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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 with the most challenging human interactions, those involving someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute where we focus on training, coaching, consulting, all kinds of things, and also the conflict influencer.com platform for those needing help in their personal life with high conflict. Everything we do and everything we talk about is high conflict as you faithful listeners know. So thank you to those who join us frequently and welcome to our new listeners as well. Today we're going to be talking about Bill's newest, latest book, slick Solutions for Conflict, and we're very happy to be joined by his co-author, Katina Ricci. Welcome Katina.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Oh, our pleasure. Thank you for joining us. You've been a good friend to us. You're an amazing human being and we're just thrilled we finally got you on the podcast. So a little bit about Katina for our listeners. Katina has an MDR and an MLS. What's an MDR and what's an MLS? Katina
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Masters in Dispute Resolution and Master's in Legal Studies.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Alright, that's a lot of homework. So Katerina is a conflict resolution expert, thus being on the show with US legal Consultant and mediator whose scientific training, and this is a big surprise to most people in microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics from UCLA informs her interdisciplinary approach to understanding high conflict behavior. She combines biological insight, behavior science, and legal reasoning to explore how individuals, families and organizations navigate stress, conflict and change. Her work has centered on the pursuit of clarity, fairness, and justice in challenging environments. And drawing on her background in mediation and legal studies, she explores how patterns of behavior, communication breakdowns and emotional dynamics, shape conflict. Sounds familiar. Bill Right up our alley.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Katerina's writing focuses on making complex psychological and scientific ideas accessible, offering readers practical tools for navigating high intensity relationship, family dynamics, and moments when justice and human behavior intersect. So Katerina spent some time with us as an intern here at High Conflict Institute after you were first in one of Bill's classes at Pepperdine, right?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, that's right. One of the best students, by the way, I must add
Speaker 1 (03:09):
One of the best students. We heard that more than once. Absolutely. So we're really thrilled to have you and here you are now a co-author with Bill Eddie on his latest book, slick Solutions for Conflict. So I'd like to hear from either of you, why did you write a book on slick solutions for conflict and what is it?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I'll start off, it actually came out of a conversation that Katerina and I had at a conference a couple of years ago and I had written the book, our New World of Adult Bullies, and she was suggesting we needed kind of a workbook or some practice exercises, ways for people to really hone up their own skills. And so we decided that we should write this really for people who found that just setting limits didn't really work for them. We felt there was a need.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
So Caterina, you and Bill talked about two and a half steps and we're going to get to that a little bit later, but I wanted to ask you, in reading your bio, you talked about emotions and relationships impacting conflict. Within that we have empathy, which we talk a lot about here at HCI. Empathy, attention and respect, empathy. I know we've talked in the past about how empathy can sometimes make conflict worse, so I'm really curious about your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, with high conflict individuals, the reason empathy can make it worse is because empathy sometimes provide kind of buffer for high conflict individual to have more conflict to negotiate their boundaries, to prolong conflict basically. Well, empathy in this case is not appropriate.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
That's good. I want to reinforce that most dispute resolvers say empathy is a good thing and that we should show empathy and have empathy, which is true, but with some people bullies, high conflict personalities that like to manipulate, like Kaino said, extend conflict, escalate it. You give them empathy, they misuse it, they manipulate with it. And I think a lot of times they use your empathy to avoid you setting, having consequences for them. And if you say, well gee, I have empathy for you, they'll say, well then let me get away with this.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
So your empathy increases and as it increases, their manipulation increases corresponding.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And this is some people, so people who are manipulators, people who want to dominate you, they go, you show your empathy, they're going to go, oh good, now I can really dominate you. I can make you feel guilty.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
And it's not a conscious thought, it's just the automatic first thought for the person.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It's automatic.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Not that they're going to manipulate, but just, hey, this is my next step. This is the automatic next step. So it is part of often in deescalating people, but what about when it comes to setting limits? Is empathy required? How does the two and a half steps fit in here?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
