How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy is a practicing lawyer, a professional mediator, a licensed therapist, and on the faculty of the School of Law at Pepperdine University.

He is a world expert in conflict resolution. In particular, how to resolve conflicts with what are called high conflict personalities. I should be very clear that these high conflict personalities, as you'll learn today, are not in a category of so-called personality disorders. Now it is the case that people with high conflict personalities often also have borderline personality disorder,

narcissistic personality disorder, or suffer from bipolar depression. However, as you'll soon learn, people who have this high conflict personality type could fall into any one of those three different categories, any combination of them, or none of them at all. These high conflict personalities essentially come in two flavors. Some are very outwardly combative, they like to argue, they like to generate conflict in a way that's very overt, very obvious.

The others, which comprise about 50% of high conflict personality types, are very passive. They play the victim, or they leverage other people, so-called negative advocates, in order to achieve their goal of creating a lot of conflict, where they always appear as the victim. During today's discussion, you'll learn how to identify these high conflict personality types, based on some very simple questions that you can ask yourself about them.

He also explains how to deal with these people in the workplace setting, in relationships, and importantly, of course, how to disengage from these people, not just in the short term, but permanently.

Now, across today's discussion, you'll realize that Bill Eddie is very sensitive both to the suffering that high conflict personalities cause for other people, and therefore, how to identify them, avoid them and disengage from them, but he also makes it a point not to demonize these high conflict personality types.

Instead, as a mediator, as a lawyer, and as a therapist, he is really most interested in helping people resolve their conflicts with these people, and find the best, most peaceful path forward for conflict resolution. Dr. Bill Eddie is the author of several important books related to this topic, and related topics, such as five types of people that can ruin your life.

It's an excellent book. I've read it, and I highly recommend it for everyone. He's also written books about adult bullies, which are becoming increasingly common online and in real life, and about mediating conflict resolution and separations and things like divorce, and in family court situations where he spent a lot of his professional career as a lawyer.

By the end of today's episode, you will have a lot of new practical tools for being able to identify these high conflict personality types, and learning how to navigate forward and, frankly, away from them in the best way possible. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

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If you'd like to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com-huberman, and you can get an extra three months free. Again, that's EXP-R-E-S-S-A-V-P-N-D-C-C-Huberman to get an extra three months free. And now for my discussion with Bill Eddie. Bill Eddie, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to discuss this with you. I've read your books. I learned about them from perhaps one of the smartest people I know.

She said, you should check out this book called Five to Ipes of People That Can Rew In Your Life. I said, well, that's an impressive title. And I tore through the book, learned a ton. You have a number of other books. I mentioned them in my introduction. And I suppose it's appropriate to say that you are an expert in conflict, conflict resolution, and in particular, how to deal with people that are high conflict.

So maybe you could just tell us what a high conflict person is, how common are these people? And then how does this overlap with some of the more traditional, quote, unquote, diagnosis of personality disorders? Yeah, it's fascinating because I started out as a clinical social worker working with children and families and psychiatric hospitals outpatient clinics. But I really like conflict resolution. So I went to law school to get a law degree so I could do mediation, other conflict resolution.

And I practiced family law. And when I started in family court, I noticed right away that a lot of the conflict seemed to be driven by people's personalities rather than the legal issue. Because I was also doing mediation in my office. I go to court in the morning, do mediation in the afternoon. Same exact issues in the morning people were stuck for two or three years in the afternoon, two or three mediation sessions, shook hands, went separate ways.

So in family court, a lot of people aren't familiar with this. But since the 1980s, there's been the use of the term, high conflict families. And family court lawyers, judges, mediators, therapists identified high conflict families as repeatedly coming to court to make decisions as having a lot of hostility of just seeming driven in one direction, unable to be flexible.

And in many ways, unable to truly have empathy for their kids, so they'd fight over their kids. And so high conflict families was a term when I became a lawyer in 1993, I was like, wait a minute, these aren't high conflict families. These have maybe one, maybe two people with high conflict personalities or traits of personality disorders, which I knew about since 1980 and working in hospitals and outpatient clinics.

Because you're also a clinical psychologist, clinical social work, clinical social work. So I got a masters in social work in 1981, then I became, I got licensed to do therapy on my own. So I'm a licensed clinical social worker in California. I can diagnose disorders, I can do treatment without supervision. I went through that and that's how I became licensed. So when I came into family court, I go, this is the same patterns when I was working, say with people in the psychiatric hospital,

who had addictions, depression, all these problems. And my job as the hospital social worker was to help them with their outside problem, their family problem. So I did family counseling for the patients with their job, maybe they're employer wanted to fire them because of their behavior.

I tried to help keep their job. Maybe they were getting evicted, their landlord couldn't stand their behavior. And I solved one problem and I go, I've got you into marriage counseling and your husband or wife's committed to working on the relationship. And I'd go, yeah, I accomplished something. Next day, Bill, my landlord wants to kick me out. Okay, I'd convince their landlord to give them one more chance. Yay. Bill, my job wants to fire me. Can you help?

What they have is a pattern of conflict behavior that doesn't get resolved. And that's the high conflict families that I saw in family court. So that's where that connection came from, which I would not have arrived at if I hadn't been a therapist and also a lawyer. My understanding from reading your book is that this high conflict personality phenotype is equally distributed between men and women. What is the percentage of people that have this high conflict phenotype?

And then maybe we can drill into a little bit of how that shows up. It's different forms of expression. Yeah, well, let me say a little bit about the difference between high conflict personalities and personality disorders because we have a lot of research on personality disorders, including statistics, which I'll give you. We don't have a lot of research on high conflict personalities. People have talked about it, like I said, since the 1980s and family court.

And my own observations with thousands of cases of high conflict personalities is pretty much men and women. My law practice, I represented pretty much 50, 50 men and women mostly custody disputes, mothers and fathers. So I got a good impression. Personality disorders, there's a lot of research on and I mentioned in the book some statistics and they came from the personality disorder research.

So what they found, they studied the 10 personality disorders in the early 2000s, a big study national institutes of health, the alcoholism, subdivision of NIH. They wanted to see how prevalent personality disorders were with substance abuse, with domestic conflicts, with criminal behavior and workplace conflicts. And so this study, they looked at all 10 personalities came up with numbers for each. Five of them seem prone to high conflict behavior.

So these five, I can give you statistics on and I can give you breakdown male and female, all from 20 years ago, big study because it hasn't been repeated since. So basically cluster B, that's a narcissistic borderline, anti social, histrionic, but we see a lot of paranoid in legal disputes and some research as paranoid personality disorder is the most likely to sue their employer of the personality disorders.

So that's got an attention to. So here's some numbers. First of all, narcissistic personality disorder, they found was about 6% of adults in the United States. They found the statistics on that was 38% female and 62% male. So that's more heavily male, 20 years ago, could be different now because of environmental influences. Borderline, also about 6%.

This was 53% female, 47% male, almost 50, 50. And that shocked the mental health world because we've always thought of borderline as a female disorder. But Marshall Lanahan, the big name and treatment for borderline says she agrees, she thinks that's true. And I think that's true as a family lawyer because a lot of the men that we see engaged in domestic violence seem to have the borderline personality pattern and the domestic violence is much more male than female.

Then, anti social, around 4% and that's about 75% male, 25% female. Historianic is about 2% and they found this is about 50, 50, which again, surprised people because you think drama, center of attention, all of that. But and this may be very much environmental influence. Our culture today teaches, especially young men, to try to get attention. To ride your skateboard behind a car or jump off a building, do all these dramatic things to get attention.

And social media really encourages that. Everyone wants attention and now you kind of have to fight for it in our culture. And so men as well as women are getting out there often in dramatic ways. So came out about 50, 50. Apparently, it's about 4% came out. I think it was 57 to 43%. Somewhere right around that a little more heavily female. But not all that far apart.

All together, it's really roughly 50, 50. Very interesting. And how does this high conflict personality cut through all these personality disorder phenotypes? Because, oh, and I should also ask, I could imagine that some people who are borderline perhaps are also historic. Is that possible to fall into multiple categories? And the study actually broke down some of that. So in the research, they particularly one that I remember is borderline and narcissists.

And it came out around 38% overlap. So and I teach where borderline also can often be narcissistic personality disorder. I see. And so this is personality disorder overlap. Now, there's a whole continuum here. So many people have traits, but don't have a disorder. The current DSM says the total personality disorders is around 10%.

Now, that's taking an average of studies from around the world. The study I quoted earlier in the US said 15% have a personality disorder. So in in the US, we're seeing that's that significant. That's one that said 38% overlap borderlines and narcissists.

I think that's that it fits for me because when I teach lawyers from my own experience, I can say, you have a client that comes on like a narcissist. They're very self centered and putting you down saying they're superior. Here's some tips to deal with them. But they also may have wide mood swings, which is more associated with borderline. So you need to butter up their ego, honestly, not you know, praise them for something that's real that they do.

But also they really need empathy. They have wide mood swings. That's someone that needs a lot of empathy and say, wow, I can see help set your artists is so important. And they calm down. She have to use both sets of responses to deal with someone that has that. Combination, you mentioned borderline and histrionic. There's a lot of similarities. So we see overlap with that. But I've seen every combination.

But what I don't know in family court is, is it the disorder or just traits and the disorder doesn't matter to me. It's the pattern that matters. Because if I see this pattern, I know I should do that. That's the key. I can imagine that in family court, it's especially complicated given that some of these things, not all, but some of these have a genetic component, certainly a situational component.

So you could potentially be dealing with trying to work out a situation for the benefit of children that have some of the same personality disorders as their parents could be really tricky. Well, what's interesting and it's very rewarding work when things can go well. When the lawyers get it, the judge gets it, everyone gets it. What's happening, they can make orders that fit the situation and help protect children from bad behavior and help get parents some help.

So substance abuse is a bigger issue in family court than personality disorders, but almost neck and neck. We talk about substance abuse all the time. So, suddenly there's treatment, everyone recognizes the signs. We don't talk about personality disorders in our culture. And that's like flying under the radar.

I don't know if you have a certain kind of disorder that you sent me, which by the way, I'll provide a link to in our show note captions. It essentially kicks off by saying that, you know, the, the movement toward explaining to people what alcohol, I think they now call it alcohol use disorder or alcoholism was and is in the 1970s and 80s was a crucial move forward for the judicial system.

I think nowadays people generally understand that addiction is not just a lack of willpower, that there are brain circuits that become hijacked by substances or behaviors that these brain circuits were designed to promote our adaptive evolution, but they can be hijacked by behaviors and substances that render people really just unable to control their their their behavior.

But nowadays that that box is checked. And it's wonderful that the judicial system understands that right because then it can work with that. I don't think that the general public has yet come to the full appreciation of these personality disorders and these high conflict personalities and how pervasive they are.

Probably because of their prevalence is just sort of all around us and in all sorts of interactions. And here's the question. High conflict interactions tend to be quote unquote dramatic.

And there tends to be a almost a reward for dramatic behavior, as you said online in politics in the media, the more dramatic, the more salience, the more salience, the more people click the more people watch. And then the algorithms are designed to look at, you know, like dwell time, which is nerd speak for how long people look at stuff. And so you could see how this stuff could be fed in the same way that for nearly, you know, 75 years leading up to the 1970s.

