How to Spot a Narcissist Before It's Too Late, with Bill Eddy

Mr. Bill Eddy, welcome to the ManTalks show. How are you doing?

Pretty good. Thanks so much, Connor. Glad to be on.

Yeah, good to have you. This is going to be interesting. You're a bit of a— you're a bit of a special task force. You know, you got a trifecta of skill sets going on that I think is going to be good, you know, from family mediator to therapist to lawyer specializing in family law. So I think we're going to have a very interesting conversation. But what I wanted to dig into first is high-conflict people. And so tell me, what is a high-conflict person?

Well, generally, high-conflict people, I believe, are about 10% of adults and actually worldwide. And there's research to support that in terms of personality disorders. I would say high-conflict people Maybe half have a personality disorder and half don't, but their characteristics, four main characteristics, they're preoccupied with blaming others. They see the fault in everybody else and can't see the fault in themselves. And so makes relationships hard, makes working together hard, makes being neighbors hard. But many people can soften some of that if you manage them well. So preoccupied with blaming others, a lot of all-or-nothing thinking, like for solutions, it's my way or the highway, buddy. Sometimes unmanaged emotions. People throw things, yell, burst into tears, that whole range. And they may do things that 90% of people would never do in terms of, say, smearing someone on the internet or punching holes in the wall. One guy punched a tree and broke his hand, those kinds of things. So it's kind of a— to me, it's parallel to something like alcoholism or addiction. It's a pattern of behavior that blocks people from really looking at themselves and making things better. They're pretty much stuck. And that's, that's the problem they have in all types of relationships, especially close relationships.

Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show was I think, I mean, I've worked with so many guys and I read through the comments on my YouTube channel and on the podcast and whatnot, who, you know, have a family member that is really tough to deal with. They have a mother-in-law or a father-in-law that's It just sounds like a nightmare or a boss or a colleague or coworker. I think many of us have these people in our life that are just these immovable forces and it can be really infuriating, frustrating not knowing how to deal with it, especially because I think for a lot of people what ends up happening is they get engaged in the high conflict. It seems to be this superpower if we could call it that, that high conflict.

Totally.

Yeah, they just have this way of eliciting conflict within you. And so I'm curious if you differentiate at all between difficult people, people that are a little bit more difficult or stubborn, and then people who are high conflict. How do you define that?

I think the key is blame. If they 100% blame you and 0% take responsibility themselves, then things are going to stay stuck and it's not going to be comfortable. Although you may be able to manage the situation, it's not going to really be a happy situation. And so there's a lot of different types of difficult people. But the key is if they really see no responsibility on their part. So if someone says, well, I think, Bill, you did this and I only did that. So my part's pretty small here, Bill. I think you've got a bigger part. Of the problem, that's someone you can probably resolve a conflict with. But if they say, hey, Bill, it's all your fault, you should just leave the planet and we'll be a lot better. And it's that kind of like you eliminate the person as the only way they can solve their conflicts in their minds in many ways. But working together, most people have some skill. I'd say 90% of people have some conflict resolution skills where they deal with the more than just hating the person.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, I think on that note, you've sort of identified 4 core patterns that signal a high-conflict personality. Can you break some of those down and then maybe give some real-life examples so that men can— so the listener can start to notice those patterns before they're already deep inside of them?

Right, right. Well, probably in terms of examples, I should talk about dating because that's when people get into relationships, often with high-conflict people, because what's on the surface looks really appealing. You've got a charming, friendly, warm, outgoing, or maybe quiet person, but it seems on the surface, just so positive. And so what happens though is we always recommend waiting at least a year before you make a major commitment like getting married, having a child, buying a house together. And so during that time, you start to see the full personality. And for 90% of people, you're probably okay with the full personality. But with about 10% of people, some things start showing up. And it could be, and it's often around blame. It's like you get yelled at and suddenly out of the blue, where did that come from? And they're saying, you're a terrible person, you're evil, you're despicable. How could you ever have, you know, left the you know, the cap off the toothpaste or whatever it was. It's way out of proportion. And it's just, it's an emotionally intense blame where you feel like as a person you're being attacked rather than something you did. Now, everybody may do that on rare occasion, but it's when you start seeing a pattern of this that suddenly out of the blue, there's outrage with you and it's way disproportionate. Disproportionate to what you've done. And people around you go, wow, what's up with her? You know, that's not you. So it's that kind of experience. Go ahead.

