Odds are pretty good there’s somebody in your life who loves to create conflict. You find yourselves walking around eggshells when you’re near this person and their mood may change in an instant. They are masters at blaming other people and rarely accept responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong. If you’re married to somebody like this and thinking about a divorce, or you just deal with somebody like this in other aspects of your life, whether that’s on the job or extended family, check out the conversation Jennifer Hargrave had with Bill Eddy, a licensed clinical social worker.
Bill Eddy is a licensed clinical social worker, he’s also a lawyer, but he’s known and respected for pioneering the high conflict personality theory. He’s written lots of books to help us better communicate and manage those high conflict relationships in our lives. These include titles like: Splitting, Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Somebody Who Is A High Conflict Person, or It’s All Your Fault: 12 Tips For Managing People Who Blame Others. And one other favorite is Dating Radar.Â
What is a high conflict personality?
Jennifer Hargrave:
I want to start off by just talking about what is a high conflict personality. How do we define that?
High-conflict people often have 4 traits
1. Preocupation with blaming others
First is a preoccupation with blaming others. This is often very dramatic. It’s someone that’s just constantly talking about other people’s behavior. And with that comes not taking responsibility. As you mentioned in the introduction, not taking responsibility themselves. So the proportion that they blame others is the opposite of the proportion they take responsibility. So that stands out and that’s probably the biggest factor.
2. All or Nothing Mentality
But, high-conflict people also have a lot of all or nothing thinking. And so they see things in all good and all bad terms. So if something’s not good, it’s terrible. And if something they done, that’s kind of minor, they make it, “Oh, I’m incredible. Look at me, look at what I’ve done.”
So, you might think of a custody dispute in a divorce. And someone says, “Well, I’m the best parent in the world, and you should just leave town.” That kind of all or nothing thinking might be prevalent.
3. Unmanaged Emotions
High conflict personalities often, but not always, have unmanaged emotions. This can be seen when a person will just in the middle of a discussion and start yelling or storm out of a room or burst into tears. And this behavior will be way out of proportion to the situation at hand. Although some people don’t show that on the outside, it’s still going on on the inside.
4. Extreme Behavior
Lastly is extreme behavior. So, they sometimes do things 90% of people would never do, but they have an excuse. So you might go, “Oh, okay. He was tired. That’s why he punched a hole in the wall”, or “That’s why he sent an email to a hundred people trashing me”, things like that.
So, to sum it all up, high-conflict personalities have these 4 traits: Blaming Others, All or Nothing Thinking, Unmanaged Emotions, and Extreme Behavior.
High Conflict Personality is a Pattern of Behavior
JH:
It seems like we live in a culture that sort of obsessed with labels. So we hear a lot about narcissists or maybe borderlines or some of the other personality diagnoses. Can you help us distinguish between what is a psychological disorder versus understanding these patterns of behavior?
Is a High Conflict Personality a Psychological Disorder?
BE:
Yeah. So, what I just described with a high conflict personality is a pattern of behavior that includes blaming a lot.
On the other hand, a personal disorder is diagnosed by a mental health professional.
For example, that diagnosis might be narcissistic personality disorder. A personality disorder can be when the person is really stuck. They’re in a narrow range of behavior. And, they repeat and repeat and repeat this behavior in many different settings.
So, the definition of a personality disorder is basically is an enduring pattern of dysfunctional behavior that is mostly interpersonal behavior.
Now, not all people with a personality disorder are high conflict people. Someone with a personality disorder might not blame somebody else in particular. However, they usually feel helpless, vulnerable, weak, like a victim in life. And just don’t know why things happen. They don’t connect the dots.
So, think of someone with a personality disorder as someone who doesn’t connect the dots from their behavior to their life or circumstances.
On the other hand, someone with a high conflict personality doesn’t connect the dots from their behavior to the specific person may blame for everything.