Alcohol use disorder was sort of fed by the culture, the other 5 p.m. happy hour. Yeah coming up in science, I would go to scientific meetings and was like, OK, 5 o'clock hits, let's all drink. And I always thought this is kind of crazy, especially given that there was also a lot of concern about the kinds of interactions that drinking can create in the work environment.

So high conflict behavior, exactly. So anyway, I don't want to riff too long on this. But first of all, this is just lauding the important work that you're doing. Second, how should we think about this high conflict personality phenotype. Should we be calling people out like, you know, hey, that's a narcissist. Hey, that's a, you know, that's a borderline, historic person. Or is there a more, I guess something that embraces a little bit more of the humanity and the real issue at hand.

I think that's what you're trying to do. Yeah, absolutely. And you may seem me shaking my head. No, instead should be pointing this out to people. That's the last thing you want to do. In fact, don't do that. And the reason why is, is personality disorders. Oh, let me just quickly distinguish between personality disorders, high conflict personalities.

The difference, and there's a chart in the beginning of the book with two circles overlapping, a lot of overlap. But the main thing about personality disorders is their stuck in a narrow range of interpersonal behavior. So some aren't high conflict people. Some are think about high conflict people is that they're preoccupied with blame that blaming others is a big part of their life.

So when you're dealing with a high conflict person who's blaming and has a personality disorder, you get a stuck pattern of behavior. You get high conflict personalities or high conflict people. So they're persistent in acting that way. That's the overlap with personality disorders is they don't reflect. They don't change. They just keep blame is everybody out there.

So recognizing that difference and similarity. So about half of people I think with personality disorders, and this is just my estimate, have high conflict personalities and about half don't. I've worked with borderlines in the psych hospital, narcissists that don't blame other people, narcissists that are just self-centered, but and borderlines who are more frustrated with themselves than anybody else.

So that's an important distinction. You beautifully distinguish between high conflict personalities and these personality disorders. And I just want to make sure everyone here is again that about half of people with personality disorders would fall into this high conflict personality. In my estimation, I don't have research yet.

And the distinguishing feature seems to be that high conflict personalities are often or constantly casting blame on others for the difficulties of their life essentially. And that's why they have conflicts. That's why they escalate instead of getting worked on and resolved.

So I can imagine that the high conflict person doesn't always appear as high conflict. In fact, this is something that you've alluded to many times already in this conversation. And certainly in your book that sometimes these high conflict personalities come in kind of under the radar. And that can be confusing to people or they can go undetected for a long time.

Yeah, so part of it goes with the specific personalities. So high conflict people with borderline personality traits or histrionic personality traits are often more openly dramatic. And so they they might really shock you that suddenly they start yelling screaming throwing things just because you're having an average conversation very disproportionate. But some and it tends to be more of the anti social personality, some narcissistic personalities can look really reasonable on the surface.

And they've actually had a lifetime of experience at looking good, which kind of covers up all the stuff under the surface. And I think of a couple of examples. So for example, and I deal sometimes with domestic violence cases. So let's say an abuser says in court says, oh, well, I was helping her because she was so upset.

I took her keys away and I held her down on the bed because I was afraid she would leave and get into a car crash. Well, there may be rare occasions where that's true, but that's a common story that we get from domestic abusers. And that's a common story of a person who has been a victim or in court, I've seen this where there'll be a very reasonable person kind of explaining the situation. And their partner more often a woman is just emotional is a mass maybe even in tears.

And so there's about 80% of divorces in court today, people represent themselves. And so there's these conversations. And the judge is like, well, this guy's being really reasonable. And this woman's a mess. I mean, you know, I'm going to go with what he's saying.

So a lot of stuff slips under the radar that way, but gender wise, it could be the reverse and a lot of relationships people get into people make themselves look really good. And then the negative stuff comes out weeks, months, maybe a year later. So that's why we say wait a year until you decide to commit because nowadays, who knows you may have someone that really is good at covering their bad behavior.

Yeah, let's hover on that one particular point because this is perhaps one of the most important takeaways from your work. Could you just spell out this first year principle. And perhaps it's useful for us to also acknowledge that yes, there are a great many truly great stories about people who met one weekend, two weeks later got married.

And then we're hearing the story 50 years later when they've got grandkids and great grandkids they thrived or people met got engaged three months later or, you know, in some cases got pregnant three months later and they have this wonderful marriage and family story to tell. We hear these stories and they're really wonderful stories, right? I mean, they sort of affirm your belief in humanity when you hear those stories.

And they are powerful, but in discussing a little bit of this with you offline, you probably have witnessed more cases where people rushed and that rushing to commit or to create lead to more problems than it did good.

Yes, and that's many, many of the high conflict divorces that I've worked on as a lawyer and before that is a therapist and sometimes as a mediator are in my mind kind of the bad luck stories got a decent person usually my client, of course, but something happened they got together too fast and then all this stuff came out.

And I really believe in today's world that it is a matter of luck and that's why you should take a year to find out am I that I draw the short straw in this relationship, I've got this perfect looking person, great record, all these good things, but close relationships is where personality disorders come out in a personal difficulty and the high conflict behaviors mostly close relationships.

So they might everyone might like them at work, but when you're home alone with them, they could be really terrible yelling, hitting, doing all of this stuff. So that's why we say way to year, I've had a lot of cases where people tell me we just just fell in love, it was beautiful and everything was wonderful for about six months.

And then when I committed to get married, all this stuff started showing up, but I got married anyway because I figured, well, time in love will heal everything only it didn't. So in today's world, there's a higher risk of getting a high conflict relationship, I must say. And the description you gave is what people often tell me, they say my grandparents got married a week after they met and they just celebrated their 60th anniversary, they're still in love, everything's wonderful.

Your grandparents tended to know who they were marrying. In today's world, not only don't you know, you don't have a history, but high conflict people have learned to cover up the full range of who they are. And they're not bad people and that's something I want to emphasize. They just have a different personality and they may have been born this way, but they don't come with with markings, you know, they don't come with the music like of jaws, do do do do do.

They look good and anybody I think is at risk of falling into a relationship like this. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. By now, many of you have heard me say that if I could take just one supplement, that supplement would be AG1. The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality and most complete of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

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Right now, they're giving away 5 re-travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash huberman to claim that special offer. I definitely want to come back to this point that you made that you're not demonizing these people. You're talking about how to behave with them or how to not behave with them in some cases in order to try and create the smoothest possible interactions in some cases, no interaction.

But if we could hover still a bit more on this first year idea. My understanding is that no getting engaged, or for that matter-married, no conceiving children. And no moving in together in year one. Are those the critical? Except for the last one. Is it's really don't commit like getting married within the first year. Sometimes moving in together is a good way to find out what it's like up close with this person. Yeah, you learn a lot by living with somebody. That's right. That's right.

And personality disorder is part of the definition as interpersonal dysfunction. And that's close, that's close relationships. So if you haven't had that close relationship, you don't see what happens when you leave your socks out or the caps off the toothpaste. And some little thing is some huge storm. Or when somebody's sleep deprived. I always say you can learn a lot about somebody after a bad night's sleep. You end them. Right. Right. The key is patterns of behavior.

So one thing I want to say is everybody gets angry sometimes. That's fine. Everybody yells sometimes. Everybody, you know, criticizes sometimes. But if they have a pattern like their life pattern of relationship is to yell and scream and criticize and all that. Whoa. This pattern is probably going to keep going. And it's going to be with personality disorders. It's a narrower pattern of behavior. So it's more pattern driven in several different settings.

Family may be at work when there's clothes, maybe in the community when it's closed. So these are recognizable patterns. As recognizable as alcohol is a meditation. So that's the key. Give yourself some time. See if this stuff comes to the surface. I think you're raising a really interesting point, which is that although nowadays we have more information about people available to us by way of the internet and social media. You made the comparison with our grandparents era. I'm 49 years old.

So my grandparents actually my grandparents knew each other from the time they were like in the eighth grade. They alloped when they turned 18. When and got married I think to the dismay of one or side or the other side of parents. But then we're married more than 50 years. Yeah. And grandkids obviously, one of them, etc. And so you have these stories and we love these kinds of stories. Yeah. But as you point out, they knew each other very, very well and had for a long time.

Nowadays one can quote unquote do their research, go online and look for things. But would you argue that that's not complete information? Right. I think it can be helpful. I tell people Google your partner and find out, you know, if there's some history there that may end up. Definitely. But don't believe that's sufficient. What I say that you really want to talk to is relatives and friends of this person. And what you really want to do is see them in action with relatives and friends.

Relatives and friends. Yes, because that's close relationships. That's the key. This is all about close relationships. And that's what catches people by surprise. They say this person looks good at work. Some people have worked together for 10 years. And maybe they were in other relationships and they both got divorced, commiserated with each other and get together. And it's like we've known each other for 10 years. You know, we're going to have a great relationship.

And they find out this is like a stranger almost. Because it's a close relationship now. And that's the difference. How people behave in a close relationship. Often triggers like personality disorder and stuff. Fear of abandonment. Fear of looking inferior. Fear of being dominated. Fear of not getting enough attention. The personality disorder seem to have excessive fears in these areas. Is it fair to say that if somebody has a lot of stable friendships over, you know, long periods of time.

That that's a good indication that they can maintain close relationships. But it seems to me you'd also want to know like what is a close friend to that person. Do they actually spend time with them? You know, do. And likewise with co-workers. Because some work environments that I've been in are necessarily very non-personal. You don't share much, right? Whereas other environments like I know the partners of everyone I work with now at the podcast. That wasn't true for my academic colleagues.

I knew some of my academic colleagues' families. I would have dinner with them, etc. But some of them less so. So context matters a lot. Yes. And I'd say, you mentioned the word stability and that's really a key. So if they have close friends they've had for 10, 20, 30 years, that's a really good sign. Bad signs are, I don't want you talking to my family. They're evil people. They'll say terrible things about me. You can't trust them. They'll end up. They'll turn on you. They'll hate you.

All this stuff. You can't even ever talk to me. I can't even let you know who my family is and what their emails and phone numbers are. Oh goodness. That's a warning sign. Yeah, definitely. It's happening every morning. Because everyone has conflict with family members at some level. But you would hope that one could feel comfortable allowing you to interact with their family. Yeah. And if your family is really difficult, introduce your partner to your family and let them see.

This is a difficult family and this is why I had to distance from them. Because a lot of people to be healthy do have to get some more distance. But it's the secretiveness. It's the, just secrets in general are not a good thing for relationships. That's the biggest piece that's missing in a way compared to 50 years ago when people knew. It was hard to have family secrets. 50 years ago. Now, even though people may be all over the internet, you might really know their secrets.

And that's what you need to find out. What about advocates? So, you know, I'm familiar with some high conflict individuals. Some are more of the combative type. Others are more of the kind of, what did you call it, sort of a quiet manipulative, victim playing type. And both seem to be pretty good at generating advocates. I guess you call these negative advocates. People that will fight for them. By the way, this is all sounding like modern politics.