I was going to say, it sounds like you're describing my 5-year-old.

Yes, yes.

How could you take my mac and cheese?

You're evil. Right, right. And it's a good thing you point that out because this is really, in many ways, a question of maturation, of maturity. And so some people don't get there by 20. And we don't, as mental health professionals, we don't diagnose personality disorders until people are adults because kids are growing, going through all these phases, and nothing is really stuck. But if you have a a partner who says what your 5-year-old says every morning, you might go, I think there's some learning that needs to happen before I make a big commitment here. But it catches people by surprise. And that's one of the biggest things I wanted to point out. Yeah.

I think one of the things that I've found is, you know, I've known a number of men, whether it's clients or men in our community. We've got over 1,000 guys in a a community called The Alliance, and they're sort of all over the world and they're focused on their own personal growth and development. And it's been interesting because some of the men in there have certainly been in relationships with a high-conflict person. And hearing some of it is— it's pretty jarring because, as you're saying, those four patterns of the excessive blaming, the all-or-nothing thinking, the sort of universal thinking, the unmanaged emotions, and then the extreme behaviors. Those four patterns that can continue to show up can be quite hard to deal with.

Yeah. Now, within that, there's five kind of sub-patterns that people can recognize if they know about them. And at this point, I might mention that my co-founder of High Conflict Institute and I, Megan Hunter, we wrote a book together called Dating Radar, and we talk about these personalities in there. So I'll quickly go through them. One is, of course, the narcissistic personality, which in the extreme is a personality disorder where the person just really, really, really repeats a very self-centered behavior, very demeaning and insulting behavior. Then some people have this Occasionally, it's not a personality disorder if there's some flexibility, but if it's really rigid, then this is what they do and they may actually increase this more and more. And there's a lack of empathy with this personality. And so, and you may get yelled at by this personality, but you get yelled at about being an idiot, being incompetent, being an inferior person., and those kinds of words are warning signs of someone with that narcissistic personality. And by the way, it's been identified more with men over the years, but women are catching up with this pattern of behavior. And so I've dealt with, with many couples where the woman had this pattern of behavior. So that's one. Another that's kind of common in high-conflict cases is borderline personality. And a lot of people have heard of that, but they're not sure what it is. And basically, there's two strong aspects of this. One is wide mood swings. It's like very friendly, loving, charming, attractive. This is just a wonderful, a super wonderful person. And then after a month or three months, suddenly this other person comes out and starts raging. At you. How could you leave the cap off the toothpaste? You're a horrible, despicable person. You're all those things, way out of proportion and very intense. And then maybe the next day, everything's normal. And you're thinking, I wonder what happened yesterday. Well, it's going on inside the person. It's not something you cause. You're not to blame. For someone being outraged like that. That's not a productive conflict resolution approach. But there's a percent of people that have that personality, generally more women, but sad to say, men are catching up with that kind of mood swings and sudden intense anger. Then there's antisocial personalities. And you think of that like with criminals and people in prison, But there's a lot of people with that pattern of behavior out in the world and also in business where they're very manipulative. They lie all the time. They cheat. They steal. They do all of that. Tends to be more men, but some women are catching up with this personality as well. And The big thing about this is it's a con artist. And I think of, you know, kind of a sad story. A friend of mine ended up dating a woman who was very attractive, charming, personable. We actually, a group of us, like 6 of us, I think, went on a camping trip together. And she was just a wonderful person. Well, she says, the doctor says I have terminal cancer. I have the kind of cancer that doesn't show, you know, but it's inside. And my friend, her boyfriend, was devastated by that. It's like, oh my goodness. And so he decided to treat her to a trip around the world. For her last— she said she had like 6 months to live, something like that. So he spends like a big part of his savings to take her on this trip around the world. And anyway, 6 months comes and goes, and other people are saying, including another friend of ours who was a nurse, said she'd be showing some signs if she had cancer. Her hair would be falling out, her weight would be lost, those kinds of things. There'd be Her skin wouldn't do so well. And she was a total con. And she had also got him to invest in her divorce from someone in another state. And it turns out eventually, I think he met that guy and that guy was a really reasonable guy and she was a total con artist. So she had that antisocial, very much lying, Cheating, stealing, and willing to take advantage of people without remorse. So now we've got 3 out of 5. Another one's histrionic, just very dramatic, can be irritating, but not quite as hostile or dangerous as the first 3. And then you've got paranoid personality. High-conflict people with that just kind of see conspiracies against them. You know, who are you talking to? They don't trust partners, so they're kind of checking up on them. I have one guy when I was doing counseling, his wife would show up at work to make sure he didn't have lunch with any of the women. Just kind of paranoid. I can't trust you. Not because of his behavior at all, but because in her mind, she just couldn't trust men, couldn't trust people. So those are the 5 kind of subtypes of high conflict. And if people are aware of them, they may be able to notice, whoops, this person's kind of like that. If you're not aware, often people are totally caught by surprise. And part of my work is to help people not be surprised.