For two and a half steps? We have step number one, setting limits clearly and briefly, oftentimes mentioning consequences. Step two is imposing the consequences, not threatening, just stating them not arguing. And step two and a half is your statement, which stands for empathy, attention, and respect. And we use selectively. So as we just discussed about with high conflict individuals, empathy is not working oftentimes because they use it as a leverage to prolong conflict. So in this case, we don't use empathy, we skip it.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
And about half the time and the other half the time, we have people who respond well to empathy. And I think in general, like children, you set limits on children, you impose consequences and it's for their own good. And you can say, I love you, I care about you, I want you to be happy, I want you to be safe. If I let you go to that person's house, you might not be safe. So that's why I'm saying you can't go to that friend's house. He can come here, but you can't go to his house because I care about you and love you. So that's the half the time you may want to use it. And half the time, as Caterina said, you're going to be manipulated. I do want to add, you don't necessarily know which way until you've shown some empathy. And then if they start manipulating it, say, well, if you really care, that's how you know. Okay, don't go further with that. Just stay focused on your consequence. Don't let them talk you out of it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah. So now let's focus on the consequence. Some of us can get good at setting the limit. We can state it and it's hard for people. It's not always very easy. But what then do we do when we get to that consequence? I think being in that fear mode can really be limiting and we feel like we're going to be attacked if we impose a consequence. I know, Caterina, you've talked about preparing consequences in advance. So would that be a way to kind of address that when we're in those fear moments to set or to impose a consequence to have it prepared in advance?
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, yeah. And what I like about our book is that in the back of the book we have a little journal. And so a person who is encountering high conflict behavior, they may take notes, they may take a few times, three times to see whether this is a high conflict behavior or not and then prepare consequences. The reason for preparation is because oftentimes when we face high conflict behavior, our body may go into fight and flight response, so we may freeze, but if you prepare in advance and state your consequences and follow through, that would make it meaningful for yourself and for the individual who is displaying high conflict behavior.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, just this morning I was talking to a court administrator who we were discussing this topic and kind of talking about people who are conflict and those who are more conflict comfortable. And he suggested or mentioned that his experience is that as a leader in his workplace, if there was someone experiencing high conflict behavior, one of his staff members was handling a member of the public who's acting in very high conflict ways, it was very easy for him to step in and set a limit and impose a consequence. But in personal life it was different, much harder. And I think the closer the relationship oftentimes, would that be your experience, either of you?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I have totally agree with that.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I totally agree with that. I often feel, well, if I set the consequences, how would the other person feel? Maybe I heard their feelings, but from the book that we wrote, readers may learn that it's not your responsibility to make sure how other person feel. Your responsibility is to be clear, state your limits, state your consequences, and follow through.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Nice. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And I think one of the things this leads into is the value of role play practice before you go into a situation. So you can use the journal in the back and do some writing and then find a friend or family member to practice with and have them say, well, that's not fair. And you can say, well, I'm just sticking with this consequence and then hope in the future I won't have to use it or something like that. That'd be your statement. Or just this is the consequence, I'll repeat it again. If you do that, then I'm going to have to do this. Or the organization's going to have to set limits and have a consequence. So by role play practice, you get more confidence and then it's easier to do. And I've done that even on Zoom practice role play with people saying what they're going to say to their spouse or their sister or their boss or their neighbor.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And at the end they say, thank you. Now I have some words to use. I really talked it through and I feel more confident now. So that's an important part of this because in general I'd say people are afraid to impose consequences and in many ways afraid to set limits even because like Katarina said, we feel like we don't want to upset people or hurt their feelings. But that's an area where high conflict people really get away with a lot because they don't have empathy for you, but they expect you to have empathy for them and they'll manipulate that. So it's surprising. And most dispute resolvers are a little bit horrified at first to hear us say hold back on your empathy in some situations. But that's because we're talking about people with a pattern of behavior that needs to be stopped or high conflict. People we know are going to manipulate. And a lot of people feel relieved to know you don't have to have empathy for this person who's abusing you.