Yes. And maybe we'll get into that a little bit because it is an important reflection on what we're talking about. But what about these negative advocates? If somebody has a lot of friends or advocates that are kind of like on their side against, that are also in a blame mode. Yes. Is that a red flag? Yes. What's interesting, and I'd like to someday learn more of the neuroscience behind this. But high conflict people have heightened emotions.

The cluster B personality disorders are known as dramatic, emotional, and erratic. That's the DSM5TR says that, the manual for mental health professionals. And so their heightened emotions are contagious. And in general, what I've learned about this work a lot is emotions are contagious and high conflict emotions are highly contagious.

So what happens, and I see this so much as a lawyer and with other lawyers and with therapists, is the high conflict person comes into your office and says, I've been terribly treated by, let's say my ex, you know, man or woman, because it happens to both. I've been terribly treated and you've got to save me, you've got to protect me, you've got to win, you've got to, sometimes they say you have to destroy the other party.

That's always a warning sign when their goal is to destroy the other parties. Not a good sign. But they're so emotional. You say, my goodness, this person's been through so much. Now I have the emotions and what I teach in my seminars is I understand a lot to do with the amygdala that the amygdala catches the intense fear or tense anger that those are heightened. And so now mine's going, oh, Billy, you've got to do something.

I'm like, my body wants me to take action and I want to save this person from their evil co-parent, for example. And so what we see with negative advocates is they're emotionally hooked but uninformed. They don't really know what's going on. And I give you an example, a court case with a high conflict person, brought their whole family. And I had a case with false allegations, terrible allegations.

My client happened to be the father, the mother was making false allegations of child sexual abuse. And I've had all types of true cases, false cases. This is a real problem or real issue, but they're also a false allegations. And this case, that's what was happening. So the mother brings her whole family. And the judge realizes what's going on in the case because of the evidence presented and sanctions the mother for knowingly false allegations. What is that equate to in the legal system?

So my client, the father spent like $40,000 getting a psychological evaluation, having a trial, doing all of this attorneys fees. And so the court made her pay $10,000 of his attorneys fees and costs. So that's what the sanction is. And there's a code section that's a knowingly false allegations of child abuse are a basis to make one party pay the other party's fees. So she's ordered, she never paid it by the way.

And she had no property. We weren't able to get it because she had property and other people's names. But the idea was that she brought her whole family there. She brought her mother, mother's boyfriend. She brought her roommate who was a psychology grad student who was like encouraging her, oh, your daughter is being abused. You've got to do something. These were all negative advocates.

And when the judge made her ruling and spelled out the information that was very clear, I mean, we caught the mother lying. She persuaded other people to lie for her. We caught them in lies. It was a really surprisingly open case. And the family started yelling at the judge. I said, this is a crime. And this is a shame. And that judge said, you take yourselves out of here immediately or I will have the bailiffs take you out.

And that they stood up and laughed and shouted, this is an abomination or something like that. These were the negative advocates. They didn't know what the full picture was. They believed their family member who was a skilled liar. I believe. And it's very interesting. I got to talk to her therapist. A therapist she had. I was released to talk to her. And the therapist it was in the open was she has borderline personality disorder. And that was an open thing.

And the therapist said, and there's something else. And I said, anti-social personality disorder. And she said, I can't say, but I wouldn't disagree with you. Which is effectively a yes. Yeah. And with anti-social, that's where you get a lot of lying and stuff like that. It's a rare case. But since I have the social work background and I've had many true cases of child sexual abuse, especially as a therapist, I can see the difference. Whereas a lot of lawyers don't know what to look for.

But this was an exceptional case. Anti-social and borderline personality disorder. She had a lot of traits. And at first the judge was very critical of my client and us. And he would have supervised contact. But the supervisor said, this is fascinating. When the child would be exchanged, the girl would like kind of walk kind of tentatively towards the father. The mother dropped her and left. Supervisor brought her to the father.

She was like kind of tentative. She'd see the father. And she'd look. The mother's out of sight. She'd jump on him, laugh, and have a wonderful time. I do have one question. It's not a litmus test question. But do you recall from the particular case you were just describing, whether the relationship had started very quickly?

Had they moved in together quickly? Decide. Excuse me. Had they decided to have children together quickly, married quickly? In other words, was your client oblivious because of the rate at which he were moving? And the analogy that comes to mind is if you're moving very fast, it's hard to read the road signs. I think he did. And what's interesting is they got together when they were quite young. I think maybe she was 18, he was 20, something like that.

It's pretty young by today's standards. Yeah. And so excitement, new, all of that. I'm pretty sure they did. And what's interesting is they they had gotten divorced that the issue I described was after divorce custody issue.

They got divorced maybe four or five years into their marriage. And she assaulted him. And he had the scars and all of this. So he had actually custody of this girl who was eight years old when the story I just told you happened, which is also helpful because she was verbal. She could describe.

She actually described how her mother coerced her to say things that weren't true. But yeah, so they got together young. I think quick. They may got divorced, but the patterns continued. And that's one thing we see a lot of high conflict divorces keep going even after the divorce. The actual divorce date is like a speed bump in the lifetime of high conflict. If they have children together. Hence the weight to have children with somebody. Yes. If possible.

You asked about emotional contagion and you made reference to the science. If I may, I'll just share something that might be of interest to you into the listeners. You're certainly right that the amygdala is a central hub for threat detection.

And what a lot of people don't know because it's just not discussed enough in the popular coverage of neurosciences that the amygdala can learn in the sense that it's highly prone to context dependent plasticity. So you know this idea that getting emotionally charged is either negative valence like fear or positive valence like, oh, I like that.

That's true to an extent, but over time, the brain changes to in some cases like the feeling of adrenaline to get an associated dopamine release with that. But a really interesting set of brain structures that aren't discussed enough. I'll just mention because they're because you asked about neuroscience. I had a postdoc in my laboratory by name of he Kyung-jung of fantastic postdoc who was looking at emotional contagion.

We were interested in human subjects, but these were animal studies, you know, by one, by one member of a species is observed and then mimicked by the another member of the species is a very powerful aspect of human and non human behavior.

And there's a structure in the brain called the cloustrom. Most people don't know about it, which seems to be critical for this. And she did a beautiful set of experiments of showing that when animals observed other animals, either in a positive or a fear state. But in this case, a fear state, they would or threaten state their own cloustrom to enter a single cortex circuitry and of course, a mcdilett, etc. Those would light up as if they were in the experience, but not to the same degree.

But over time, what one could see was a kind of a heightening a plasticity of these circuits so that smaller threats started to create larger internal responses. That's both combining heak yung's work and other work that's come out since. So what it says is that our brains are very tuned to the emotional states of others. This is good.

Empathy, for instance. But that over time, we can, our brains change to actually require a lower stimulus to activate that kind of negative advocate part of ourselves. Yes. And so perhaps this is a good segue into a discussion about what we're observing societally now, not just in terms of politics. But you know, it's one thing to be recruited to a camp.

But then once you're in the camp, it turns out if you, if we think about through the lens of this work, it seems that it requires less negative stuff in order to stay in that camp but want to fight more and more stridently in order to protect a cause.

Does that make sense? I think exactly. And as I mentioned in my book about bullies, I think polarization really demonstrates that. So once you're in your group and you see the other group as not only having a different point of view, but as the enemy, then your brain doesn't need to work on it anymore.

That's case closed. They're the enemy. The only question is, what do we do now? And the research saying that when you, when you talk to the people in your group, rather than coming together, you move farther apart.

And to me, what's fascinating in terms of legal cases, and especially in family law, is you have like the family I described, you have the family talking to each other, you pull a lawyer into that, the lawyer talks to them, the lawyer gets heightened anger, maybe your commitment to save this person.

And maybe you get a therapist into the picture and they all just talk to themselves, they pull farther and farther apart. And that's often when we have our high conflict court case, they come back to court every six to 12 months. Sometimes for years, I have cases where people have been in court like every year for eight or nine years. And these are cases where the divorce was done long ago, but people don't realize is the worst custody disputes tend to happen after the divorce is over.

And I think it's because people are spending more and more time talking to their own team, to their own group. And that pulls them farther apart. Their view of the other side is worse and worse and worse. And that's why I think the structure really matters. So I think politically we have, we have these two different universes that not necessarily talk to each other.

And they really create a sense of community, people are looking for community and they find it. But it's fed by I think the media ecosystem, everyone has their own media. And so we have these two universes talking to themselves, growing farther and farther apart. And that's why elections don't seem to have made a difference in any of this because elections kind of decides who does government, but they don't resolve the adversarial communities.

And they get a lot of attention and sad to say I think our culture has shifted from government that politics as about government and the details in nitty gritty and the values of government are what's good for our group good for our country unity citizenship. We should be together in this that politics have shifted to entertainment, the values of entertainment are be extreme, be emotional.

And entertainment is driven by drama, you know, for thousands of years. And drama is opposing us against them. And as I mentioned in the bullies book, there's a terrible crisis, there's an evil villain, and there's a superhero. And if you have someone tell that story to their community, they will love that person. So now we have two communities in politics, loving themselves and hating the other.

And the election don't resolve that. That's a speed bump on the road to high conflict. And that's not a good sign and we have to find ways to bridge the gaps. And there are ways you get people one to one talk to each other. There's a lot of groups trying to say let's let's connect rather than separate. And if we get too far out of balance, we're going to have bigger and bigger high conflict problems.

We have to, the more people's eyes are open to this pattern, the more they can say, hey, I seem to be part of this group, but I want to, you know, my neighbors think differently, I'm going to listen to them. It's listening that's missing. I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, function.

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So if you'd like to try David, you can go to Davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is Davidprotein.com slash Huberman. On the suggestion of my friend and former guest on this podcast, two-time guest, Rick Rubin, I started watching a documentary about the history of professional wrestling, which everyone agrees is made up.

So let's just acknowledge that. I recognize that. But it's a remarkable portal into some of the things that you're talking about because it all hinges on being able to create emotional responses in the crowd. It's just a very brief history of it as I understand. And I'm by no means an expert, but I took notes on this documentary as I do. Take notes on most everything. They used to have good guys and bad guys, good gals and bad gals. Yeah.

You know, because it's men and women's wrestling. Typically, not against each other, although sometimes. In any case, there was a transition that occurred at some point where they couldn't get more excitement and literally couldn't get more attention to the sport. By having good good guys and bad guys, good gals and bad gals. So what they ended up doing was making everybody bad. And the ratings just skyrocketed. Everybody bad.

Right. The underlying premise being that both teams are cheating. And so therefore they had to behave poorly also. And it created this whole era of just just bad people doing bad things generating even greater emotional responses.

Yeah. And this fits very much with the neuroscience of emotion. Yeah. Emotions like all happiness, joy, meaning, pleasure. These are powerful emotions. And I will not say because there's no data to support the idea that fear, anger, being threatened, etc. are more powerful emotions. But they tend to drive more behavior. And so in other words, people will do more of this as well known in the field of behavioral economics too. People will do more to avoid losing something. Right.

Then they will to gain something sadly. But this is how our species is wired for the nationary. Meaningful reasons. So the point being that I think societally and perhaps interpersonally because the two things mimic each other at every level individuals on all the way up to culture. It seemed to be engaged in this like increasingly amplified emotional states. And now it just seemed like combat is the rule of the day. And it's so sad and you kind of have to wonder where it goes next.