Think of somoene with a personality disorder as someone who is stuck. Narcissistic personalities are stuck being self-centered and disdainful of others. They might have a drive for unlimited money, glory, power, beauty, all of that. The other personality disorders are stuck in their own special ways.
The 5 Types of High Conflict Personalities are:
Five of the personality disorder that stand out as high conflict are narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial, and paranoid.Â
JH:
That is great. And I think it is helpful because what we really focus on, especially in the family law context are the patterns of behavior. The diagnoses may give us some insight into why those patterns are happening, but they don’t really tell us what to do about them. And what I love about your work is you’ve given some really good tools and skills for how to deal with people who are high conflict personalities. I want to talk for just a minute about the person who is in a high conflict relationship, what are some common things that they may be experiencing in trying to have a relationship with this person?
BE:
Well, part of the problem and most common is that they’re getting blamed unfairly for things. And that’s that preoccupation with blaming others. So they may have done something minor or not at all, and the other person’s just outraged with them for why did you tell so-and-so such and such? And it may have been a really minor thing. It may be distorted. It may not have even happened. So you start feeling like I am the target of blame. That’s what we call that. But also you’re being barraged with these intense emotions, typically, and that’s hard to sustain. Human beings really are very sensitive to each other’s emotions.
And so the intense emotions constantly really kind of fry your brain a bit and make you really want to get away or fight with the person, which isn’t the way to solve the problem. But there’s also what people called gaslighting where that person makes you think you’re crazy. They say, “I didn’t do that thing”, that they did that you saw with your own eyes. They want you to deny the world that you see. And they often tie that with the blame. And it’s like, “Well, I didn’t do that. And why are you blaming me anyway?” So it’s what some people end up calling, walking on eggshells.
High Conflict Relationships Erode an Individual’s Trust in Themselves
JH:
It’s very interesting. And I know a lot of people who come to me after they’ve been in a relationship for so long, one of the biggest struggles they have is just learning to trust themselves again, because so much has been eroded over the course of that relationship.
BE:
Yeah. What happens is your self-esteem just goes down and down when you have somebody trying to tell you that the world isn’t the way you see the world. And so your doubt goes up. Part of the problem is let’s say 80 to 90% of people. When there’s a problem, they ask themselves two questions. They first say, “What’s my part in this problem?” And that’s a very healthy human thing to do. And the second is “What can I do differently next time?” Those are two very healthy things. Well people with personality disorders, can’t ask themselves those two questions. In fact, I wrote a blog for Psychology Today on, do you have a personality disorder? Here’s a quick way to find out. If you can ask yourself, “What’s my part in this problem and what can I do different?” You don’t have an enduring pattern that doesn’t change. So, but that beaten down feeling is really sad. And of course, it’s really hard when you’ve got kids involved and they see one of their parents getting kind of beaten down either emotionally, sometimes physically by the other parent.
JH:
I often say that just from what I’ve observed and from other mental health professionals, the fact that there’s conflict isn’t necessarily, what’s damaging for the kids. It’s the pattern of seeing unresolved conflict over the years. I’m just wondering what impact being in a high conflict relationship has on children.
BE:
Well, there’s many factors involved how severe the conflict is, whether there’s violence in the conflict or not. So high conflict without violence isn’t as bad as high conflict with violence, but also depends how resilient, just kind of inborn traits of the child, how resilient they are, and also the support systems for the child. So what’s interesting is, let’s say, you have several children, three, four children. The child does better, generally, because there’s other kids going through the same experience. Whereas if it’s just one child and they’re with just too upset parents a lot of the time, where do they turn?
Now sometimes grandma or grandad or uncle Joe and aunt Mary are a good source of support. And the child has someone to talk to that helps them feel like, “Hey, this isn’t what the world is everywhere”, but for kids that don’t, they, they do suffer. And some research I’ve seen says the worst thing for kids is hostility and unpredictability from parents. And it really can add up. And high conflict parents display a lot of hostility and they’re emotionally unpredictable, so it can lead to mental health problems, depression, anxiety, et cetera, for kids.