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah. Often high conflict people are surprised when a limit finally is set because they've gotten away with it for so long because people are afraid to set those limits with them. And so they just, not everyone, but often will just kind of get their way with people. So it's quite shocking when suddenly there's a warrant for someone's arrest or they're being arrested or being sued or being, let's say, think about a neighbor dispute and a neighbor finally calls the police or someone's getting away with something for a long time at work. And finally HR is able to step in and do something. And it's quite surprising, unfortunately by that point when someone does finally say, Hey, a limit needs to be set here, we often don't know how to set that limit with high conflict people and then it can backfire. So does that sound familiar, bill? Is that a real thing?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Absolutely. And so we want to build up confidence, but also in the book we went through, I think we ended up with 33 examples in all different settings. So we have family situations and there's some with a teenager who's not enjoying the limits being set. And that's of course where you'd want to use some ear statements, empathy, attention and respect, divorce situations. And I think this book really will be found helpful for people going through divorce. They have so many different areas to set limits in with their former spouse with the children because everything's kind of changing and what are the rules now, but also sometimes in court where you need the judge to set limits like someone who's been physically abusive and domestic violence situation and the court needs to set some limits or a parent's been badmouthing the other parent alienating behaviors, and the court needs to set some limits, but it's hard even for courts to impose consequences.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And I know having been a family lawyer in court for 15 years and then doing mediation, that people just assume that court orders will be followed. Nowadays we're seeing a fair percent of people don't follow court orders, and so consequences are going to need to be imposed. But anyway, also we've got community, and I think we had neighbors in a condo complex and tenant situations. Catarina supplied a few from there and I thought they were good. And then schools, workplace, business, government, social media, this is now a huge area for setting limits. So we may give Katerina a chance to talk about that. She contributed a lot in that area. All these different settings, I would say in all these settings, people are nervous, have a hesitation to set limits and have a hesitation to impose consequences at all levels of business, society, et cetera. So
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Catarina, I'm curious about, but you're around a little bit younger age set than Bill and I are. And so I wonder in your experience in the university setting and just being around younger people, and I know you like to observe and read and research a lot, what's your observation about younger generations and setting limits right now? Maybe the 20 somethings? Is there anything that we're seeing as a trend with them? Do they need limits set because they've now had social media for most of their lives and maybe they don't understand the limit setting?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
What I've noticed is younger adults in 20 something don't know how to set limits because they don't know what their limits are. It happened that younger generation are more less about community, less about social responsibility,
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And maybe they're not seeing the role modeling that they need to see by parents perhaps about setting limits and imposing consequences because we have kind of gone through the gentle parenting phase maybe. I mean, I'm just speculating here.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, exactly. And so a lot of young adults just want to say yes to everything. Social media gives all kind of idea about current trends of behavior and how one should look like, who they should believe they are, and introducing normality to young generation, which is knowing what your limits are, knowing what is appropriate, and teaching them how to set limits an act of self-respect and social responsibility, which young generation is maybe not having at the moment.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, okay. The self-respect. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I think it is actually two areas in particular that are so hard to define nowadays. One is relationships. So if you're 20 and your parents had a horrible divorce and you're an only child, how do you know what the rules are for a relationship? Some people I talked to who are victims of domestic violence say, I thought everybody punched and hit and slapped each other and that was normal. We have an example in the book of what was the guy doing pinching this woman? And pinching are really, I would say, antisocial behavior because you can avoid it being seen. And so you pinch somebody and you could say, oh, it's nothing. And yet the person that's experiencing it, not only does it hurt, but it's messing with their mind because telling them it's nothing and yet it feels like something. So the rules seem gray, very gray area. And that's part of what we hope to address with this.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