But it does seem like it rewards these high conflict personalities because they go undetected. Right. So now the co worker who's super angry about something they saw on the news and is trying to engage people or something or create an issue around something that like is this really an issue.

I mean, there's some real issues in the workplace and it's school. But like is this really an issue? Like that person 10 years ago everyone would have been like, this is a problem person and would have backed away. Now it just kind of because the the mean has shifted. Right. I think it goes it's no longer signal above the noise. It's as we say in science within the noise. Right.

Well, what we're seeing is the these kind of media systems I call them are attracted to high conflict personalities and high conflict personalities are attracted to attention. They want attention. So there's it's almost marriage of media exposure and high conflict personalities. And so that's what what what pulls people together. There's like I think everyone's looking for community these days and it used to be around work like a shared task.

But now we do so much of our work alone or tiny groups. And so you get a real sense of community people used to get it from from church or synagogue or mosque or ever. And that's weakened. And so we get that now a lot the intense emotional community from politics. And so there's a community for you. And there's a community for you. So they pull themselves together. They get that that I don't know dopamine hit or whatever it is.

And strengthens them. So what's happening is we're pulling apart. But to me the answer is exposing the patterns and understanding our brains is recognize what's happening. This person's probably exaggerating when they say that you know those people are evil. This person's probably exaggerating when they say those people are stupid. And so whatever it is that we have to realize okay don't don't buy that completely. And what's fascinating to me. I don't know how it happened.

But I get text message solicitations to contribute to campaigns from conservatives and liberals. I get both. And guess what they look like each other. And they're like the end of the world is coming. They give $10 or $100 to save the world. And the end of the world's coming because of them. It's all fear based. And it's fear based. But it hooks your emotions. I know this stuff so I can get okay swipe swipe swipe away.

But a lot of people don't know that this is happening. They don't understand how emotions are contagious. And how I think high conflict emotions are more contagious. So to me it's educating people about these dynamics so you don't engage so much with them. Like I won't watch more than a half an hour of TV news. But you could have 24 seven TV news. And since 1995 1996 when they allowed.

They gave you licenses for radio and television that didn't have to tell the other side of the story before that used to the fairness doctrine. You have to say what the other side is. You're for a candidate. You have to hear from the other side. You didn't have to after 1995 96. So we had like MSNBC and Fox News. So we had like a few news. Slightly off center slightly conservative slightly liberal. Well now we've had 30 years of that much farther apart.

And communities around each of these. And yet if you go okay I'm probably hearing some exaggerations here. So I can check myself and this person's trying to be a hero and demonize those people. So I'm not one for government regulation. What I want is for everyone to be able to say okay I see what's happening I'm not going to get my emotions hooked.

And I think to me that's one of the goals is for people to learn I don't have to absorb the emotions because that's where the problem is people are emotionally hooked and uninformed. What are some of the signs of a high conflict personality because in an ideal world we avoid these people. And again we're not trying to say that they're bad people some of them are bad people some of them aren't but since I'm not a clinical psychologist you are you can make the assessment.

Certainly better than I can what what are some of the ways to avoid these circumstances besides the first year rule. And then let's talk about some ways to disentangle from these people based on their unique phenotypes so. Is there a question or set of questions one should ask themselves when they are potentially dating someone potentially becoming friends with somebody potentially becoming co workers with somebody and so on.

Yeah so what's interesting is often your gut feeling tells you something's up here like the person suddenly has a shocking opinion of somebody else. And they say you know that person's a total jerk and yet you know that person and they're not a total jerk they suddenly something's disproportionate I think disproportionate emotions is often a trigger.

I put I put in a lot of my books now what I call the web method is pay attention to their words your emotions and their behavior so starting with words do they use a lot of blaming words you know it's all that person's fault. Is it do they use all or nothing works they seem to see things through a narrow lens that you know there's all good there's all bad unmanaged emotions which they may or may not show like I explain some people are good at hiding all that even though it drives them inside.

And the extreme behaviors do they do things 90% of people would never do and I'll give an example here and this is I won't say the city but there was a mayor there was someone who worked who was a congressperson and they decided to run for mayor in their city instead of flying to go to congress.

But when they were flying to go to congress back and forth this is in California I'll say that much people can easily research this so this person flying back and forth one day one night standing you know there was a line to get your bags at the airport after you got off the plane.

And he was told to wait in line to get his bags and he said don't you know who I am and he pushes way to the front of the line and had an argument with the person behind the counter said don't you know who I am I want my bag right now and she said you but don't have it now you can't have it right now and he pushed her and knocked her over.

And he shoved this this airline worker behind the counter and knocked her over this was a mayor of a major not yet he wasn't mayor yet he was a congressperson. So that he's sorry no no no I know some some some decent congress people but like okay yeah but so he's a good in any case right this person could be any number of different preventives like yes this is anti social behavior but this is a high high profile person.

This is in the all over the news the next day this is twenty years ago maybe fifteen years ago something like that goodness anyway so it's in the newspaper the next day and newspapers says congressman so and so gets into physical altercation with airline worker knocks her over half the people said that's terrible and the other half the people said wait wait he was sleep deprived he was flying across country you have to understand that he was stressed.

And here's where my web method comes in ninety percent of people would not have done that even if they were sleep deprived and I fly back and forth a lot and I'm not I don't do that I would like to think ninety nine percent of people I think you're right right ninety nine percent ago with an airline person over a bag the cutting to the front of the line is a great is a gregis the shoving the airline person is like beyond the pale yeah exactly so this is so.

Anyway so he's running for mayor and I'm going this guy's a high conflict person if he gets elected he's not going to be a very good mayor he's going to have a lot of trouble with the people close to him and so guess what happened he gets elected

with in I think it's eight months he is and this is before the me to movement got started but people are reporting he's harassing women sexually harassing women women come into his office to meet with him professional experienced important and he's like wanting to touch them a lot inappropriately they don't want to be touched

anyway so women start complaining about him were kind of gets out yeah this happened with a lot of different people that he's he's not sexually assaulting them but he's he's treating them badly so it cuts across domains it's like in yeah so it's it's not just in the office it's it's it's there but it's also at the airport it's it's basically anytime he's not getting what he wants he throws a tantrum and that's the thing with with person

family disorders is a narrower range of behavior that's repeated in a variety of settings so he's fitting all of that so which personality disorder I'm not going to diagnose him but it narrows down to one or two so it's not context dependent it it is right it's pervasive pervasive and that word is in the diagnostic manual that it's pervasive across I think several

settings I think that's the words but let me let me just finish so please because the end of the story the end of the story is he's also got committees and people that are supposed to accomplish things he doesn't want them to think he wants them to he wants to do the thinking and tell them what to do so he goes around alienating a lot of people within eight months he's out of office because enough people were upset

and the way he got out of office is some of the heads of government told him I think was the city attorney or something if you quit now we'll help you with your legal expenses because he's starting to get sued for some of the stuff

so in the city so in him will help you with your legal expenses if you quit now and there was starting to be a petition movement for some I don't know the mechanics like a special election or something to get rid of him anyway within eight months he was out of the office and now you don't hear about him in that city it's a very interesting literally high profile although still anonymous based on this conversation case I wonder if

on a more subtle or typical level the following is informative or not I'm not looking for a validation of the example what about to give but I've been very surprised at times how if a person who I'm with for the first time out on a meal will behave towards the weight staff

yes not explicitly disparaging of them but sometimes mildly disparaging of them or feeling as if the amount of liquid poured into their glass was somehow an indication of how the waiter felt about them or didn't feel about them reading and like reading into these things or you're just thinking yourself like oh life must be really tough for you like who's paying attention to this stuff and so that that's one that I've noticed in people and it's proved informative

it's really a useful thing to see that's part of what you see their behavior and their behavior towards other people this was it was a brilliant thing I don't remember the name of the program but there was a guy who was head of a company and he used to when he was interviewing people for high level jobs he pretended he was a taxi driver something would pick them up at the airport

as the taxi driver and see how they treated him as the taxi driver and then he gets in the interview room and he's the guy interviewing them and in some cases people treated him really disrespectfully and it's like now I know this is not someone I want clever I made the decision to not work for somebody years ago when I was on the different very different stage of my career

based on how that person treated a janitor and it was amazing because it was one very brief interaction and it wasn't like this person yelled at the janitor it was the kind of dismissiveness and I remember it was this your web approach it was it was his I guess I just revealed it was his words towards the janitor

it was my emotional response was for like I felt like I've been kind of kicked in the stomach right like that was like it just felt like like a very what I would call like the football play unnecessary roughness yes it was mild from the perspective of like no one got physical or called anyone names but it was remember thinking like like that sucked

right and then their behavior was just to just go right back to what they were talking about and I I knew in that moment I was really crestfallen because in that moment I knew oh my goodness I can't work for this person yeah like I just can't and I made the decision not to and actually their response to my deciding not to for a variety of other reasons too

confirmed everything that I suspected in that one little interaction yes but it's interesting because we're trained to collect data rather you know carefully you know and we don't want to we don't want to make snap judgment somebody could truly be having a bad day but in this case it was the right decision to not work for them thank goodness I think my lucky stars it's a really bad decisions about people in my life that was a really good decision

I never spent a day regretting it and I went to work for someone else who was terrific instead so but as you said these things sometimes hit at a at a somatic level as opposed to some sort of wait did you know some like very cerebral analytic thing it kind of hits at what must be a very primitive circuit I can't help the neuroscientist

it means wants to say like it's got to be something at the level of the body where we go wait that was messed up yeah and you can't really point to a specific word and then you start to question yourself that's the problem you you wonder was well maybe their tone was it maybe it's my own perception but I don't know maybe maybe the body doesn't lie maybe it knows