Yeah, I think we're going to get into that part because I'm very curious about whether or not there's a pattern or a specific archetype of men that seems to attract— I mean, I'm talking more about, you know, men, but we could just say person that seems to attract these types of people. But I first actually want to engage in the, in the conversation around, you know, as you're talking about this, looking at some of like Jonathan Haidt's work. I don't know if you've— you're familiar with his work.

Yeah, yeah, he's got great stuff.

You know, I think it seems like from a societal standpoint, it seems like we're creating more of these people who are a man, like mentally and emotionally quite fragile or unhinged or unstable in some way and incapable of sort of taking— maybe not, maybe incapable is not the right word, but they have an allergy, we could say, to responsibility and accountability. And disagreement is something that they sort of see as a relational connection point where they always have to sort of win in the disagreement and create disagreement. And that becomes like a kind of love language. I'm curious about your perspective on that. Do you feel like our culture and our society is producing more high-conflict people?

Well, let me say there's three factors that really influence personality development. And one of them is early childhood because that's when you learn especially how to have close relationships. And high-conflict personalities come out in close relationships. So you could work with 100 people and not know that any of them are high-conflict. But if you live with them, you would go, okay, these 4 are high-conflict. So it's It's partly, you know, early childhood relationship skills. And to some extent, I think what you're saying, people lack these skills. And I like to think of it as lacking these skills because some can learn these skills. But that's one factor. Another factor is genetic tendencies. And some people are born with more tendencies towards, like, being domineering and being manipulative. Those kinds of characteristics, although life experience can tilt them deeper into that or more away from that. So parenting does make a difference. The third factor seems to be the larger cultural environment. And I believe two things are really changing. We're not changing biology at this stage, at least, but early childhood is harder for some people now than 50 years ago. And I think, you know, when kids are raised and their parents have substance abuse problem or have mental health issues or have parents with personality disorders, it makes it harder for them to learn flexible relationship skills. And so partly early childhood is less stable than it used to be. For many kids. Not— there's a lot of kids that's great now. And I think one of the great things is that fathers are as involved with the kids as mothers in many, many families today. And my guess is your listeners include a lot of dads who are very heavily involved with raising the kids, and these kids are going to do well. But there's a lot of kids without dads, and some kids with dads that are really abusive. So that's a factor. But I think the biggest change we're seeing is in the larger culture and our communities are weaker. So there isn't the expectation. I remember as a kid, I grew up outside of Philadelphia in one of the suburbs, and I remember as a kid being about a mile from my house and I walked into a store and, you know, we were pretty much free-range kids. 50 years ago. And someone saying, "Does your mother know you're here?" It's like, "Oh my goodness, my mother's reach could be a mile away." And communities were like that. It's like there's a standard of behavior that everybody reinforces. Well, communities today are much weaker than that. So there aren't standards that people reinforce. But another key factor in here is the size of families. So I was one of 4 kids. I had to get along with my brother and my sisters. Families are smaller. I do, as a lawyer, I've done a lot of divorce work and a lot of the most high-conflict families have one child. And so there's a lot of competition over spending time with that one child. And that one child learns how to maybe play parents off of each other and doesn't learn how to cooperate and be in a close, equal relationship. And so that's also a factor. But another big factor is, is our constant media exposure to high-conflict behavior. And I think what we're doing is we're teaching high-conflict behavior inadvertently. So, you know, the dramatic bad behavior you see on the evening news and you see on social media, like, look at this, look what this person did today. For young people growing up, that starts looking like the standards of behavior for our society. And I think that's the biggest shift of all that I'm seeing. Is this constant barrage of high-conflict behavior because it's exciting, it grabs our eyeballs, and frankly, we get manipulated a lot by that. Social media, YouTube, all of that shows us the worst behavior because then we watch. So it's backfiring as a societal value, but that's what seems to be happening. Yeah.