And another example of role modeling from social media is you have these men on Instagram teaching other men how to pick up females, and they're walking around with wearing glasses that have hidden cameras, and they record how to approach what words to say, you look beautiful. Can I be her boyfriend? Can I get online? And all young men watching these, they have a lot of followers and they know they believe this is how you meet female. And they go out and they try to pick up females, they post them on Instagram, which is I believe, highly inappropriate.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Well, bill, all I have to say about that is I'm so glad you and I are both not in the younger generation and having to find our respective partners in this environment.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You don't have to reinforce that so much, Megan.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I know,
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Maybe I'm feeling old today.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I'm so glad that I'm not a young person dating now when the rules are so unclear and so invasive. I mean, before social media, you could make mistakes and the people that were around you knew you made mistakes, but the world didn't. Now the whole world can see your mistakes, and it's very hard for people to live down things that they regret that maybe were inappropriate, but you learn from. But I must say that that example that Katerina just gave was one of the most shocking things in the book because I just didn't realize that people are doing this, going around manipulating women and then posting it on Instagram, and then how hard it is to get that taken down, although the story ends with her succeeding. So I won't ask Katina if this is an exactly true story, but it's a good example.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, yeah. So let's switch to a little bit different angle on this book. And because it's your first book, Katina for Bill, it's like his 20 plus something book. He's had a lot of writing experience. Was there something in the experience that was surprising to you?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I guess what was surprising to me about myself is that much kind person by nature, but kindness doesn't always mean being flexible. Sometimes it's actually hurting you, but being firm and consistent with it is the hardest lesson that I had to learn.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
That's a good lesson. That's a very good lesson. Yes, you are a kind person, and I think we all have this idea that kindness wins the day. And while, yeah, we want to be kind, we also need to sell limits and impose consequences. It's a structure. It's how the world works. It really is how the world works.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Let me just add, I think Katarina, first of all, I want to give her credit for finding the majority of the examples that we discussed in the book. Some of which we said at the beginning are very true, and we quote from publications and others we made up, but they're all based on real situations that happen. And writing the book is a way of teaching. And teaching is one of the best ways of learning. And I think I also found that Catherine, I found myself thinking because every day situations come up and I go, Ooh, do I need to set a limit here? What would my consequence be? Okay, I'm going to ask myself five questions about what my consequence would be. And it was writing the book where these five questions came from, and the two and a half steps came with a little article about a year before the book.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
But implementing them and explaining why it's a half step just changed my thinking. It's like you rewire your brain a little bit when you're teaching. I just want to add something that I really liked seeing as we were slowly writing the book was Katarina coming up with examples, but also writing introductions and writing conclusions and just seeing your writing Katerina, I think expand was a wonderful thing. And now I understand you just got your own page on psychology today.com, which is a great honor to share your thinking and that you're actually an amazingly fast writer. Most people I know say that they stare at the blank page and there's Megan raising her hand. So Megan and I have written a couple books together over the years, and she often mentions it's hard to get started and you Katina just went for it. So that's a real skill you have and I hope you build on that.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Thank
Speaker 3 (25:24):
You. I appreciate your kindness. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, I think you have a lot of articles and books in that brain of yours, Katina. I know you're always thinking, so this is fantastic. Did you find that there was something hopeful in this book and around setting limits? Because the word hopeful and setting limits and imposing consequences don't seem to go together in my mind at least. So is there something hopeful in this?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, one of the most hopeful things in the book is that these skills can be learned. Most people struggle with setting limits and imposing consequences, not because they're weak, but because they don't know how to set limits. They don't know about consequences. They never think like you're thinking about five questions. So slick gives them a structure they can practice. So it's okay not to know, just follow the steps.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