JH:
One of the things that I wasn’t really aware of, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it because I didn’t grow up in a home with a lot of conflict, but it’s the fact that when it comes to these personality disorders and high conflict personalities, there’s not a medication to cure the problem. So how do, I mean, if somebody… Do high-conflict personalities change over time, can they be motivated to change, and what does that change look like?
BE:
It’s really, think of it as a continuum. So, for example, there’s some high-conflict people who don’t have personality disorder, so they’re not quite as stuck. And they may have a little bit of insight, even though they think everything’s other people’s fault, they may have some room for insight. So that’s why I think it’s always worth trying to have some kind of change activity. That’s why counseling’s a good idea, but high conflict people don’t seek counseling and personality disorder people don’t seek counseling because they don’t think they have a problem. We developed a method called new ways for families, which teaches some very simple but powerful skills to both parents in a divorce or separation situation.
And then they teach these skills to their kids and we find they can learn some skills, take the edge off a high conflict emotions that they can learn to write emails and texts more respectfully, learn to manage their emotions a little bit more. Learn to make proposals instead of making demands and actually negotiate agreements so they can learn skills, but to really change a personality, you need two to five years of therapy in the best cases and some personalities just aren’t going to change.
What is the BIFF response?
Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm
JH:
And what a shift to talk about some of those skills, because as a practitioner, as somebody who lives and works in the high conflict arena, sometimes it could be the opposing party. It could be opposing counsel. It could be the clients that I’m working with. You have developed some skills that are so helpful for dealing with those high conflict situations, especially when it comes to communication. And one of those that I teach my clients is the BIFF response. Can you kind of go over what the BIFF response is, and when to use it?
BE:
Yeah, BIFF is great because it’s really simple. It’s brief, informative, friendly, and firm. And we developed it as a method for responding to hostile emails. And I was asked by some judges say, “What can we do to get people to stop writing these awful emails?” And I said, “Well, they need to be brief because brief doesn’t get them into as much trouble.” Most problems can be solved and addressed in a paragraph. So three to five sentences in most cases. Informative, just focusing on straight information, not emotions, not defenses, not accusations, all of that. Just straight information. What time something happens, et cetera, and then friendly that there’s a friendly time.
Thank you for responding to my request. If it’s Friday afternoon, say have a good weekend. So, that keeps it on the positive. And it’s firm, in other words, it ends the hostile conversation. Doesn’t have any cooks to pull the person back in like saying, “So what do you think of that, buddy?” You don’t want to do that. So brief, informative, friendly, and firm, and it’s amazingly simple to do, but sometimes things slip in there, so it’s always good to have somebody else look at it if you can, but that’s in a nutshell. And of course you may know by now we have three books on BIFF.
JH:
Yes, and your website has a lot of resources to go and look at different examples of BIFF communication and what that looks like. What I found really interesting is that when an accusatory email is sent or it could be a text message or, or an in-person communication, right? It is natural to feel that defensive response. But the minute you respond with trying to defend yourself or arguing with the other person or trying to show them how they’re wrong, you’ve just gotten hooked into that dance. And now it escalates. And in the BIFF response is such a good way for unplugging. It is empowering. And that you’re saying, I’m not going to get involved in this dance. Thanks for inviting me on the dance floor, but it’s a very powerful tool.
BE:
One thing I want to mention with that is to remind yourself that when somebody just dumps on you, that’s not problem solving. That’s more about them and their inability to restrain themselves than it is about you. So I think it helps to memorize some short phrases, like that’s not about me or the issue’s not the issue, that’s going on, it’s their stuff. It’s stuff inside of them, and I don’t have to take it on. Another thing, though, is if someone has a high conflict personality pattern is that you’re going to feel pulled in emotionally. And to just be able to tell yourself it’s not about me, it’s about them and that it’s just going to happen from time to time. And so if I defend myself, I reinforce their emotional belief that I’ve done something wrong. If I can avoid that, just stay information focused, friendly, calm. I don’t reinforce that, because high conflict people want to bring you down to their emotional level and you don’t want to go there.