I think the body is like a first responder and that we should pay attention to that and especially with high conflict personalities especially the con artist which is part of anti social personality and the ones I've dealt with are very good at this is their words are just right and your brain is like sooth by them you go this person gets it and I'm totally comfortable they're charming all of that

and your gut goes wait there's they're out of sync I have this cold feeling why do I have this cold feeling and I think that they're they're aimed at your your cerebral thinking

and that your guts kind of gets it because they're in a way predatory like anti social tend to be predatory those people have dead eyes I've known a few I've known a few men and women and their eyes are I can only describe I'm a vision neuroscientist that's like what my career has been and those are two little pieces of brain right there and there's

something about the deadness and I don't have a science to support what I'm about yeah there's something about the deadness in their eyes maybe there are people don't change shape with levels of arousal the same way other people's due because we know that happens in in healthy people with a healthy

autonomic nervous system but there's something lacking yeah and people make up all sorts of theories online like I'm not a big blinker I don't when I'm concentrating it blinks break up my flow and this is actually a way I can remember things people have these theories about blinking non-bling the research doesn't support any relationship between blink frequency and personality had this whole theory about zuck to like he doesn't blink

therefore he's look whatever is a robot none of that holds up what does hold up however is this mismatch between words and the affect that it creates in us yeah it's sort of like it sounds right but it doesn't feel right I wish we understood more about this at the level of science

there are a lot of theories not a lot of not a lot of tools someday I think yeah yeah the tools for measuring the stuff that are getting better I wanted to ask you about other ways of just knowing if you're interacting with a high conflict person when the cues are more subtle are there other things or examples of the web method that come to mind well for me of course dealing like with court especially there's a lot of stuff in writing

and so being able to look at what's written and a lot of blame words the all or nothing words she did this and she did that and disparaging words he stupid or whatever or he's a bully he's this and that which triggers for me maybe he is or maybe the person saying it is but it heightens my attention yeah how do you disambiguate between projection and a real thing like online now I mean one of the most pop one of the fastest ways to get a popular social media

account is for somebody to give advice about how to avoid bad people the name calling gaslighting narcissists sociopath psychopath history on it like these these are clinical terms that now the general public can leverages to like you know sort of amplify community and then in part I understand from talking people in the tech side is that social media is social right the accounts that grow fastest are the ones where you don't need much language to convey what you're trying to convey like a sport

or dance or an animal that the and among the others that grow very quickly and therefore rewarding to people are ones where there's where you're recruiting these negative advocates first I want to make sure that I get this point across and that is there's a lot of temptation to label people with like the

mental disorders the personality disorders and it's absolutely essential that people don't do that if you think somebody might be a narcissist or might have borderline personality or be anti social keep that to yourself and adapt how you work with them to be more effective or be more cautious whatever but the worst thing I think is people say oh and everyone agrees that person's a narcissist so we kind of gang up on that person that's not

helpful the goal is not rejecting people the goal is adapting what you do to either manage the relationship decide okay that's not someone I'm going to get close to but you know I can still work with them or have them as neighbors or whatever so I want to emphasize that because I think you're right there's a lot of that today and people come to me with that

concern is a bill you teach about personality disorders yes so people understand patterns of behavior and how to adapt your own behavior I'm not teaching people to label other people so that's real important yeah people go to school for many years and do 3000 plus clinical hours to do that yeah to do that properly it's like saying it's like

diagnosing anything right I mean dermatologist might be able to help diagnose a skin patch for potential cancer but we're taught that we're not supposed to do that themselves right so we have to be cautious but on the other hand of where and the more you're aware of patterns like like being aware of someone with an additional abuse issue is to go okay I'm not going to be serving him alcohol with dinner it's a great person but I'm just going to leave that out of the evening meal

adapt to what we do rather than judging them and I don't see people of personality disorders as lesser beings I see them as having a different set of behaviors that they acquire pretty much in childhood so I don't hold it against them I may dislike their patterns of behavior but I really don't hate people like that I've been a therapist with clients like that so I think our awareness needs to be there so we adapt how we work with people but I think the gut feeling is is so important and as a

therapist I was trained pay attention to your gut because that's going to help you with your clients and that's why the web method there words their behavior but how I feel often gives me tips you mentioned before and I think it's really important to highlight that people's patterns of interactions across a lot of different domains with the teachers in the school with close family members with

the people that know them best at work that these different types of relationships reveal a pattern and one of the things I'm just speaking from my own experience is that I've tended to where I've gone wrong I've tended to overemphasize the importance of like a credential for instance some of my past romantic relationships have been with people who are highly educated

some less higher education all extremely smart people some more formal some less formal education but I think that I and other people sometimes will look at the CV of somebody and of course that's not the only indication of their values etc but and to overemphasize like oh well they did difficult things in a difficult setting

therefore must be a good person like we hate so would you say that these high conflict personalities exist more or less in high competition venues versus low competition venues I don't want to make this about socio economic status those things correlate but I'm but you know all too often we tend to do the kind of good on paper analysis yeah and forget the like how do they actually measure up in real life

yeah I would say first of all that we see high conflict people in every occupation in every culture and every community every economic status I think that I don't think there's research on this but I think that health care and higher education are two fields where there's a slightly higher incidence higher of high conflict people because there's a higher tall also I would say churches and we get consultations with churches sometimes there's a high tolerance for behavior that's outside the norm

because you said higher education and health care in particular and I would say church physicians and universities yes yes so students and faculty and staff yes both administrators sometimes and I believe it's because of the higher tolerance administrators just kidding I would say we have been blessed with a great administrator

but let me let me mention I do a lot of consultation and one of the things that people come to me about is is people with little power bases like department heads in universities I remember one university I did a consultation with about a department head and they were a medical school and they had a high conflict person high up in the

structure who was really I was told damaging some of those students careers because they didn't they looked at them crosshide or something like that so they wouldn't write the kind of recommendation that they needed and how can we deal with this person because they're embedded in their position so gave them variety of tips but that's that's why I think people do need to have their eyes open in these

fields and and I want to add since I'm talking about occupations we see this a little bit more in nonprofits and nonprofit administrators because again nonprofits are good people doing good things but they have this higher tolerance for administrators of bad behavior because they're good people and that lines people because they're good people because they're because the mission is good the mission is good and they're invested in this mission so they must be good

do you think that's part of what got them there yes and and the thing that's so tricky is is it's everybody somewhat unique but also these are some recognizable patterns of behavior once you know to look for them and this is something we're doing much more in the workplace now and employers want to know we want to promote this person is that a good or bad idea

well let's look at the patterns of behavior because once you put them in an embedded position things are going to be harder I've been approached by city councils they say we've got somebody on our city council that's a high conflict person what do we do do we confront them do we publicly talk about them all that stuff I say neither of those is good

learn how to manage them until they move on and they often do because people slowly go we don't like working with this person it's really interesting you know when I was a graduate student there was a department chair in the department big personality like big personality yeah and I very quickly came to realize also because I listened to the faculty that were under this person that despite having this like big like larger than life personality that you might initially like place

into a category of you know like diagnosis or something yeah that this person was an incredibly strong advocate for the faculty yeah and they loved that

and he was really beloved and I think rightfully so you know and you know at a surface level might have rubbed a few people the wrong way I think as students we were like oh whoa like you know like it was almost like I didn't quite know how to like respond respond to it but you very quickly got the sense of like a real kind of paternal nature in this person

so I point this out because sometimes these big personalities are really truly benevolent now I'm not saying it was a perfect human being how could I know that I don't know that I didn't know him in all domains of his life although I didn't know his family and he seemed to have a great strong family too

but then by contrast I'm thinking of the person I alluded to earlier different department different university who was kind of like more me like like certainly is more of the stereotypical lab scientist and you know there was this like interaction that I observed and I thought like whoa like that's really dreadful at least that's not an environment I want to be in yeah

so sometimes these things don't match our initial impressions I raised this because sometimes we think big personality aka high conflict personality sometimes we think hey kind of you know quieter nerdy type and they're actually quite dreadful so it doesn't always fit and I think the problem with the internet social media version of this the typical version

because there's some great social media internet stuff podcasts etc is that we default to what we see and what we hear but we don't really have the data and we can get manipulated that way that's that's what's tricky but but you raise several important points I want to respond to them all if I can remember them the the first is that this is in many ways quite nuanced the key thing to look out for with high conflict people a preoccupation of blaming others and not taking responsibility

so you might have a big personality that's that's not a high conflict person you might have a me quiet person who is a high conflict person so you can't go by what your I see and your ears here it's really a question of evidence and that's why I think maybe I got into this after I became a lawyer that there's no way to quickly know although you may quickly suspect

and then want to look deeper but I wouldn't give an example because now that I seem to have criticized department heads and well I cited at least once that is really wonderful I've known some other great department heads I mean there's some chairs that are just like these are first of all as a department head sometimes there's a slight salary increase usually it's trivial yeah these people don't do it for the money I have a good friend who's also been on this podcast

who's a chair of neurosurgery and a major I mean these are people who they work their butts off to try and make conditions better for patients for professors for clinicians for staff I mean I'm not I'm not just saying this I have no incentive for saying you know like these people don't control my life anymore I suppose my my chair of the wonderful person it does et cetera but the point is that there are some people that step up to the plate to lead

that are really great leaders I know and these are just not the people that were focusing on today right right and so the thing I want to emphasize that my favorite example is Steve Jobs Steve Jobs I would say hands down was a high-complete person famous for there was a guy in Silicon Valley wrote a book the no A-hole rule and he talked about Steve Jobs in there because he knew Steve Jobs he was in Silicon Valley so I remember reading his biography like thousand pages or whatever

and what stood out to me was that he blamed people sometimes why all or nothing thinking they talked about his distortion reality distortion reality distortion field and that's exactly what high-conflict people do they all or nothing thinking you got to do this you can do the people say that's not possible it's physically impossible Steve you can't do this and then he would push them and one example that stood out to me was touchscreen glass that you touch and it knows where you are

I think and I may have it wrong but it from reading his autobiography that he her ranked corningwear glass company corning company something like that to create that and they said you can't do it it's not physically possibly possibly says do it and do it in the next 90 days and they did they invented this thing that they probably would not have done unless he pushed them so high conflict person but I don't think he had a personality disorder people say

oh it's even incredible narcissist but personality disorder is characterized by lack of change lack of self awareness lack of flexibility and they shoot themselves in the foot and interferes with their success he I think was close to that but he had enough flexibility and he picked a team that pushed back on him and he liked that so he's an example to me of high conflict person probably not personality disorder and successful because he probably had some traits of these

personalities so what I see is you totally have to look for the evidence that you can't make an assumption but if your guts says maybe something's off here pay attention to that but look for the facts talk to other people that know this person see them in other

situations because there's incredible people like him that that accomplish a lot of really good stuff that you don't want to say oh we can't have him apple fired him in the 1990s and he seemed to learn from that he seemed to grow from that people

with personality disorders don't seem to grow and change and that's that's their problem there's stuck high conflict people they blame others if they have some traits maybe you can do a work around so there's many people in position surgeons are one group

by one of mentioned briefly because as a clinical social worker I worked in hospitals and dealt with doctors a lot as a lawyer I've represented doctors in their divorces several I think are high conflict people but most aren't and that's what I want to say most

departments had aren't high conflict people most surgeons aren't high conflict people even though they get a reputation for that police is another area military is another area probably slightly higher incidents because they're in a position where they can dominate and control people

police aren't like that most people in the military aren't high conflict people they're professional people they like their job they know their job they have empathy they work with people so even though some of these occupations there's a higher incidence and that's certainly

there's a higher incidence and that's what I think most lawyers I think but most people most lawyers aren't like the most lawyers I know are really committed to their work really want to help their clients so I want to kind of be clear that this is nuanced stuff but when you're hiring people when you're getting into a dating relationship you want to watch more closely because it's the close relationships where high conflict behavior comes out more

so the web method seems like a very good method as well as paying attention to and maybe getting some information from other people close to that person in different domains of their life that seems like a very like say you to approach this exactly and because when you hear from different people the same problem then that should raise your antenna okay a lot of people say yeah but this person can be really irritable

and you go okay they're irritable in different settings I'm going to think about that what about when somebody is already involved with a high conflict person and they want to disentangle I could imagine a couple different scenarios let's say disentangle from a professional relationship

probably some overlap there but slightly different let's assume the high conflict person is a high conflict victim type then let's compare that to if the high conflict person is more of a combative type they will start with the combative type so if you're dealing with a combative maybe even dare we say narcissistic type I don't know that we should diagnose but the the stereotype that comes to mind is not a good thing

but the the stereotype that comes to mind somebody that that gets angry when you don't fulfill their expectations and blames others does not take responsibility and it's time you decide to like the Homer Simpson meme kind of drift back into the hedge is that the way to do it or do you lay a clear line and say listen I'm not going to tolerate this anymore I'm out

it's really somewhat dependent on the nature relationship I do a lot of consultation we do a lot of training with high conflict institute so we get you know married people getting divorced we get business partnerships where there's one partner that they going we got to deal with this we have employees trying to get away from from a high conflict supervisor

and we have supervisors trying to deal with a high conflict employee so the slightly different settings you know the most common situation is going to be where somebody has a friend or a romantic partner or a business professional partner they want to get out of so I suppose any of those close so a partner kind of relation something where the person expects to hear from you yeah on a fairly regular basis expects things from you could be professional things could be person who you want to do that

from you could be professional things could be personal things but where there's an ongoing expectation that you show up emotionally physically financially whatever yeah so first of all we strongly recommend against the direct hit is don't tell the person look you do this this this in this and that's terrible and I don't want to be I don't want to work with you I don't want to be in a relationship with you I don't want to be close to you

because of your behavior that high conflict people put some through the roof they will defend themselves and for the next months or years they may put you in litigation they may stalk you depending on your relationship they they they will hate you for that they'll blame you they will blame you and that fulfills their picture that it's all

your fault and now look you you have violated the most basic thing is that you will never blame me so don't blame them second thing is don't blame yourself because that reinforces to them like if you say you know I just can't you know I'm a sensitive person and I just can't you know keep up with you I know I'm defective and I know I'm just