I love that. I mean, it's kind of like Biff, our Biff response method for email. It's a structure. It gives you something to cling to because in high conflict, we're often feeling anxiety ourselves. So if we can have a go-to then it doesn't have to be so hard and overwhelming and seemingly impossible because it's not impossible. And once you do it a little bit, it's fantastic, especially because I think if you can keep in mind that setting limits is a two-way street. The high conflict person is constantly setting limits. I won't do this, I'm not going there. You're not doing this. You're on and on and on. That's their whole life. Whereas, so then the person opposite them is walking on eggshells or just not setting those limits just out of fear or trying to avoid getting in trouble or feeling attacked or feeling that anxiety. It can be extremely anxiety provoking and producing. So you kind of have to give yourself permission to say setting limits is a two way slick is a two way street. Okay, bill, there's something in that, right? Icy streets, slick two-way street. Yeah, just remember you can have that permission to set limits. And in fact, beyond giving yourself permission, which I think is a good first step, then practicing that and just actually doing it is the real thing. You have to do it. And that's at the end of the day, empowering.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Let me build on what you're saying, Megan, because I just had a funny thought recently. And that is when you're saying that high conflict people are very good at setting limits, it's just their limits are inappropriate. But sometimes I find, I figure after studying high conflict personalities for probably 40 years, I first learned about personality disorders in 1980 and then thinking of them as high conflict personalities when I became a lawyer and practicing in 1993. So I don't know how many years this adds up to, but what I realized is sometimes I think to myself, what would a narcissist do about this? And a narcissist would be totally confident at setting a ridiculous limit. Well, I need to set a reasonable limit. And I'm thinking, what are some of the words a narcissist would use? Oh, that's unfair. You're treating me badly. And I'm thinking, well, maybe I'll say that when I set this limit. If you don't follow this limit, you're being unfair and treating me badly, and I may have to impose this consequence. And so it's funny that we learned from high conflict people in some ways how to set more limits. Ironically, needing to do it mostly with high conflict people, but it's a good way to approach it. And I really like the concept of structure that's really helped with all our skills that we teach.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And I like the ridiculous versus reasonable. They're going to give you ridiculous limits and you're going to come back with reasonable limits. So just adapt the language they've used in a reasonable way within the structure, the slick structure. And then it works. I think honestly, that people who have been steeped in high conflict relationships for a long, long time, they've lost some of their mojo, they're exhausted, they've kind of run out of steam, they've run out of what to do because the things they've been doing haven't been working. So I suggest trying to use a slick solution, practice it with someone first and try it safely. It might be the best gift you give yourself.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Well, I think that's where the hope comes in because Catarina wrote some nice things in the conclusion about by setting limits, you're creating space for yourself to live your own life more and to respect yourself more. I don't know if you want to say a little more about that, Katerina, from kind of summarizing it in the conclusion why it does give us some hope.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, because with high conflict individual, they explore your boundaries. They're constantly getting into your personal life by setting limits. You decide where to draw the line. The more life you get to yourself, the more personal space you get. It's an act of self-respect.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
And a lot of folks don't have a lot of that or self-esteem maybe. And so just doing this one time, there's your self-esteem and self-respect each go up a notch, right? Try it again. It goes up some more. It goes up some more until it becomes really automatic. And it's, I guess another way to say or expand on self-respect. Katerina is what I've always said to women is don't you think that if your friend were going through this situation that you're in that, what would you advise them to do? And they immediately say, well, I'd say tell the person whatever, bugger off or something, set a limit in some way. And so then you flip that around and say, well then don't you deserve the same? There's that You deserve to get to say that yourself. You would want that for me. Now how about you do that for you? And I think setting limits and imposing consequences, everyone can do it. A lot of people would get out of some really miserable situations. I'm not even saying that they're going to leave a relationship, but they're going to be able to manage the relationship and tolerate it much more if they're using limits.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Let me mention here, I want to make sure that we touch on the five questions.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, what are those five questions, bill?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Here they are, the beginning of chapter three. First of all, is the consequence proportional to the limit that I have set? And there's so many examples. Well, if you keep talking that way, I'm going to take away your phone for 24 hours. Okay, well, you're still talking. I'm going to take your phone away for three days. Well, you're still talking. I'm going to take it away for a month. Sounds like a parent that doesn't work, doesn't work. Short consequences work the best enough to get attention, but not to build resentment and ridiculousness. Second question, have I considered positive consequences as well as negative consequences? And many situations positive consequences will do just as well if not better. And I think of situations, I deal a lot with situations in family law where there's domestic violence also where there's alienating behaviors.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