JH:
No, I mean, it’s easy for the unwary. So if you’re not, if you really haven’t paid attention to this and you find yourself getting in broiled in these arguments, this is such a great tool. I think I learned from you to avoid that, I think, is it the three A’s? Arguing, admonishing, advising, do I have that right? Something like that?
BE:
Almost. Almost. So, it’s advice, admonishments and apologies. And so what we find is it’s tempting to want to give advice to someone who’s criticizing us. Like, “Let me give you some advice, buddy.” And you don’t want to go there because it just feeds the hostility, feeds the conflict. Admonishments are talking down to the person like they’re a child. Like “You should remember not to do…” And it’s like that triggers people, but also what’s confusing is apologies. And when you apologize to a high conflict person, remember they have a lot of all or nothing thinking. So you apologize for something small. What they hear is it’s all your fault and you agree.
BE:
So we discourage having apologies in BIFF responses. There may be a time and place and a structure for apology, but most of the time apologies solve things well for reasonable people. So I don’t say that apology is the problem. It’s high conflict people because I’ve seen, I’ve had cases, I had a mediation where a guy pulls out crippled up letter. And you could tell that his wife had tried to call him down by saying, I’m sorry, I don’t clean better. I’m sorry, I don’t cook better. Or something like that. He said, remember that you took responsibility because it is all your fault. And it’s like, don’t walk into that by using apologies in a BIFF response.
JH:
That is…
BE:
I call it apology quicksand.
JH:
Exactly. And it is so interesting because it seems like, well, if I just give the apology, we’ll be able to move on, but it doesn’t, you’re exactly right. Quicksand’s a great analogy. I want to talk about the EAR response. So can you kind of go over what the EAR response is and how, and when we should use that?
BE:
Yeah, this is another really fairly simple tool, but very important. And EAR stands for empathy, attention and respect. And so we’ve been teaching EAR statements now for about 15 years and we started teaching them to professionals saying your client’s upset, give them an EAR statement and show some empathy, like “I can see how frustrating this is, and I really want to help you.” Pay attention. “I’ll pay attention to your concerns, take your time, I’m listening.” And respect. “I really respect your commitment to your kids, your record keeping, thanks for bringing in all these records”, respect for something else that they do. But then we found that really can teach this to clients too, unless they’re in a dangerous situation like a domestic violence situation where they should not feel they have to calm down someone who’s trying to hit them.
It’s better for them to figure out just how to get out of the situation. But in general, and in most cases co-parents can use this. They can say, “Oh, I can see how frustrating that was. Or you can explain, “I was 10 minutes late because of such and such. And here’s how I’ll avoid having that happen in the future, because I care about your relationship with our daughter, and I want to not get the way of that”, or “I can see you’re really upset with me about something. Can you tell me more so I can understand it, and I respect your time with our daughter and I respect your efforts to negotiate on this. And I respect this, that, and the other thing about you”, and co-parents to news that too.
JH:
What is so interesting to me is that with both the BIFF and the EAR, and just the materials that you teach, you’re really taking what is kind of a fight or flight, I think moment and helping engage the other part of the brain. So I’d love to know kind of neurologically what’s happening? Why does this stuff work?
How do our brains respond to conflict?
BE:
Well since your podcasts includes video for some of the observers, I’ll hold up my extra brain and talk about why this seems to work. So it seems as though our brain has two generally different responses to conflict. One is the, let’s say this brains looking at me. So this is the left hemisphere. There’s problem solving, talking, reading, writing, talking, listening, looking for solutions, looking at various options, all of that, calmly solving problems. The right brain seems to have a big picture view, and is more concerned about our survival in our environment, and is paying attention to tone of voice. Is this person safe or dangerous? And the brain, right brain seems to pick that up through nonverbal behavior, like hand gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice. And so what happens is with when people are real upset, they can’t think logically you give them an EAR statement and that calms the right brain so that now they can get into problem solving.