I mean, you think about growing up in a village 100, 200 years ago, the frequency at which you would have seen that level of conflict would have been quite low, right? And, it usually had very serious physical implications whereas now you can scroll on your phone, you can see a high-conflict thing over and over and over and over and over again, different examples. But, it actually has no— I mean, it's not that it doesn't have an impact on you but it's that you feel like you're removed from the conflict not realizing that you're carrying a psychological imprint of that, that now it's sort of subtly becoming normalized for you to elevate your interactions.

And yeah, yeah, I was just going to say one thing I've noticed, it's real subtle and simple, but is swearing. I remember when I was a teenager, I don't remember what I said to my mother. She says, all right, lean over the sink. She gets out a bar of soap and rubs it on my tongue, washing my mouth out with soap. And growing up, I remember, you know, other kids had that happen and you'd hear, oh my goodness, you know, yeah, I did that and I got my mouth washed out with soap. Well, now all day, so I cannot like physically swear in public. I can a little bit in private. My wife will tell you that. But in public, the very rare times people are shocked because I just can't do that. And yet in public now, swearing is so much more common, so much more accepted. And it's kind of like no big deal. And yet to me, that's kind of an example of the creep towards more high-conflict behavior that people feel they can vent without restraint. And that's not really a healthy thing. And that's where I think parents that are really invested in raising happy kids, can really help kids know that's not okay. Or some people have a jar, like a swear jar, and you got to put a penny or a dime or something in it. And kids love catching their parents. Mom, that's a dime.

It's funny because my son is 5, and it's also interesting what you're talking about because it's very cultural. Like, if you go to the UK, they swear all the time and they are pretty vulgar and it's just part of their culture. But yeah, I mean, in North American culture, I mean, I grew up in Canada and depending on where you were in Canada, it's not as normal or it's not as taboo. But it's funny because my son is 5 and I don't know if you've seen those trends on Instagram and TikTok where a parent will set up a camera in the bathroom and then they'll say to their kid, you can say any bad word that you want and say all the bad words and get it all out and you get in trouble for it. Well, I tested it out with my son because I certainly sometimes swear around the house, and I've wondered to myself, like, I wonder if he's picked up any. He's never said any of it, and he's never used any bad language. But it's like, I wonder if he's picked any of that up.

Oh, he probably has them all.

And you know what? He didn't have a single one.

Oh, really?

Not a single one. No F-bombs, no shit. It was just, you know, he was like, like, "You're stupid and this is gross." And, it was all these just sort of childish things that him and his other 5-year-old friends might say to each other on the playground. But, I was like, "Oh, this is great. He doesn't even know what those words are." Now, I will say that I know my daughter will probably pick up on those things faster because my son is more like in his own world and my daughter is fiercely present with everything that's going on around her. And so, I know for sure that when she starts talking and she's only 20 months right now, when she starts talking, that little girl is going to pick up on everything. And, I know the first time I drop an F-bomb, she's going to have it right there. I'm like, "Oh, no." So, I really started to monitor myself more. But also, just on the genetic side, I think that was interesting. The sort of predisposition genetically towards whatever we want to call it, defiance or dominance or aggression. I've certainly noticed, I think that is a part of my lineage is that there's more— it's interesting because I don't really like conflict inherently. I don't really enjoy it. It's not fun. It's not something I move towards. And my wife and I, when we got married, I wrote a poem called Two Stubborn Hearts because we're definitely stubborn in our own ways. But it's a byproduct of us kind of knowing who we are and what we want and what we want to move towards. And so that's like this ongoing joke. We, we are stubborn in a way that is not conflict-oriented. And that's always interesting. But with my son, I've definitely noticed he can be, he can be like more than stubborn. It's like, and that's part of a byproduct of being 5, right? It's like you're trying to ignore. Oh yeah. And do all that kind of stuff.

He's testing out, he's testing it out, stretching the boundaries of what I can do, what I can get away with.

But I see, I see some of my friends' kids and they are just relaxed as can be. They don't want to enter into any type of conflict. They don't want to escalate in any way. And my son's not afraid to get into it and push back. And so it's very interesting that you said that.

