How to Identify and Deal with High Conflict People

Welcome, guys and gals, to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and today we are going to talk about how to identify and what to do with high conflict people. Now this actually came out of a webinar that my fiance and I were leading the other day called Understanding Men, where I was unpacking and we were unpacking the inner workings of men and masculinity. There's a lot of women and men on the call and it got brought up that one of the people had been in a relationship with, with somebody that they deemed to be a narcissist. And when they described the behavior of this person, it hit me and I disagreed with them that they were a narcissist because I think that we, you know, in modern culture that word, that categorization gets tossed around a lot. And I said, I don't think that they're a narcissist. I think that they're a high conflict individual, which, which presents a little bit different. So today I'm going to walk you through the four ways to identify a high conflict individual, what creates these individuals, and then what to do with them. So first and foremost, the first thing that you need to understand about high conflict individuals is that they have a preoccupation, a propensity of blaming other people. So no matter what the problem is that's going on in their life, they have a preoccupation with blaming other people. So they see challenges in their life, they see problems in their life, but they don't think that they are at cause or at fault for any of those problems. And when I say any, I mean this is a very real way. Some people do this to a certain degree. They play the victim. I think we all do this to a certain degree. But high conflict people are really in the state of blaming everybody else for their problems. Now, one of the things that is a sort of telltale sign of a high conflict individual is step number two or way number two to identify them is that they use absolutes and universals to blame other people. Now, absolutes or universals are things like always, never, constantly. And whenever the conflict does come up, this high conflict individual will say things like you always or you never. And there's no space in there whatsoever for there to be something that is counter to what they are saying. So they're constantly, constantly using absolutes. The other, the other telltale sign, the number three, the tell sale sign of high conflict individuals is that they really have this like unmanaged sense of emotions. So whenever Conflict does arise. It is usually very volcanic emotionally. It's very volatile emotionally. And the thing that I want to point out here is that high conflict individuals aren't men or women. It really is across gender. So one of the signs is that in this high sense of emotion, this volcanic sense of emotion, is that when conflict does arise, they might have a little bit of a bandwidth where they can maintain things. They might become very loud or, you know, sort of outspoken. But there's a. There's a very clear threshold where all of a sudden their emotionality and how their emotions sort of spew out of them becomes like, next level. You know, like that kid at the Whole Foods grocery store. I think we've all seen this, like, kicking and screaming, and their emotions become very, very volatile. Which brings us to point number four, which is that they have very extreme behaviors. They have very extreme behavior. So this behavior, again, if you can imagine, I think we've all seen this, like, little kid in the Whole Foods or, you know, grocery store, wherever you shop, Safeway, Whole Foods, I'm using, like, Canadian grocery stores here. But we've all seen that little kid, like, in the dairy aisle kicking and screaming and like, throwing yogurt on the ground and just throwing a complete, like, berserk tantrum. And it makes no sense. And high conflict people as adults have very similar behavior. So they will have. When conflict happens and their emotions start to erupt, they throw things, they punch things, they smash things, they break things, they throw things at other people. This is often where abusers come from. And the thing is that they will oftentimes blame somebody else for their actions. So let's say they erupt and they smash something or they break something, that's never their fault again. Because high conflict people oftentimes can't see that they are the ones responsible for this action because it's a very childlike mentality. So what creates high conflict people? Well, the thing to know is that there is an empathetic and very real relatable thing that we all need to know about high conflict individuals. So most of them, most of them are emulating and mirroring learned behavior. So most high conflict people have actually come from a very high conflict environment. So their family system, their fathers, their mothers, their siblings, their grandparents, their uncles, whoever it was, they have witnessed this behavior and learned it from other people. And because of that, they have become these. They've become these very high conflict people. And they don't see it as them being responsible for their emotions or actions the other way that High conflict people are created is that they grow up with very soft parents, parents who don't enforce rules, parents who don't help guide them with emotional rationality, emotional understanding, emotional processing. So when they're kids, they start kicking and screaming and their parents just sort of let it happen, and they have outrageous, extreme behavior in public, and their parents just let it happen. And there's no consequences for their actions. And so there's no consequences for their emotions. And so they don't know, they don't understand rationally and emotionally that they are actually responsible for their emotions because they see it as everybody else's problem. Now, the other thing to know about high conflict people is that they usually have a target of blame. They usually have a target of blame. And the target of blame is usually one of, you know, it's usually their partner, it's usually somebody that they're intimate with, but it can also be someone who is close to them at work. And generally, generally high conflict people will have targets of blame that are perceived as authorities. So anybody that they perceive to be an authority that might be trying to impose their will on them will all of a sudden become their target of blame. So a lot of high conflict people, you know, dislike authorities like police and government. You might be a leader within a corporate environment where you have one of these high conflict people working with you or working for you, and they just might be resentful and completely outrageous sometimes. So what do we do? How do we deal with high conflict people? Well, the first thing that you need to know is that there is no telling high conflict people that they have high conflict behavior or that they have extreme behavior or that they're volcanic in their emotions. They don't see that as being their problem or it being their fault or responsibility. So the challenge here is that as much as especially, and I want to say this is really important, if you are the target of blame for the high conflict individual, you will almost 99.9999% never be able to tell that person that they are a high conflict individual because you are the one that they are projecting all of their pain, all of their hurt, all of their anger, all of all of their irresponsible emotions at and they see you as the fault and the problem. So what do we do? Well, first we need to keep our distance a little bit because when we get too close to high conflict individuals, we can suddenly become another target of blame. This doesn't mean that we should isolate them and cut them off, because that's going to perpetuate it. But what it does mean is that we bring in third party support. High conflict individuals need someone that they can trust, almost like a parent figure. This could be a therapist, a coach, just that knows how to deal with high conflict individuals who can build rapport with this person so that they can start to repair and teach them how to emotionally regulate. And this is very, very important. So if you deal with a high conflict individual at work and you're the target of blame and you are maybe there, maybe you're the authority within the organization, try bringing in somebody else who's within their level that can help you mediate this conversation, or an outside party. If you are in a relationship with a high conflict person, it is definitely going to be beneficial to bring in a third party coach, therapist, psychologist, in order to help them start to understand and work on their own emotionality and behavior. So thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe and man it forward. If you know somebody who is dealing with a high conflict individual, if you know someone who maybe is a high conflict individual, maybe it might help to send them this. They might be able to see themselves in a different light. But definitely send this on to someone that is or has been challenged with a high conflict individual because they might have patterning of attracting those types of individuals. So thanks very much. This is Conor Beaton signing off and I'll see you next week.