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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 TruStoryFM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict people. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and conflict influencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, educational classes, programs and methods, all to do with high conflict in professional life and in personal life. So welcome back listeners. Thank you for being here today, the second episode of our newest season, and today we're going to keep answering some listener questions. You guys have been sending in a ton of them and we're so grateful, so we're going to get right to it. And hi Bill.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hello again.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Hope you've had a great, great week. Okay, we have a question from Jay. Hi podcast team. Thank you for your podcast. You're welcome. It's a very helpful resource. Awesome. I'd love to hear an episode exploring relationships between individuals with high conflict personalities. For example, when a grandiose narcissist couples with a covert narcissist or when a histrionic high conflict person marries someone with borderline traits, is it common for certain HCP types to be attracted to or gravitate toward each other? Are there recognizable or recurring pairs, pairings of HCPs? Additionally, what are the implications for those around them, particularly their children or extended family when navigating relationships with these types of couples in a family dynamic? Thanks for considering the topic. It's one that would offer great insight. I have tried to find information on this topic, but there does not seem to be many resources available. Alright, bill, so let's go back to the first question. Is it common for certain HCP types to be attracted to or gravitate toward each other?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I would say yes, it's common, but let me start out this whole thing saying every combination seems to sometimes happen. I wouldn't know this just from being a therapist, that being a family lawyer has helped a lot in understanding that just seeing the combinations of what become high conflict family court cases. There's a question that I ask in many of the seminars I give, and this is to lawyers, judges, therapists and mediators. And I'll say picture your high conflict cases. Do you think the of your high conflict cases have one high conflict person driving the dispute or two high conflict people driving the dispute? In other words that they have personalities that are high conflict and that it isn't just reacting to the dispute dispute. I typically get around one third to two thirds. Sometimes it's one third is one person and two thirds is two people driving the dispute.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Sometimes it's two thirds is one person and the third is two people driving the dispute. So there isn't a clear presence there. But I would say a general principle in my mind is about half of high conflict relationships are both people have personality problems, maybe personality disorders. And I think as a therapist I saw that as well, that often one person had a personality disorder or the other didn't. But often both people seem to have at least traits. Keep in mind personalities have a wide range, so whether someone has a personality disorder or just some traits say of a narcissistic personality disorder means they're more able to perhaps overcome and change that. With that said, the combination I've seen the most where there are two personality disorders is borderline and narcissists, and generally it's borderline women and narcissistic men, but sometimes it's borderline men and narcissistic women. All these personalities disorders seem to be moving towards relatively equal and the genders. So you should make assumptions that borderlines are always women or narcissists, sorority, always men.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And sometimes there's overlap. It may be borderline and narcissistic person with a narcissistic person.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
True, true. And there is this, they think about half of people with a personality disorder actually have two. The other combination I've seen is antisocial and histrionic and the histrionics very dramatic and everything's terrible and everything's wrong. And the antisocial dis controls the histrionic because the histrionics so unable to manage themselves and the antisocial just kind of dominates them. They're the easiest people to dominate is the histrionic people that are just kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
So it's like it's pretty simple, right? I mean, when you come down to, it's almost like a simple math calculation. If we're in this interpersonal relationship, problematic, we are driven by a certain need and if it's a need for the antisocial to dominate, who are they going to be with easily, most easily it's going to be someone who needs to be the center of attention and is easily dominated. So it makes sense. We gravitate toward what we need.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's an underlying principle here is the people with personality disorders tend to operate more on emotions that they're more driven by emotions. And I think that's a fundamental thing, attracting all the different pairs so that you get narcissists and other narcissists, you get borderlines and other borderlines. I've had cases where there's a borderline woman who's emotional roller coaster blaming all of that, and a borderline man who's not as verbally good, not as competent verbally, but is abusive and tends to be a more physical person. But both of them have these kind of cycles of buildup of tension, explosion of anger, and then a period of remorse. And this helps them stay stuck. It's really hard to help them let go if they both realize this isn't healthy for me, but it feels good. It feels reinforcing. And we know something about reinforcement is that like domestic violence combined with charm and love and apologies and everything is very reinforcing and it makes it hard to let go because the good feelings that come from the person who's treated you badly helps you feel attached to them.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Is that what they consider a trauma bond?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, definitely a trauma bond. And part of what people don't understand is that if you're treated badly and it's combined with this charm and seduction and everything, that the bad treatment is overcome by all that other stuff. And even if it's rare, they call intermittent reinforcement. That's what the person remembers. But this is a person who loved me more than anybody else. I can't leave him