BE:
When you do a BIFF response, you’re keeping it from escalating the other person. So, in my mind, this is not exact neuroscience, but the general idea is that if you calm the right brain, then you can move to problem solving with the left brain. And that’s why information in a BIFF response is so important. It keeps that left brain problem solving focused, which keeps it calmer. And by the way, parents being upset and angry a lot makes it hard for a child to shift from right brain defensiveness, “I got to protect myself from my angry parents”, to, “Hey, I can think about problem solving.” So it’s interesting. The neuroscience does really support these types of techniques. Although we learned it after we learned the techniques. So it’s very interesting.
JH:
It is. And again, I go back to the word it’s empowering. When you can kind of get a hold of your brain, get ahold of your thinking and your problem solving skills and not let it be hijacked by somebody else’s emotional response. It’s very helpful. I love your book Dating Radar, when your brain says yes to the one who will make your life hell, I think this is such a great book and I’m giving it out to all the graduating high school seniors in my life because I think they need it. I hope they’ll take it and read it in their college dorm. People don’t come with warning signs that say high conflict personality. And so it often is not until you’re further along down in the relationship journey that you begin to recognize these signs. What advice do you have or what are some early warning signs that you can kind of begin to detect that this is somebody who might be prone to high conflict?
BE:
Yeah, well, first of all, it is [inaudible 00:26:51] as you said, but it’ll come with warning signs and I want to give credit to my coauthor, Megan Hunter, the beginning of the book, she put that in and I liked that, but they don’t come with warning signs. And so the first thing we tell people is take your time, keep your eyes open. We tell people don’t make a big commitment, like getting married for a year, get to know somebody, because a lot of the high-conflict behaviors, they cover up the first few months, but usually between about six and nine months, you start seeing those things like domestic violence, demeaning behavior, yelling, criticizing, et cetera. When we did that book, we actually did a survey an online survey, got about 300 responses. And what we were told is that the worst behavior came out after they made a big commitment, like getting engaged to get married or buying a house together or having a child.
So, you want to give yourself time. Now what to look for, look for those characteristics I described at the beginning, do they do a lot of blaming? Even if it’s of other people keep in mind that someday that may turn against you. Do they tend to have all or nothing thinking? Like they’re watching a TV show and they’ll say, “Oh, that guy doesn’t deserve to live.” That kind of lack of empathy, extreme thinking raises a red flag and you want to kind of see, is this a pattern or was this just an isolated thing? How do they manage their emotions? Do they yell and scream and throw things? What happens is people mostly miss the warning signs because of wishful thinking, but also because they accept the excuse.
I had someone in my law office at one point while on the first date and she said something and he said, “That’s stupid.” And he slapped her on her butt. And she said, “Well, what’s that about?” He says, “Oh, that’s nothing.” And she decided then and there, I’m not going out with this guy again, because she had been working in my office and knew about this stuff. That’s a warning sign and people try to distract you from the warning signs. So watch out for distraction. We call it jamming your radar. So this is just a few things, but the other is not being in a vulnerable place and looking to someone to make you heal from another relationship loss or something that you’ve got to be strong in yourself so that you’re getting together with someone with eyes open.
JH:
Of course you have written the books, the books that I hand out to people who are contemplating ending a marriage or ending a relationship with somebody who’s high conflict. And I would just like to hear from you, Bill, what are some tips or advice that you give to somebody who might right now be in that high conflict relationship. And they’re worried about ending that relationship about the impact it might have on their children. What should they be thinking about and what kind of information should they be gathering?