Well, let me mention, I really think there's a real diversity of personalities and that even within families. And when I worked with families with 3 or 4 kids, Maybe one of them is high conflict, or as an adult, one of them becomes high conflict and the others don't, but they all had the same parenting. And that really reinforces to me the genetic role of the dice, that that's always part of humanity and that that's a good thing because then we have different skills, we have different things to offer each other. And I think in many ways, the high-conflict personalities are more old-style personalities where you had to fight and dominate to, to be okay. And if you didn't dominate, you would be dominated. And so if you look back in human history, it's like maybe 1,000 years that we've tried to really work out more equal relationships. And more gender equality, more democracy, more people contributing in work groups, teams, and all of that kind of thing without one person telling everybody else what to do. But in the old days, you got told what to do or you were the one telling what to do. And so I think in many ways we're seeing somewhat of a holdover. And, and some people can learn skills to get along much better. And that's part of what we teach with High Conflict Institute is some interpersonal skills that are real simple to learn and practice to help people get along better. And, and there's high conflict people that learn to soften those tendencies and to be more flexible and cooperative. And then there's some that just can't change, that are just really, really stuck. And it may be those are the more genetically based high-conflict personalities. So it's fascinating. But there's such a— yeah, it's so fascinating because there's such a diversity of personality. But on the other hand, the 5 I described, you'll see all the time if you keep your eyes open.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because, like, with my boy, he's so sweet and gentle and loving, and he is like the biggest He's just got such a beautiful heart and he's disagreeable. He's totally— and it's funny because a friend of mine was like, "Welcome to your kid karma," because I can certainly be running in my company, in my business. I'm like, "No, this is the way I think we should do it and we're going to move in this direction." And, I always value what my team has to say and oftentimes, I'll defer to them and what they think we should do. But I certainly have that edge to me where it's like, this is the direction I think we should move. And, you know, the research does show that men are, statistically speaking, more disagreeable than women, and women are generally more agreeable. I do wonder if that is changing, as you were talking about. I wonder if that is starting to shift a little bit where it's equalizing.

But I think, I think it's equalizing, but I think there's always going to be those gender tendencies for majority of men, a majority of women, but that we can fit them together better and better. And so, you know, it just seems in general women do have more of these kind of social group skills and in many ways are more powerful in their social group skills, whereas men tend to be more powerful in their individual skills. Although men can certainly work together and, you know, we wouldn't have built rockets and buildings and all that stuff if we, if we didn't. So I'm excited. I think there's just such a wide range of people and contributions. And I see people, all people as equal, but that some behavior is better than others. And that's where I try to treat high-conflict people with respect while setting limits also. And that's the key. And you'll get good practice with a 5-year-old. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, definitely. There's so many stories in there. Okay, I want to circle back around on the archetype of individual that, like, it's sort of a two-pronged question. Are there certain archetypes of people that tend to attract more high-conflict people, and how do we start to identify if we're in a relationship with one or start to sort of pull ourselves away from the sort of entanglement that can happen with a high-conflict person? I know you talk about the WEB method— words, emotions, and behaviors. So maybe we can get into that in a moment as well. Yeah.

So it kind of all fits together. I like to say that high-conflict people will try out their behavior on everybody and that there isn't necessarily a type that starts attracting them. But here's where your own personality type comes in is some people tolerate high-conflict behavior or may even be drawn to it because it's exciting.. And those people then, high-conflict people, focus on much more so. So if you think in the workplace, let's say there's a workplace bully, could be a man or a woman. One of my first jobs, I had a woman boss who was a high-conflict person before I knew what they were, but she was a bully. And so what happens is They start doing that to people that will let them do that. And so she started— we shared a small office, and she would, you know, just verbally, she wasn't all that great. She was abusive. And most of that I just ignored. And I found I could pretty much ignore her. I had to engage with that kind of stuff. But then she started asking me to cover for her that she would be coming in late or leaving early. Just tell people I'm in the building. And she wasn't. And so she was going to use me to help avoid her responsibilities. And basically I started saying, I can't do that. You know, I'm not going to lie for anybody. And so if someone asks where you are, I'll say, I don't know. They'll say, are you in the building? I'll say, I don't know. So I started— fortunately, she left after about 6 months, so it made my life much easier. But the idea that they start focusing on the people that will tolerate them. So one of the things we teach people in the workplace is Don't be passive. Don't be aggressive. Be assertive. So if someone's starting to push you around, walk away or say, hey, buddy, that's not okay, or burst out laughing, which can be a great technique because it just confuses the person who was trying to dominate you. And it's like you're not very successful at dominating somebody if they burst out laughing when you They say, "You don't know what you're doing, Bill." Give me a break. And so be assertive because if you're passive and you stay engaged with them, they're going to get used to making your life harder and harder. And that's where workplace bullies, people get stomachaches, people can't sleep, people take sick days more, all of that to avoid. And so in many ways, bullying is progressive. And the people that tolerate that progression are the ones that will get more of it. And so if you spot bullies, and by the way, bullies are the same 5 characters I talked about before as high-conflict people, the narcissist, borderline, antisocial, etc. And you'll see them in the workplace. And when you see them, I would say keep your distance because they tend to focus on individuals and you don't want to be who they focus on.