And one of the things with alienating behaviors is if a judge orders parent and child to do something that they haven't been doing, they haven't seen the other parent for a year and says you have to go. It often doesn't happen. Or there's a resentment with it. If a judge orders that, for example, to get your driver's license, you need to spend a couple hours every other weekend with your rejected parent to get your license and you really want your license, that's a positive consequence. And that's a real consequence that I know about where someone, they had a breakthrough during the driving lessons because if you want your license, you do this. So the license was a positive consequence. Third is the consequence safe, and that's important too. So for example, think of a domestic violence situation where someone's going, okay, well, I'm going to change the locks on the door.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And you've got someone who's violent, they may find a way to break down the door or get you when you're not in your home. And so you have to think, what's the consequence, what's a better consequence? And in many cases, it's not saying anything. It's getting out of the situation and not saying, okay, buddy, I'm ending our relationship. I'm going to walk out the door now and I'll never speak to you again. Well, if you've got a bully or you've got a violent person, you may not get out that door. So you've got to really think through, is this safe? Fourth, am I ready to enforce my consequence? And this is like what Catarina was getting at with building up your self-esteem, getting yourself ready, and maybe even practicing. And fifth, do I need to get help in imposing my consequence? In many situations, you need to get help.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Maybe it's help of, oh, I forget there was a college resident assistant or something. In one of the examples we had college dormitory getting help from the agency or whoever supervises the dormitory and can kick somebody out who's disrupting everybody else. You get help from that. In a tenant situation, you need to get help from a manager perhaps in a school. I think you had an example, Caterina, where a student was being harassed by a professor, and so the student was looking at hey, and it wasn't like sexual harassment, it was just mispronouncing her name on purpose and laughing at her and looking at, well, the department head may have to get involved. And so knowing that there's other resources, there's people in society whose job is to help set limits and impose consequences. Sometimes you need to get this help. Sometimes you need another family member to come with you to sit and confront somebody. So anyway, so these five questions, we applied in a whole range of situations from family, neighbor, even government governments are not good at imposing consequences. They often play favorites, and so you have to sit on government officials to do their job. Sometimes businesses, sometimes higher ups in a business are kind of favoring people rather than playing fair. And you may have to look at how to set limits. So set limits going up as well as going down with people's behavior all around you. Anyway, that's a long description of the five questions.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Well, thank you. Anything to add to that Katerina? I know that's a big question. Another question might be, was the experience of writing the book enjoyable for you?
Speaker 3 (38:02):
It was very enjoyable, and we actually had more examples. We had to take out a lot of examples because we come up with so many examples that it would exceed the limit of the book. So we have a lot of backup or maybe double, I don't know how many, but we have a lot of examples we didn't include because we had too many examples,
Speaker 1 (38:24):
And they're everywhere. I mean, whether it's a high conflict situation or just any situation where a limit needs to be set, it's not hard, just do it.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Just mentioned in the back of the book is a list of the 33 examples so that people can know where to find them, and if they have a similar situation, they can go right to the example. They don't have to read every chapter to get to their example. Two examples I want to point out that I really enjoyed with this one was the Betty Ford example, and most people probably don't know, but she started out resisting getting treatment for herself. And of course she's famous today because all the Betty Ford centers and all of this, I mean she's passed away years ago, but her work lives on. But at first, her daughter, I think in the family doctor, and the secretary confronted her and set the limit with her. I said, you got to stop taking pills and drinking. And what Betty Ford said is Get out of my house.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So just setting the limit didn't work. Then they came back with the whole family ready to impose consequences, and they went around the room and did what's become a standard intervention for substance abuse treatment to stop people's substance abuse and basically said, we love you. They did a lot of ear statements and we're going to have to withdraw our support from you. One of the sons already had, they were all adults at this time, and she kind of broke down and accepted going into drug and alcohol treatment and then became a real leader in the movement to provide treatment for people. But most people don't know that even the setting limits wouldn't have worked without imposing the consequence. That was interesting to me to learn. If you want to know, I have another example I want to point out in business and how big business you can set limits on.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