Tips for people in high conflict relationships
BE:
Well, the first thing I want to say is they should read the beginning of the Splitting book that you held up at the beginning of this, because we talked about that, how to get ready. And even before you say you want to separate or get divorced while you’re still living together, it really helps to gather information. Sometimes bank accounts disappear after people make these announcements, so some people will make sure to copy at least account numbers and know where things are, maybe even bank statements, things like that. I had a case where, unfortunately, it was necessary for my clients to take photographs of the furniture in each room in the house, because after they separated, there was a dispute over the value of household furniture because he was the husband in that case. And I represented clients about equally husbands and wives.
And in this case, his wife was done to keep the house and they had some good furniture, he wanted to get his share of the value. So they had a furniture appraisal, they called an appraiser to walk through the house, say what things are worth. And there were several pieces of furniture missing and he had photos of that. And so the appraiser said, “Well, I can’t can’t appraise the photo, but the judge was able to estimate some value [inaudible 00:32:11] …photographs because furniture had been removed. So, a lot of cases, your partner or spouse is not going to be that sneaky, but there are some cases where they are and that’s often the high conflict cases.
JH:
Yeah. And I’m so appreciative of the work that you’ve done. I think you are really providing good and valuable information to people who are in a really vulnerable place, because if you’ve been in a relationship with a high conflict person, you’ve endured probably a long period of time of having your own instincts questioned and your own opinions and your own feelings invalidated. So your work is amazing Bill, we’re going to provide a link to your website and I would encourage, I know you have a new book. I want you to talk about that real quick. Talk about the new book you have coming out this summer.
BE:
Well, there’s two things coming out this summer, actually one is Mediating High Conflict Disputes, which is geared more to professionals, but anybody can read it. And it’s about some shifts in that, but in July, we’re going to have the Splitting book second edition coming out then included in that is more information about how to present your case, how to talk about personality patterns without diagnosing somebody, because most times someone hasn’t had a diagnosis, even if they could, they haven’t, and the courts don’t like hearing people present that information. So instead we talk about patterns and how to talk about the patterns that are concerning in the case. So that’s the two books that are coming out this summer, but they’re on Amazon or also through our website, so. And there’s a lot of other books. There’s Don’t Alienate the Kids related to the alienation issue in divorce, and BIFF for co-parents, specifically, 28 examples for communicating, calming the communication. So we really try to give, as you’ve said, techniques and skills and reassurance to people.
JH:
Just before we end today, I wanted to talk a little bit about process because I think your experience has shown this. And certainly mine has too, is that the courtroom can be kind of the perfect staging ground for somebody with high conflict personality tendencies. They tend to love the chaos and the drama. I’m just wondering what you’ve seen in terms of alternative dispute resolution methods, being effective for families who are dealing with high conflict?
BE:
Very much so. I really tell people you want to try to stay out of court if you can. You really want to resolve your case out of court, if you can. So use of mediation, use of collaborative divorce, negotiation, consultation, lawyer, therapists, people who can guide you through kind of the mining field, because once you get in court, high conflict people, remember enduring narrow range of behavior? Well that just really gets enduring in family court. One of the things I found, as a lawyer therapist mediator, is when I was a lawyer in court and we were dealing with parenting issues, that it was hard for the parents to communicate by the end of the court process, which sometimes was one or two or three years, whereas in the out of court methods, mediation and collaborative divorce parents were not only able to communicate, but usually able to communicate better because of going through that experience. I’ve had clients say, “I wish I had had these skills 10 years ago. Things sort of been a lot easier, maybe we still would’ve gone separate ways, but there would’ve been a lot less conflict and hostility.”
JH:
Absolutely. I mean, I think this is beneficial for the whole family and if you choose a process where you have the opportunity to really use these resources and practice them, it just makes for a much better life, post divorce than having to have ongoing litigation for the rest of your children’s childhoods. So I think your work is amazing and I’m so appreciative of what you’ve done. And so we will include links to all of that below. And just thank you for your time today.
BE:
Well, thank you, Jennifer. And thank you for the work you’re doing, because I think you’re helping many people as well. So it’s all all together. That’s the key. Thanks so much.
JH:
Thank you. And that’s all for today. Thanks.