Yeah, definitely. I used to work at Apple for a period of time and saw the same thing. There was an individual there that fit into that archetype and tended to go after and sort of pick on the people who would just allow it, who never pushed back.

Yeah.

You know, and, um, and I think, I think it was just, it was interesting to watch because I remember having a conversation with one of the individuals and I was like, why do you let her treat you like that? Why do you even put up with that? And, you know, and after some conversations with them, what ended up coming out was that, you know, that individual's father was very much a high-conflict person. And so there was this dynamic of, well, I grew up in this similar setting. And so, it feels really confronting to be in a work environment with a boss who is treating me in this way and I don't know how to confront them, not only because of the dynamic of being at work, but because of my past and my history and what happens inside. So, it's complicated because it does seem— and maybe you can speak to this— it does seem like people who grow up with high-conflict people tend to become one or tend to attract them?

I think, and being cautious about not saying they attract, but that they don't protect themselves. They don't set limits.

That's a better way of saying it.

So, yeah, because I think no one particularly attracts them. It's the people that tolerate them. Come on over. Yeah. So they'll do the same thing to 5 people and 4 people will either walk away, laugh at them, or say, "Cut it out," and the fifth person's intimidated. And it may be because they grew up being intimidated. They had a similar experience. Or there's another alternative, and I've seen this a lot, is people that grew up in really nice families and are just totally unprepared for high-conflict people. And they're kind of like a deer in the headlights. This is totally foreign to me. I don't know what to do. And so they don't do anything and they kind of tolerate it out of lack of knowledge. So I see both those extremes. But yeah, so I don't see people attracting high-conflict people as not protecting themselves from high-conflict people, not setting limits. And I think there was another question in there, but I'm not too sure either.

I think I think you got to it. We'll just—

we'll—

they'll let me know in the comments. Comment what I missed. But, let's shift gears a little bit into some of the frameworks that you use because I can imagine we've kind of been talking about this archetype and I can imagine some of the men listening that are like, "Whoa, that's my dad. That's my mom. That's my wife. That's my brother. That's me." And so, I want to start to shift into if you have a relationship with somebody that is this this sort of type, this archetype, how do you start to deal with it? Maybe we can start with the BIFF framework, the B-I-F-F framework.

Sure.

Actually, or wherever you want to begin.

Yeah, let me just start with 4 things to avoid and then what to do, because BIFF is one of the things to do. 4 things to avoid. First of all, don't try to give them insight into their own behavior. Don't say, now let me tell you what you're doing wrong here. It doesn't work with high-conflict people. They become extremely defensive and they'll try to dominate you because what it does is it makes them feel dominated. And so you don't want to say, you know, here's what your problem is. It just doesn't work. The second thing is don't try to focus on emotions. Don't have an emotional emotional confrontation with them. You want to be pretty much calm and look at it in terms of problem solving. Because when you get emotional with high-conflict people, a lot of people don't realize this, but high-conflict people don't go through the 5 stages of the grieving process. That's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. When you're facing a big loss like a relationship, somebody's dying or something like that, we go through these stages. Light conflict people seem to lack the mechanism for that. So they get stuck at anger. And so when they're facing a loss, they get angry. And when they think they're facing a loss, they get angry, even if most people would say there's nothing happening there. And so you don't want to focus on emotions and say, well, how do you feel about that, buddy? You want to steer clear of emotions and focus on what to do. You want to not give them insight. Don't focus them in themselves. Focus them outward on what their choices are. Let's look at what our options are. Let's look at what we can do now rather than here's what you're doing wrong. So try to steer clear of insight, emotions, also getting stuck arguing about the past. High-conflict people, because they don't grieve and heal loss, are always trying to rewrite history. And they're trying to say, I was right to do what I did. You were wrong to do what you did. And you'll have an endless argument with them because often it's a fantasy in their mind that that they have no responsibility. That's part of the package. So try to focus on, let's just look at what to do now, things like that. And the last is don't call them names like you're a high-conflict person or you're a narcissist or you're a blankety-blank. That also makes high-conflict people too defensive to solve problems. So steer clear of inside emotions, the past, name-calling, and focus on, let's look at what we can do now. So that's the things to avoid.