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Big feelings. Big sparks.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah. Oh, then you really know from the research we did for dating radar that the spark is often what misled people into high conflict relationships.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Then what are the implications for those around them? Is the next part of the question. When navigating relationships with HCP couples in a family dynamic, so in particular their children and extended family members. So I guess the one thing is how would you ever go and say anything to this couple? I think we all know the answer to that or one person or the other in the dynamic.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
One thing we know in general is four things to avoid is don't try to give people insight into their own high conflict behavior because high conflict people are very defensive and that's going to backfire. Don't focus on emotions with them and don't focus on the past. Well, why did you do that thing yesterday is really focus on, here's some ideas I think will help you kind of going forward without saying why, just say you seem frustrated and you may be happier if you do such and such. If they go to couples counseling, couples counselor, I believe today they're all couples. Counselors need to understand personality disorders.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yes, indeed.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And they also need to understand domestic violence because sometimes that's going on. They need to interview each party separately and find out is there violence and risk of violence in this relationship? So with that said, the average family member, I would say if your concern is talk to them individually, certainly talk to them together. They're going to team up against you.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right? It's true, true.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah. We're not high conflict or we're high conflict because she's high conflict or fees, high conflict. And remember high conflict people, the leading characteristic is it's all your fault, it's all your blaming. Everybody else, we should have a podcast after
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That. We should probably should do that Bill. No one's thought of that. Okay, good. Well, we have our new ways for couples and families of course that you've written bill and coaching with that too. So we'll put that link in the show notes where any couples can learn skills for communicating four big skills for life. Next question is from Sarah and dating a man who has a five-year-old daughter. He and his ex-wife share custody, but the daughter spends most of her time with my boyfriend. His ex is a high conflict narcissist and she is trying to turn the child against me while putting my boyfriend in a fear and guilt based position saying he doesn't prioritize his daughter, which is completely false. He's a great dad and always puts his child first. What can we do in this situation? How can we help the child not be influenced by her mom? Million dollar question Bill.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The good news is she's only five and this is a great time to start teaching your child the four big skills for life that we teach in our guess what new ways for families, methods, new ways for couples and families, and also new ways for families, both online courses. But one of the things is the four big skills for life which anybody can teach their child and you're encouraged to are first of all flexible thinking and so all or nothing thinking, and there's a little bit of that in the description here that maybe this child's being told, your dad doesn't care about you all, he cares about something else. So flexible thinking is, well, that's one way to look at it. There may be another way to look at it, maybe I'll ask my dad. Another is managed emotions because when alienation occurs, and this is a setup for alienation that they're describing, saying these negative things about dad creating this negative story of dad is that you have a lot of emotion with it and that makes the messages more powerful, more intense.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
The good news is the child's only five and alienation generally starts to take hold around eight or nine. And so we've got a little bit of time to teach the four big skills so that the child doesn't absorb what the mother's saying. In this case, the third big skill is moderate behavior and it's extreme behavior to reject a child or tell a child, the other parent rejecting you. Parents shouldn't be talking about the other parent. You're talking about what do you want to do today? You're five years old. So it's definitely some alienating behaviors sound like they're going on. And this is part of how to challenge that is say we're trying not to do extreme behaviors. That guy on tv, he was at an extreme behavior when he screamed at that person, I hate you. Yeah, that's an extreme behavior. We don't do that.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
But that's assuming that the adults actually understand what's extreme and what's not. These days
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Getting more difficult.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yes, but you can still use examples from television, flexible thinking, managed emotions or unmanaged emotions. That guy in the store, was he using managed emotions? No, he was screaming at the counter clerk or he couldn't manage himself. So the child gets the idea we're managing our emotions, we're using flexible thinking, we're using moderate behavior. So when the child's mother says, oh, your dad doesn't care about you, that the child already has a way to kind of question that, that sounds kind of extreme to me. Is that true, dad, do you really not care about me? And so at this age, kids often will do that. They'll say, mom says, you don't care about me. Do you not care about me? Whereas by eight or nine, the child might not mention, mom says this and may start believing it. So now's a good time to teach that. I might add that there's a little article, it's appendix in our book Biff, for co-parent communication. It's appendix B and it says What to tell your child about a high conflict. And the first thing is you don't tell your child you have a high conflict, but instead you teach your child the four big skills for life. And as they learn those, that helps them interpret what the other parent's doing and it doesn't attach as strong to them.