And we have this example of one of the Epic games. It was the owner of one of the online games, and they were suing Google because Google was shutting them out because Epic Games didn't want to use Google's money collection business system. And the court found in favor of epic games and said, Google is bullying you. They didn't use those words, but that idea and that at that level of business setting limits is hard but important and is starting to happen. So I thought that was a fantastic example in real life. And for me, it was exciting to write this book because of learning a lot. Not only things like that, the examples that Catarina came up with, like the young man manipulating women and posting it online.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
In this week's news, we're recording this in December, 2025. I'm interested to get your take from both of you on this. So's a football coach here in the US who was arrested this week after being discovered having an affair with his executive assistant and the school, the university, finding out that the assistant had received a 55% pay raise, which is quite significant. And this coach was married, so they went straight to the regulations. The regulations are the limits, right? And the regulation says, here's the consequences if you violate this limit. So the coach was immediately fired, and this is a multimillion dollar position contract, so that's all normal. We use guidelines, standards, policies, laws, rules, all of those external limits to reasons, to set limits. What would've happened if those limits hadn't been set. This individual allegedly then went to the younger woman's house that he was having the affair with, and he had a knife and he was breaking in.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
And so he's been charged with assault and things. So he's sitting in jail as we speak about this, when he knew the police had been called. He ran from the young woman's apartment, allegedly what I've read, and went to a church and he was trying to hide out a little bit and very scared and wanting to take his own life. And this is a very real example of why it's hard for people to set limits. We're afraid of what the outcome is going to be, what's that person going to do when the police are called. So I'm interested in your take on that. Do we live in fear of calling the police or do we have to do what we have to do when things are out of control, when people are not doing what they're supposed to do,
Speaker 3 (43:44):
We have to do the right thing, which is calling police regardless of the fear, it's the right thing, it's more responsibility to do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, I think you're right, Katerina. We do have to do the right thing regardless of the outcome, and we can do it with compassion, but we have to do it.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
And I think mostly people know what the right thing is, but it's the fear of upsetting people or maybe having them come back and attacking us verbally or online or physically. And so there's a lot of social knowledge of what the right thing is, and I think it's the fear that holds people back and the lack of practice. We're not used to being responsible for other people's behavior. Our institutions have taken care of that. But our institutions now are so confused about what the rules should be. From the beginning of the book was the rules of change. We're not sure what the rules are, we're not sure what they'll be enforced, all of these things. And so it's this environment that people need to learn these skills in. And the more they have these skills and the more they impose consequences sooner, the less it's going to get to points where people are getting arrested or having knives or whatever.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
And I think that's one of the important things is you've got to figure out early on, this is a situation to set limits in and impose consequences in. And then it won't be too bad. There's an example in the book of high school kids who picked on people, and this is in the news, and they picked on people and they beat up other people, and one time they accidentally maybe killed somebody, and now people have gone to prison for 10 or 20 years that wouldn't have had to if the community had said, Hey, you can't do that earlier on, because the community was aware it was happening, but was afraid to do anything.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Right. And in this particular story, from what I've read, people saying We knew something was wrong for a while now his behavior was off for a few months, and just even more recently, the way he was treating his fellow coaching staff and things was more volatile, my words. So yeah, trying to intervene a little bit earlier. Having a conversation maybe could have prevented some of this because there's a lot of fallout now, results of his own actions, but maybe a way of setting limits earlier. So with that, we will close this, and I thank you both for talking about this great new book. And of course, we'll put the link to the paperback and to the ebook because it is also available in digital format. You can buy anywhere books are sold, just Google Katerina Reci or Bill Eddie or Slick Solutions or High Conflict Institute, and you'll find it. Okay. So we'll also put it in the links.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
If you are looking for any consultation or need any help or training with high conflict, whether for your organization or for yourself, come see us@highconflictinstitute.com or conflict influencer.com. Keep learning and practicing skills, 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.