It's funny because as you were laying those out, I was struck by how those are pretty much all the natural things that we would be driven to do.

Right. Right. Which is the opposite of what you feel like doing. Yeah. It's like, right now I want to yell at you and tell you you're an idiot. And yet that's the opposite thing of what I should do right now. And it's difficult. You're right.

Can you say a little bit more about— and then we can get into some of the more specifics of what to do. I love that you laid out, like, here, don't do these things. What is it? Because you've kind of talked about high-conflict people as there's like an allure in some way that they can be quite charismatic, quite Like I've seen Steve Jobs talked about quite a bit as this very sort of quintessential high-conflict person who would drive people and was sort of ruthless and relentless. And having worked at Apple, seeing a lot of the culture that is downstream of that is very interesting. But what is it about high-conflict people that can make them so charismatic and sort of alluring?

They're very skilled at the positive side. And to some extent, maybe not really consciously, they know they have another side. So they put more energy into seducing people into liking them and respecting them. To get into relationships. Because if people know that they also scream at them or fire them in front of 200 people, if they know that's coming, they're not going to want to work with you.

Right. They're trying to offset is what you're saying. They're trying to offset for the behavior.

Start out charming. And we see charm as one of the warning signs of high-conflict people. Now, most people who are charming really are. But there's a percent of charming people, maybe the most charming, or actually end up being high-conflict people. Interesting. So, but I think, see, that's where I think part of it may be inborn, that there may be part of the pattern of some leaders is to be really draw people together, like the narcissistic leader. Connor Beaton is skilled at drawing people in saying, I have a plan. And if you invest $50,000 with me, you'll get $500,000 back. So trust me, give me your money. And I'm just this super fast-talking, positive, energetic, irresistible personality. And people go, all right. And 90% of the time they wasted and lost their money. And every so often it works. I mean, that's Silicon Valley and all of that. And I think Steve Jobs had one of those personalities. He could just draw people in to work with him and be committed to the company. And the story I remember the most about him And I may not have it right, and you may know since you worked there. But as I understand it from reading his biography, at one point in time, he was talking to, I think it was the Corning Glass Company, and saying, you have to make a touchscreen for me. And they said, it can't be done, Steve. And he says, I want you to do it, and you've got 90 days. And they did it. So you're right. So that personality pushed people. But very few people have the talent combined with that personality to have it succeed. And so many people, so many companies are destroyed by narcissists who can't treat people respectfully and don't have the brilliant ideas. But he, he was like right at that nexus of high-conflict personality, but not so high, and brilliant ideas that other people couldn't see. That combination worked. I don't think— I think he's like the high-conflict person that didn't have a personality disorder because personality disorders generally don't learn and change. Right. And when he got fired the first time around at Apple, he came back somewhat different in his approach and was much more successful. I think he was good at learning and good at putting people around him who would challenge his thinking. So that's why I think he wasn't a personality disorder person, but clearly a blamer, all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, all that stuff.

Yeah, it's fascinating because I think, you know, in prepping for this conversation, I was really struck by how many, how many men especially that we would look at throughout the course of human history who have produced sort of abnormal outsized results that have pushed culture, society, technology, engineering forward. And many of them, I think, in some ways were high-conflict individuals who almost seems to have leveraged that high conflict in order to move the needle forward. But it does seem like what you're saying is an important caveat that generally the people that are high-conflict people that also have personality disorders have a much higher tendency or predilection towards implosion. Is that—

Yeah.

Like that it's going to crater at some point. And I've seen that for sure in businesses and entrepreneurs and men that I've worked with were just just tanks.