I'm defective and I know I'm I know good at this this in this and so I just have to end this relationship and I so much apologize it's all my fault you know I it's I do everything wrong and I'm going to go really look at myself and get some therapy and I'm so sorry but I just can't you know keep up with you you're such a really good this this in this and I just can't

keep up with that well they're going to blame you for that and you're depending on their personality if they tend to have borderline traits they're going to feel abandoned by you they have narcissistic traits they're going to feel put down by you they're going to because you're supposed to see them as superior if they have anti social traits they're going to feel like wait a

minute you know you're supposed to be submissive to me and and yet you're walking away so you don't want to blame yourself so you're going to go well what's left what's left is we aren't a good fit our goals have gone in different directions I'm really ready for a career change I want to go

back to school or you know I just realized I'm I'm not ready for a committed relationship so it's not about you and it's not about them it's not about blame you want to try to keep it away from blame now some people say it's dishonest to not tell them everything and let's talk about brutal honesty high conflict people really love brutal honesty and they'll tell you I'm just being honest you're stupid or a jerk or whatever that's

high conflict people reasonable people don't tell everybody every negative thing they think that's just not healthy for relationships so it's okay to say you know we seem to be going in different directions or I have different plans I've realized I want to change so those are basic principles the worst thing in ending a relationship or reducing contact is to go back and forth the worst thing is to pour out your feelings to the person I have this people getting

divorced and they tell it I'm so sorry and I love you so much that pouring out your feelings to someone brings them closer to you so you want to start holding back some and the other person say well it's work let's go to counseling let's do this and if you're not sure go to

counseling I recommend that but if you're sure just say you know I'm I'm kind of not there anymore I really need to be more on my own so don't go back and forth because that really makes it raw and sometimes presages violence in divorces is

a high conflict person especially with some of the personality disorder traits can't handle the opening and closing opening and closing so but the other thing is I say do it in steps so the person can adjust you might say you know I'm I'm thinking about making a career change or I'm thinking that maybe this relationship isn't the right one for me anymore so the person gets used to the idea this may be coming to an end and then I'd

like to move out and have more time alone to think and then you're at a safe distance and you say I thought about it and we really need to get divorced and let's go to a divorce mediator I want to be amicable you know I don't hate you in many ways I still love you but we're just not meant to be a couple anymore if there's kids

involved then you know I really want us to have a supportive relationship for them if there aren't then maybe this really is the end but it's it's step by step so this person can adjust to the fact that you really are leaving but not too long and not too many steps because then there are expectations or raise oh maybe you're not really leaving so these are general principles depends a lot on the specifics yeah that was very helpful in reference to the high conflict person

especially not placing blame on them I mean I suppose in your own mind you can hold all the litany of reasons why they are a terrible choice or I guess more typically if we're realistic yeah it's not going to be all black and white right I mean it one would hope that at the first

side of really egregious behavior people like I'm done but typically it's a mix right I mean this is you know it professionally it's it's often a mix yeah and you know I've certainly observed this professionally where people you know wanted to collect the

degree or they were three years into a degree and like leaving was it it's always an option and yet sometimes it's not an option they have you know plans and financial obligations and you know some some cost is a real thing people always talk about some cost like oh that's just some cost some cost is a real thing so I think okay so with the high conflict person I think you beautifully illustrated how to not blame them not blame yourself internally you can hold any reasonable understanding

that you come to but you don't have to share all that and that you don't want to oscillate in any decision but that perhaps things some staging of the exit not staging a theatrically rather staging meaning in stages increments would be a better word what about with the high conflict victim playing person that seems like it's a little trickier I mean yeah maybe back up a minute because I want to say there's sometimes where you just need to get out and do it all at once and don't ease yourself out

by serious physical or emotional risks so you may need to get away before you hint that I no longer want to be married to you and I've I've worked with people consulted with them on established you know moving out when the other person isn't there they and the kids go to a safe place they've got their lawyer and then they tell this person that I'm getting divorced from you because people get killed when they separate with certain high conflict domestic violence people so also in the

workplace sometimes they're going to destroy they're going to send emails again be really destructive they may you might say I'm going to leave in a month and and they're so angry that they're going to really destroy your business this is why in the

professional setting there they're forgive the word because it's a associate with this podcast often but there are protocols for this in the in the workplace where you have to let somebody go it there's a sequence of steps and sometimes it involves telling people you

go home will ship you your things that's one extreme right go home now in there somebody waiting to escort you out type thing other times it's you know listen you're going to finish out the month but you're going to finish that the month out at home other times it's hey you're

welcome to stay and continue to to participate but by x date that's their final day so there's any number of different variations on these themes in the professional setting and sounds like there's any number of different variations in the

personal setting it's nuanced and that's where getting consultation and having a therapist a lawyer a high conflict consultant someone that you kind of walk it through with maybe even practice what you're going to say with a third party observer seems really key right just for a piece of mind yes right so yeah so mostly gradual but sometimes fast really depends now you asked about the person who plays the victim and I

would suggest that that's very common with high conflict people that when aggressive behavior doesn't work they switch to oh how can you do this to me that I'm so sad and what's interesting the word that I didn't come up with this other people came up with in divorce settings where let's say your door forcing someone with high conflict personality and they they're like I hate you I hate you don't leave me kind of personality and so you know I'm

divorcing you and they're like in a rage at you and then no I'm really leaving then they switch and beg and plead and I've got cases where people say and you know my X to B just seduced me and somehow I went along with it because it felt real good and it's back and forth from the high conflict person and they call it a brain you go hoovering where that word come from the Hoover vacuum what happens is a vacuum they suck you back into the

relationship and it's very common with some of the high conflict personalities they can't stand to lose you and when rage doesn't work then they try to seduce you back in and some people have allowed themselves to get back in and that's not good you've got to get ready for that don't be surprised by that and don't give into that if you're sure it's over if you're not sure it's over get couples counseling and see where it might go I know a number of people who let's just say conceived children

very in close proximity to the ending of the relationship and therefore there was no end to the relationship until years later I don't know of a single case where that led to a persistence of the relationship for better or worse so this sounds

like it falls under the the rubric of hoovering right people are leaving and then they end up you know one more time or just to try and make the the pain go away type thing and and then they're bringing you know more of an attachment I mean obviously a child is a forever tie as they say so yeah I wouldn't say it's the majority cases for sure but it's it's a common symptom with high conflict people and you and you hit on it it's like they can't handle the pain and so they really bring the

pack bring the person back in but if this is direction you're going you need to let them start coping with the pain either step by step or if it's dangerous all at once but don't go back if you can help it these are very helpful there are even tips this is very useful information for everyone listening I'm sure they agree we had a guest on this podcast Jonathan Hight has written the book anxious generation the coddling of the American mind and he mentioned some

statistics that younger folks so high school and younger have seem to lost or are losing the capacity to arbitrate among themselves that now more typically if there's a conflict and here we're we're assuming not extreme conflict or or anything criminal but where there's a conflict between two kids

school and they bring it to the authorities when I was growing up that was called taddling right you were called a rat and it got you semi-austercised if you did it you learn quickly don't do it either you learn directly or you learn by observation you don't be a tattle tale he claims that nowadays there's more of this lack of ability to be a person and you know kids you're calling out other kids publicly or publicly and that parents are doing it now

too and this seems to worrisome in that it seems like it would foster these this group segregation and cultivating through emotional contagion you know blaming of others and negative negative advocates I mean I don't want to blame social media for everything because I love social media for certain things I exist on social media for a number of things that I believe are truly

benevolent so I'd be a creative I said I didn't like social media love social media for certain things but are you concerned about this I mean this seems like a real issue I mean the profession of law exists because of a lack of ability for people to arbitrate among themselves but that's not what we're talking about here we're not talking about people bring in therapists or lawyers to really help mediators we're talking about just

people going to the to the authorities are online and trying to create some drama for what to what end yeah I think in some ways to some extent that's high conflict parents who see everything in all or nothing terms see their kids as as offended by other kids or they're protecting their children and and I am concerned about it and I also agree it isn't just social media in many ways I've been watching this since families got smaller so I remember growing up most families had several kids the

divorces I do now often have one or two kids and that's been true in many ways since the 1970s and a lot of it has to do with birth control so don't just blame social media also blame birth control that when people could decide how large a family they have they decide to have smaller families so birth control pills came out in the 60s and the 70s suddenly we started noticing people are having two kids

and by the 90s 90s 2000s a lot of people have one kid my most high conflict divorce cases have one kid because it's hard to share one kid it's a little bit easier to share two kids it's a lot easier to share four kids it's like you can have for the weekend I'm not going to fight with you about that please take them and the small family and this is I think structurally a lot the fall small family

structure is feeding parents becoming in mesh with their kids some parents and so their kids become their partner especially in these high conflict divorces now dads a bad guy moms a bad woman and the child especially often the oldest child now is my best friend my kind of junior partner in the world and that's where you see a lot of stuck in alienated kids now they hate dad and moms perfect or they hate mom and dad's parental

and that's where the strangest is growing yes like crazy as a as a phenomenon we're heading towards the holidays in a few weeks and months and this is going to come up I actually did an Instagram live with a really skilled therapist named Matthias Barker who specializes in among other things parental engagement yeah it's so common now people kids just deciding I'm done with my parents right and it's partly the culture is fulfilling that that we're now seeing everything in like opposing terms all

or nothing terms etc and the big message I want to get across with this with all parents and kids is it's a question of skills that the kids aren't growing up with the skills to manage the nuances and so we teach a lot of our skills and we teach parents teach these to your kids in divorce flexible to thinking teach them flexible thinking teach them manage emotions teach them

