker 1 (27:43):
They're paranoid too of a therapist?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, yes, partially, but also it's long slow work. So therapists I know, I remember talking to a good friend, psychologists and he says, I've had some people with paranoid personality disorder in therapy and it's a slow process of building trust, but there was progress. And so I found that encouraging. But most people with personality disorders don't seek therapy because they can't see that they may have something to do differently. Most of them don't get therapy. But I think if you're in a couple relationship and your partner seems particularly paranoid, is to encourage couples counseling so you can clarify what belongs to you, what belongs to them, and also encourage them to get some counseling because it's sad. But so many of these distortions, and I worked as a therapist with cognitive therapy a lot. I was trained in that in the 1980s. And with cognitive therapy, you learn to reign in your thoughts, to check your thoughts, to have realistic responses to your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
So when you jump to conclusions, which is a common cognitive distortion, you go, is that really true? Is Joe really out to get me or did he misunderstand the instructions or did I misinterpret his facial expression? So wait, it's like helping people with their cognitive distortions, and that's a form of therapy, cognitive therapy for personality disorders and talks about correcting people's cognitive distortion by helping them challenge to really make life more manageable. Is this really a crisis? Is this person really out to get me? These kind of questions are really good ones. And the average, most of us all the time are questioning our thoughts and going, wait a minute, is that really true? We all have cognitive distortions, but people with personality disorders and high conflict personalities don't check themselves. They just accept as true these perceptions, including paranoid perceptions. So there are things that can be done, but it's not easy to get people to get into some help.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
So we'll wrap up with this. I know you had a client once in a divorce case that you thought might have these traits.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, so what was interesting, so in the 15 years I represented clients in family court. Borderline and narcissists come up a lot, and I think some had those disorders, but I had a case with a man. My client was a woman and a man who actually had been diagnosed as having paranoid traits in a psychological evaluation during the divorce case. And it totally fit for me. He was so suspicious of his wife who became his ex-wife, but he beat her up 40 times in their six year marriage. This was definitely a domestic violence case, but it wasn't borderline personality or antisocial personality. It was paranoid personality perhaps with some antisocial traits. That's what I was kind of sensing from him. But psychologists did some testing and said some paranoid traits. And so his mistrust ended up pushing his wife away. His behavior certainly. So I get into the case about a year after they've separated, she's remarried, so there's a stepfather, they have a son.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
They separated when the boy was about six. And so I got into the case, he was around seven and I was in the case for the next eight or nine years. It became clearer and clear that he mistrusted the world. And so he was kind of an isolated person. But the son, the way he dealt with the son was he believed he should have control of the son. And you could see he was very much into power and control first over his wife. And then once she was gone over the sun, so she had about two thirds of the parenting time, he had about a third of the parenting time, and we went back to court. He took us back to court, took her and I went with her to court once or twice a year trying to gain more power and control over the sun.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
And it would be issues of soccer games or issues of, he tried to say that the new stepfather was abusive and that the boy was wetting his bed and he was like nine or 10 by then. And there was a lawyer for the boy, a minor's counsel in the case. By that time he was a very high complic case boy, wasn't wetting the bed, but he talked to his father on the phone who would say, if you're abused, tell me and tell somebody. And so the boy had two drops of urine in his bed. It's like as if he was trying to satisfy his father. He was not losing control. It wasn't bedwetting. And so the minor's counsel came over to look and yeah, there's a drop of near and there, but the father was so paranoid, he started teaching the son to be paranoid.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
The son would get into fights at school with the other kids and the father would said, you're right to stick up for yourself, fight back, fight back. And then the boy get in conflicts with the teacher and his father would say, you're right. The teacher's treating you badly. You can't trust the teachers. And so he was teaching this boy not to trust kids his age or other adults. And what happened is when by the time the boy was 16, he basically ran away to the father's house. He secretly gave him a cell phone and he communicated and he ran away to the father's house and stayed there. So rather than a third of the parenting time, he stopped coming back to the mom and the father, I believe, over the next few years, just really cut him off from society. And so that's part of how this may be taught by a person.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
So I just wanted to mention these are some of the dynamics that because of psychologists said he is got paranoid traits. It helped me understand this guy sincerely believes the world's out to get him. And I tried to be not too escalating in my language. I had to deal with him directly sometimes when he didn't have a lawyer. But that's what was driving him. And it was sad, and I hope the boy's okay, but mother said, Hey, I've done my job. He's 16 and if dad's going to, I've kind of run out of solutions. So that's what happened. And the boy did come back and would see her alternate weekends, so she didn't lose her relationship. But anyway, just the kind of thing that can happen.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Right, right. Well, thank you for sharing that, bill and listeners, we hope this has been helpful to you. We know these topics can be confusing and quite complex sometimes, but focus on what to do and not shaming and blaming. And we'll put lots of links in the show notes for the book and for courses and some articles. Next week we're going to go back to our asked and answered q and a. We've had a ton of questions come in, so I know you'll really enjoy that. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.