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Excellent. So we'll put a link to that book in the show notes and also to our New Ways for Families class and New Ways for Life where you can teach young people in both of those courses. The four big skills, and I have to say in our last episode, bill, we talked about the Donna Adelson case, which was a divorce case initially began as a divorce case between her daughter and son-in-law. It was very striking to see that the grandmother was putting that messaging into the grandchildren's heads about their dad against their dad or your dad's. Just stupid.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Many things like that. I can't remember all the exact quotes, but so if you're extended family, if your friend don't do that, so we have to think about this child and that this is their turn in life and it's their right. They get to have their parents. So okay, thank you for that question, Sarah. I hope that's helpful to you. We'll put those links in the show notes. The final question here, it's a little bit bigger. This is from Joel. I'm in the middle of what I believe to be a parental alienation situation, but I cannot seem to find examples in all of my research, I guess, of his type of situation. We have six kids ranging from 29 to 11. My wife was having challenges with the oldest for quite some time. However, the second oldest suddenly came out with accusations of bullying against the oldest.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
These accusations seemed to trigger something in my wife. She told me that she was disowning our oldest and that I either needed to disown our child as well or she was filing for divorce. I asked if we could do family therapy to try to figure out what was happening and she refused. And as I will not disown our child, she proceeded to tell all of the siblings that our oldest was no longer her child and not their sibling. As well as quite a few negative things about our oldest. This quickly alienated the younger kids and because I had chosen this other person, their sibling over them, I was also alienated to the point where apparently my 11-year-old locks herself in a room. If I'm going to be around, I now have no contact with my 11-year-old and very limited contact with the other three minors. And all of them have also refused contact with their older sibling. I now seem to be in the position of trying to sort out the alienation with me as well as figure out how to repair sibling relationships that will also have a long lasting negative effect. And I don't know where to start. Are there any examples of this happening elsewhere and what advice would you have? That's a sad
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, yeah, examples. There's examples of every possible alienation scenario just as there's examples of every possible child abuse scenario generally in a situation like this. Once again, you want to, when you can teach the kids the four big skills for life so that they can also interpret that people aren't all bad and all good and that it's important not to cut people off in your life as a way of solving problems. That's an extreme behavior. And I think depending on the age of your kids, you can talk about that mostly you've got sounds like some adults or almost adults. So on the one hand it's just a teaching thing and not accepting the situation and not accepting that you should take sides and all of this. Taking sides in a family is an extreme behavior and I think that's important to communicate and you can say that out loud and say it over and over again.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I'm not going to take sides in a family. I love all of you and this is not a healthy approach. It's not good for that. Now with the 11-year-old, that's a divorce case, which it sounds like sometimes you end up having to get the court involved and have them order some family counseling, which in this case may help all the kids, but especially the 11-year-old so that she doesn't build up getting used to keeping you at arm's length or refusing to see you. This is in that age range like eight, nine to 13 when kids are most at risk of becoming alienated maybe for years and decades afterwards. So now's the time to act. You want to get a therapist who understands family dynamics and understands this principle. And that is when a child resists contact and there's no physical abuse explanation for it, but it's more likely alienating behaviors by the other parent that the child's responding to the story of dad not to real dad. And as long as she doesn't see real dad, then the story of dad grows bigger and bigger in her head that's being fed by the other parent. Consciously or unconsciously, some parents just verbally vent and complain about the other parent without intending to alienate them, but the effect is that it alienates them. So that's why you may want to get the court involved to order some counseling, get a knowledgeable counselor involved, and of course the new ways for family skills are good to learn.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Oh, absolutely. So what we're going to do for this is put the newest for Families Link. We have that already from the last question. There's a book that you've written called Don't Alienate the Kids Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce. It doesn't have to be read before divorce, it could be read at any point. We have a provider list on our website, conflict influence.com of trained counselors in our New Ways for Families program. I'm going to put the article you've written called the story of, is it called The Story of Dad?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
It's the story of Dad versus real Dad
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Versus Real dad. Okay, we'll put that in there too. And a couple other links to Conflict Influencer class. We also, I don't know if a lot of people know, we do one hour consultations and in that one hour, I recall two or three weeks ago, we were both in San Diego where you live at the same time sitting around waiting to be interviewed. And I said, bill, will you help me on this consultation that I have with a dad who's struggling in a situation like this? And I just thought you were brilliant in that consultation, just in 15, 20 minutes to take what had been a problem this person had been floundering in for many years now and just turned it around that quickly with just a few pieces of information and almost permissions to stand up for themselves and how to use the corp effectively and things like that. So we'll put a link to the consultation also on our website. We have a lot of things we, we just love to help. We do. That's why we're always tired.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
We're so grateful for everyone. And thank you for these questions. All of you listeners, we'll put those links in there like I said, and give us your friends about us. Hit the button and spread the word around the world. Keep learning, keep practicing the skills, be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It is 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.