to moderate their behavior teach them to check themselves wait a minute am I doing something here rather than always you you you and we developed a method we call it new ways for families which was designed for high conflict divorce cases for both parents to kind of learn these skills and practice either with a therapist or a coach or just watching online and typing in answers

to practice these four we call these the four big skills for life and this is I think what parents need to teach their kids is you can solve that problem tell me what happened okay let's talk about what you could say to Johnny and we teach skills we call ear statements empathy attention and respect statement that shows that and so we teach parents teach your child you know your best friend who just broke up with you

might be feeling heard about something maybe something they said what can you do so we encourage kids to help their kids manage the situation and we encourage them to manage their relationship with the other parent they come back from visitation or access from a weekend let's say with dad and and child says you know dad didn't look at my drawing I drew a picture and dad didn't look at my drawing

high conflict parents is oh your dad's a jerk you know I always hated that about him a reasonable parent says oh that's sad we know what next time if he doesn't look at the picture right away maybe wait an hour and then show them the picture again maybe he got busy maybe this or that teacher child to manage the relationship even with the other parent

and those parents don't have high conflict divorces high conflict divorces have the other your dad's a jerk you know forget about him he'll never pay attention to you and that's when you see parents estranged or alienated of the kids alienated from the parents so you think that with increasing number of siblings kids learn how to work things out

themselves that's another big part of it is you have to find out how to share so I had three siblings and we grew up and and it's fast enough you're one of three or you had three others I'm one of four so I have three that's a good sized kid a brother to sister so four and what's fascinating for me and I think it helped shape my personality and approach the life is we grew up without television we didn't have something to to watch

after school we had to deal with each other so you know we might play kickball in the backyard or we might read or something or other but we had to learn conflict resolution with each other

and our parents were like you know you go talk to your brother bill I don't have time to hear your complaint and so structurally it's tracking going from that to doing people's divorces with one or two children even two is is better than just one because they do learn to share but parents parents feel so guilty today and that's our culture is really not fair to parents I think

to know that you know teacher child ways to deal with it themselves I'll say I have one sibling we get along terrifically well we're exceedingly close but I can recall when we were kids if we were getting into the scrap my mom or dad would say just sort it out among yourselves just don't get any blood on the carpet it was like that right it was like that but then again my mom's from New Jersey and so it's like a different style right

anyone from New Jersey will understand that was a joke but the point being that we learned pretty quickly how to sort things out my sister and I have had a few conflicts over the years but we get along terrifically well we vacation together for our birthdays every year like we're

but both of us had a lot of friends in the neighborhood right I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of boys my age she grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of girls her age and so I quickly learned in that big pack of boys

and then I entered sports and got involved in things where it was like big packs of boys like that's just kind of how it worked out eventually young men and then men that you know you you couldn't say certain things or it was you it was going to mean trouble you could punch in the face

you say that right but nowadays that would be considered like oh goodness and you know like wait obviously not a proponent for violence but there were certain you learn I probably learned at 14 that there were certain things you didn't say to friends you get into the scrap with them

and then you'd remain friends right and so we arbitrarily among each other but also just had a share how to you know we would I don't recommend this because I'll well whatever we used to do these like dirt clawed wars where you throw dirt at each other's heads like like you know and

and occasionally someone with throw a rock and cut some kid and then but that kid who threw the rock would get in trouble with us it's not like we'd turn him into his parents right you just kind of knew like he plays dirty and then he wouldn't play dirty again or if he did then he kind of knew it like you got there was just sort of an understanding of how people sorted out in groups

right and this stuff harkens back to primitive circuitry that's present in all old world primates right chimpanzees in particular I always tell people if you want a really good watch and you want to learn about human behavior watch chimpanzee and then you can't even pimp higher the Netflix series because it's basically the it's the it's the core circuitry of the primate brain and action how people team up how they cooperate how they then all the human behaviors pretty much are there

except the technology development those chimps aren't building rockets and and electric cars but they're engaging in all the sorts of behaviors both hierarchical and non hierarchical romantic and professional so to speak chimps have professions to to bring about cooperative and non cooperative behavior and sort it out it's fascinating

then the chimps are closest relative I think as far as I know I mean I have friends who are like really into the genomics of all this stuff so I want to be careful that's getting but I believe so they are old world primates we are old world primates so there's a there's a common lineage there for sure yeah yeah

but but I want to really reinforce what you're saying is about the community of learning and kids growing up in the community of learning and it I think it plays a role with with bullies because what happens is the community of kids figures out whose bullies and confronts them with their behavior

and people ask me well are adult bullies because my book is about adult bullies where they bullies his kids and I'll say it seems to be pretty universally they were as kids but most kids try bullying at least once and they grow out of it because they get feedback they learn that's not going to work you're not going to have friends I'm not going to be around so bullies learn to either change their behavior or to live on the

fringe of the group if they don't change their behavior and so part of why we're seeing more adult bullies today I think is because they used to be on the fringe because or they they learn how to get along but if they're on the fringe because nobody liked them and they didn't change their behavior what we're seeing today is bullies are finding each other and this is one of the negatives of social media I think and I agree there's a lot of good things but this one of

the surprising things when I research my book bullies are finding a group for themselves and instead of the group teaching them not to be a bully the group reinforces being a bully says you were justified in doing that and one of the things is to find that school shooters have a support system online really that they seem to some of the research says they always have a social media group they have peers that they're trying to somewhat

press and that may actually add them on and that if they track down they find these folks have and I think they should look for that find out who they've been talking to who they communicate with and so what I think we're seeing is bullies are reinforcing their bad behavior rather than social

media for them to learn good behavior which is for me I've done a lot of group therapy I've treated people that go to alcoholics anonymous narcotics anonymous and the group reinforces and teaches them good behavior and that's an issue we have to address especially with young men is that we have to get on top of that and redirect them into socially pro social activities and most people don't realize that I didn't realize that

I think Thomas has a real surprise to me as well are there female bullies and male bullies online or is it more typical that there are up groups of male bullies online I haven't heard about female bullies finding each other well actually actually take that back and this is gets into a sensitive area about personality disorders but borderline personality disorder is one of the more treatable personality disorders and people become aware that they have this disorder a lot from internet information

but what seems to happen there's a couple stages for them they become aware before they change their behavior and like like dbt dialectical behavior therapy is a really good treatment for that but therapists and my wife is dbt therapist said that they become aware of it before they change their behavior so they do self sabotaging things even though they shouldn't

I know I shouldn't do this but and then finally they learn to change their behavior well some people are discovering their borderline and finding other people online and reinforcing their borderline view of the world there's evil people and good people

and occasionally they write reviews of my books and say how awful a person I am because I talk about personality disorders even though I say don't identify anybody and I believe personality disorders in most cases could be helped if they're open to that so I think there's some degree of say female people with that personality finding each other and reinforcing that behavior but what I what I read was and I cited in my book in the

I'm trying to remember I don't remember which chapter but that that some researcher at university said look for their social media connections and you'll find that there was a reinforcement of this behavior rather than people saying hey you can't do that you've got to cut it out

one of the best pieces of advice a colleague ever gave me was when I started teaching in the university to undergraduates this was prior to my arriving at Stanford where I am now I had this big class and this colleague who is a neuroscientist very esteem neuroscientist but also trained as a psychiatrist he's an MD

he said just remember the statistics on a very psychiatric and personality disorders you know you've got 1% of the population is schizophrenic you've got 10% at any time that's probably experiencing major depression you've got borderline you've got it and he said so when you look out on your classroom

just understand that you that it's a not necessarily representative population but that those challenges he posed in the right way he was patient oriented those challenges yeah our present in that population I mentioned this now because it's something to keep in mind anytime one goes on to social media and reads comments yeah you you have to run those comments through the filter of what we know about the frequency of those of those challenges for people

so which is not to say that every negative comment is coming from somebody that's borderline or right sociopathic but there's a there's a high probability that if somebody is is is is continuously doing that especially in the blame game type scenario that that that's what's going on there something I want to fit in here and that is that we need to understand that people with personality disorders didn't choose to have them and so I have a lot of compassion for people like that

and I have I have so I have a lot of students over the years and they write reflective journals and occasionally they put in their journal I've been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and I remember this one woman said so when you talked about borderline personality disorder it was a little uncomfortable for me but I found it helpful

and she's actually one of the better students in the class and so she had that level of awareness but she was still working on working on herself to manage you know the emotional roller coaster and such and so what's important to me is some people with borderline personality disorder maybe angry with me because I talk about it because they're early stage with this but other people say thank you Bill that was helpful

and so there's kind of a range there but I also want to say three basic reasons I think people develop personality disorders the first is genetic tendencies and various researchers say like 20 to 80 percent may be the genetic tendency depending on the person that early childhood first five years of life maybe attachment difficulties maybe a driving factor

but also cultural environment some people say the researcher in San Diego wrote the narcissism epidemic and she says from her research that the decade you're born in influences your personality development as much as your family I don't agree with that because she's not a therapist and looked at the mental health she looked at big surveys college students especially but I think that's more significant than we realize and more significant than I used to think

and so part of what you're saying is today's culture is reinforcing not taking responsibility whereas in the past you had to solve problems yourself on the positive side it seems that even though family structures have changed quite a lot even though culture is changing quite a lot there's this wonderful feature of social media in the internet now which is in you know what we're doing right now which is the opportunity for experts like yourself to come on and educate

and I think that as we started off talking about it's probably about 90 percent of people do not fall into this high conflict personality category and what we're talking about what you're educating us on is how to interact with this 10 percent in a way that brings about more functionality for everybody

more effective professional personal familial interactions for everyone it's not about just ostracizing those with challenges so keeping with that you know what should most people you know do if they are feeling frustrated with someone that they feel

well for instance the you know 80 percent of your problems come from 20 percent of people in this case where I guess we're saying you know like 90 percent of problems come from these 10 percent of people but really it be hoops us all to try and figure out how best to interact with others

and so you've spelled out a number of ways that we can do that today if you were to highlight I never want to pressure but you know highlight you know one or two things to just keep in mind as one moves through the world

the web tool seems especially effective yeah is there anything else that you recommend that we just hold in mind as we navigate forward because it's a it's quite a landscape out there yeah several things and I can be brief with each of them first there's what I call a four forget about it's is forget about trying to give the person insight into how they're behaving that blows up the person you know just like I said don't blame them for you ending the relationship so just forget

about giving them insight and said talk about what we can do now talk about options talk about don't don't go inward with them go outward with them so when you go inward you escalate their defensiveness so don't try to give them insight into themselves and a lot of people say how can I make him see that what he's doing is so wrong or how can I make her understand that she's she's creating the problem

we're trying to solve just forget about that talk about okay here's what our options are let's talk about what to do second is don't emphasize the past and people argue forever with high conflict people about the past and you never resolve the past with a high conflict person and I'll tell you in a minute why that may be focus on what to do now and the future future focus not pass

focus maybe needs some information to understand a problem but then emphasize the future the third is don't focus on emotions and especially don't yell at them don't burst into tears don't tell them how frustrating they are all of that and this is what I'm going to tell you now is a theory that I hope someone figures out and that is people with personality disorders and high conflict

personalities don't seem to go through the five stages of the grieving and healing process denial anger bargaining depression sadness and acceptance they seem to get stuck at denial and anger so what happens is they don't resolve things they don't quotes get over things they don't get over the divorce they don't get over the job loss they don't get over having to sell their house because they didn't they couldn't pay them

mortgage they don't experience the normal human healing and grieving process so they're stuck and so a lot of situations with them turn to anger they're angry but they're not resolved so high conflict people are constantly talking about the past and how aggrieved they are they shouldn't have done that to me I was right to have done this and people start notice when I say that like students in my class

oh yeah that's what I see they keep repeating themselves and they go to as many people as they can and tell the story I believe they're trying to grieve and heal but they don't have the mechanism and I don't know exactly why so I'm hoping someday neuroscience will figure out what connection is missing and can we give people that so that they can grieve and heal well what that means is if you focus on emotions you're focusing on an area that's unresolved and has a lot of hurt

and so if you say well how do you feel about that they almost always say I feel terrible I suggest not saying how you're doing today because the answer I get is terrible you know what she did yesterday you know what he did last week so instead do small talk do it about anything except about how are you feeling today so don't ask how you're feeling focus on thinking

and doing and an example I teach lawyers and mediators is don't say how do you feel about that proposal say what do you think about that could you picture doing that how could you do that how could that work for you because if you focus how do you feel I feel insulted I feel abandoned and then they they drown in that and next thing you know you've lost them

so avoid emotions don't focus on emotions but acknowledge emotions say I can see your frustration now here's how I can help you today the fourth is don't use names don't label people don't say you're a high conflict person and lawyers do that to motivate their clients that doesn't work don't say you have a personality disorder you may be wrong and that never motivates anybody so that's the four forget about it so that's key stuff for people to avoid

so that was a long answer when you're ready I have four simple tips for things to do that was a great answer with love to hear the four simple tips for people to pay attention to

okay I'm so glad you asked that question so we have what I call the cars method and we've actually trademarked this cars method connecting analyzing responding and setting limits first is connect with the person so someone's angry with you or you're trying to help somebody with their problem is connect with them by giving them a statement that shows empathy attention and or respect

you know I can see how hard this is I see your disappointment I hear your frustration I can understand by saying I can I'm showing I see them as an equal rather than looking down on them so that's the empathy rather than sympathy

pay attention say I'll pay attention tell me more I want to understand your situation and listen some and so what I see all the time as people say I was like good because I'm going to listen to them they don't have to prove they don't have to fight to get my attention and high conflict people often are fighting to get attention because they've turned everybody off

and that's why teach lawyers in therapists that they're going to come to you as much as anything else to get your attention so let them tell their story listen to them acknowledge the emotion so empathy attention and respect find something you respect about them they respect the kind of work they do you respect their relationship with their son or daughter or you respect their commitment to resolving this dispute

so use those words and what's fascinating is I teach this to people like who I consult with and then they come back say I did that and it really worked the person calm down I had one woman who said my boss was giving me a hard time and so I'd run into my office to try not to interact with her

and I said next time especially like Monday morning or something is go up to her and say like you know how was your weekend and say or say you know I appreciated the presentation you gave last week give her some empathy attention and or respect you don't have to do all three of these just any one of these often calms the relationship

and I remember checking back with this woman a month later and says guess what bill now I'm her favorite employee but she's picking on somebody else so I gave somebody else your book but the idea is connect with people so empathy attention and respect and your statements we call it and people say they really remember that because you can use that with anybody anywhere even with your kids genuine respect right

you're not puffing them up yes you're not puffing them up yes think about that now if you don't respect them and you don't have empathy for them tell them you'll pay attention and listen and often you'll start developing some empathy or respect for them but you can always pay attention and listen so that's connecting the second area and these aren't exactly steps but these are four

areas high conflict people who have difficulty the second is emotions kind of cloud they're thinking so we want to help them think so you want to move to analyzing give them a way to think so you're kind of calming the emotions and now you're saying let's think about this so present problems as a choice you know you could do this now or do this tomorrow or here's the options I see you can do this

options I see there's three ways you could approach this problem so you're getting people thinking about the problem rather than reacting and when you give a choice it kind of forces them into logical problem solving so one way you can do this is especially if you have a professional relationship like employer employee therapists clients stuff like that is have them write a list they're talking to say this is wrong and that's wrong

and that's when you say whoa whoa whoa right right a list of these problems so I get a clearer picture when you write a list you calm down and I've had this over and over again angry people when they're writing a list calm

down they start thinking about I've done this with with like like a doctor wants he was having trouble with the nurses and it was like they're doing everything well all right right a list of all the things they're doing wrong and pretty soon you start thinking you know there's this other thing they do but it's not so bad actually and I want them to do this on the left hand side of the page goes on the right hand page side we're going to start looking at what are

possible solutions and you really calm people that I've done this as a media I've had both people okay want you to write two lists like business partners now say you're trying to decide whether to split up or keep the business partnership so I want you both to write a list what you would do if you split up wind down the partnership the steps you'd have to take and another list what the steps would be if you could make it work between you

so let's meet in a week and we'll look at your list come back a week later they say you know what we both wrote our list we immediately called each other and realized we should terminate the partnership but we have one last big project we want to do together and we realize now we can go our separate ways in peace we really have different goals it's not her fault it's not her fault this was two women who worked together and so radio list helps this is all under analyzing the A of the

cars method having the person make a proposal say make me a proposal I tell managers as soon as you can tell your employees that now that I'm your manager whenever you bring me a problem and I want you to bring me problems when they're small because conflicts that are small much easier to resolve always bring a solution to the problem I want to hear your

proposed solution because you know the problem better than I do you're getting them to think so high conflict people I believe have a band with for problem solving and some are brilliant heads of companies inventors all that

stuff they got a big band with for conflict but they also have a band with for problem solving you want to aim at that and bring that out so that's analyzing R is for responding high conflict people because they blame so much are always saying you should have done this you didn't do that our tendency is to argue with high conflict people and that's a forget about it you're trying to give them inside it's not going to work so instead give them what

we call a BIF response that's brief informative just straight information don't tell them you're wrong just tell them what the information is and do it in a friendly manner and have it be firm have it end the discussion most commonly BIF responses are in writing and we teach this as an email method and we estimate there's about a million people doing BIF now because we taught it's about half a million people professionals and individuals we've got four little BIF

books we've got it's a brief informative friendly and firm firm and those four things friendly is is a material well a touch of friendliness so what I say like someone writes to you and say you know you're doing everything wrong and you're right back and you say thank you for telling me your

concerns here's some information you may not like say someone tells me bill your methods are never going to work and I could instantly defensive and so thank you for telling me your concerns you may not be aware but about a million people

are using this method now and I wish you well something like that so what touch of friendliness doesn't have to be a lot and firm doesn't mean harsh it just means try to end the hostile conversation so don't respond to their distortions maybe even when they say you've

done this or misinformation or hostility is just give them a BIF response and I tell that sometimes to business owners sometimes public figures is they might say like politicians sometimes terrible things are said about them and they go but they're not

true and they're going to go well I'm going to ignore that because no one will believe that but then people believe it a great example dominoes pizza about 10 years ago this is a great story I love it and I also eat dominoes pizza I won't get into the details but somebody said

something that grossed people out and their stock just dropped two employees did something to the pizza but then so first they were going to ignore that everyone's going to realize that was a dumb thing to employees did well their stock dropped like 10% or something like that so two days later the

dominoes pizza puts out a 90 second video and it gets spread around and what he says is two former employees did this gross thing and that doesn't represent us and most important to us is our customers were totally dedicated to you this is never going to happen again we've done everything to

us so they bounced right back and in my mind 90 second video didn't do a 20 minute explanation of how we do this that just 90 second video head of the company put it out there bounced right back and to me that was a bit of response even though we never heard of it

we've informative friendly and firm so that's a car C a R that's our yep that's the responding what's s that s is setting limits and this may be the most important with high conflict people because they one of the biggest problems they don't stop themselves they keep going in areas where most people

stop themselves they keep talking they talk a lot they create a problem and keep creating the problem they don't stop and so people around them have to stop them and we're not used to stopping other people's behavior most people manage themselves and part of writing my books is I believe today that we have more high conflict behavior and everyone needs to learn skills to set limits on on bullies on high conflict people's behavior it's all about

behavior they're not bad people but they don't have the self-restraint so setting limits and key things here don't blame them don't blame yourself say there's a policy there's a rule there's a wall how it looks to people is do this instead of doing that so that behavior and if you keep doing that behavior here's what the consequences so I have a method I call slick so everything I've got initials got a lot of acronyms that's all right scientists have acronyms military science and apparently I

conflict methods so slick is setting limits and imposing consequences so with high conflict people you might set the limit make you say you know I'll give an example as a lawyer a representative woman victim of domestic violence her ex-husband to be didn't have a lawyer so that means he's allowed to talk to me I have to talk to him

negotiate solve problems so he calls me up and he says we've got to solve this problem you tell that blankety blank blank wife of mine I so hold on you can't talk about my client that way you so I'll talk about her anyway I want to she's a blankety blank blank or whatever so he didn't respect my limit at all so then I said if you keep talking like

that I'm going to hang up and so it's up to you says I'll talk about her anyway I want keeps talking like that so okay you've chosen for me to hang up I'm hanging up now call me when you're ready to be civil so end the call next morning he calls me back he says Mr. Ready we have to solve this problem my blankety blank blank wife and I say hang on remember I'm

going to hang up if you talk like that because I know no no don't hang up we have to solve this problem I'll try not to say those words and he doesn't say those words we get to address the problem so the consequence is what stopped him not the limit and I think it's a brain thing that they're so absorbed in the emotions of the moment that they can't picture that their behavior has a consequence so if the people around them point out there's a consequence if you do that is kind of a

jolt to them oh I don't want that consequence and so with high conflict people you often have to tell them the consequence when you set the limit and be ready to impose the consequence so that's setting limits imposing consequences they have to go together with high conflict people

love it and I know that those listening and watching really appreciate this I mean these are incredibly valuable tools I mean I can say from my own life and I know observing the experiences of others and what people have shared with me that here I have to be careful because I don't want to place blame right let me phrase this correctly that the ability to navigate interactions with high conflict personalities well can lead to a dramatic

improvement in people's lives both for the non high conflict personalities and the high conflict personalities right and that a failure to do that does exactly the opposite so look really want to thank you for doing the work that you do as a lawyer as a therapist the research that you've done you're incredibly well researched and thorough you send me papers in advance of this in addition to having written all these books that will provide links to in the

show no captions I've read several of them but I plan to read the others as well you have a book specifically on relationships you have books on bullies you have a book about five types of people they can ruin your life and several others as well so put links to those as well as some other resources related to your work and also just want to thank you for you

know being contributor to public education I mean that's what this podcast is people listen to this podcast in hopes of gleaming information that they can really apply and that they can pass on to others and you're doing incredible work you're also teaching in the university system later today so you're quite quite busy and we're deeply appreciative that you took the

time to come educate us so behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching I just want to extend it you know a deep gratitude thank you you're trying to make the world a better place and you are making the world a better place thank you so much I appreciate the chance to speak with you and get this out right we'll come back again and tell us more about bullies and the rest there's a lot more to cover we'd love to have you back

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