Yeah. Let me give you an example or a contrast here. And I contrasted Steve Jobs and President Richard Nixon in our book, It's All Your Fault at Work, which is about high-conflict people and how to manage them in the workplace and mostly what to do. But I contrasted them because Steve Jobs had a flexibility that actually Richard Nixon didn't have. He was not— they're both narcissistic tendencies. But Richard Nixon also had a strong paranoid tendency, and his lack of trust in anybody made him become very isolated. And so he didn't know how badly he was doing. People weren't telling him and he wasn't interested. And so he had two people, his two chief of staff, I guess, and someone other, Ehrlichman and Haldeman. I think they both ended up going to prison for some of the things that they did because his team broke a lot of laws. But he's an example. He flamed out because of his personality, even though he was a skilled politician. I mean, he did a lot of things that both Democrats and Republicans respected. And he opened up our relationship with China, and that really made the world perhaps a more peaceful place, at least until now. We'll see how things go.

Well, I mean, it's an interesting thing because it does seem like such to find— this is something— I mean, I've got 11 or 12 people that work with me now, and this is something that I'm— and when I worked at Apple, eventually, at one point, I was overseeing 250 to 300 people. And so, there is this sort of paradoxical nature of leadership of you have to be relational, you have to inspire. But specifically, I've always looked at leadership as this process of influence, and it should be a reciprocal level of influence that You know, you're influencing me in a way and my decision-making process and how I'm viewing things and seeing things, but also I'm influencing you towards what we're trying to accomplish and achieve. And it's challenging because it does seem like sometimes people who get the best results are the ones that are oftentimes quite relentless in their drive and their determination and relentless in their ability to to bring people to that standard and to hold people to that standard. Now, I do think that you can do that in a highly relational way, or you can do that in a non-relational way. And I think maybe that's part of the difference of what we're talking about between, like, high-conflict people don't do that in a relationship— relational way. They do it in a dominance way.

Right. Right. It's a blame way. It's all other people's fault. They don't take responsibility. The key factor, maybe two key factors here are Does the person reflect on their own part? What's my part in this problem or this conflict? And what can I do differently going forward? If you can ask yourself those two questions, you're probably not really a high-conflict person because high-conflict people can't ask themselves those questions because it's all other people's fault. And so they stay stuck. And I think what you're talking about is leaders who are strong in what I would say assertiveness without it being so aggressive that they're burning bridges as they go. So it's the assertive approach that takes, that can reflect and can change. Those are the folks that are the most successful, I think.

Yeah, I mean, Steve Jobs has just always been a fascinating study for me because what he managed to achieve. And when you read the interviews of people that worked really closely with him, they almost always had this very strange love-hate relationship where it was like, that man got the absolute best out of me that I didn't know I was capable of, and he was a monstrous pain in the ass.

You know? Right, right. You know?

And I think a lot of people would I would say that about somebody like Elon Musk as well, right? Where, you know, I mean, you look at the innovation and what he's achieved and accomplished, and, and at the same time, there's kind of a relentless or ruthlessness there. Yeah. But for the sake of time, because I could go into leadership all day long, I want to come back to, for the individuals that's listening to this, and they are in a, they're, they're in a relationship where they work with somebody who's more high-conflict oriented, what do you start to do? How do you start to manage or deal with that relationship?

Well, there's 4 skills we like to teach. And you mentioned the BIFF method, and this is one of the most commonly used and popular. I estimate about 1 million people are using this because we've taught lots of people over the last 15 years. So BIFF stands for brief, informative, Friendly and Firm. It's designed for written responses. So you get an email or a text and they say, you know, you're a horrible person, you don't know what you're doing, you're totally incompetent. And what day do you think your report will be delivered to me? And so a BIFF response would be, thanks for asking me when the report will be in, and I'll get that to you next Wednesday by close of business. And you just ignore all that other stuff. There's no need to prove yourself. But if it hooks you, then you're likely to get down into the quicksand with them. So keeping it brief, informative, friendly, and firm really makes it much more constructive. And you avoid getting hooked in with this. And you can do this with supervisors. You can do this with employees. It's a just very simple method. Now we have 10 questions to ask yourself when you've drafted something or if you're coaching somebody else to ask them. First 4 are: Is it brief? Is it informative? Is it friendly? Is it firm? And firm doesn't mean harsh, it just means it ends the hostile conversation. Then, does it have any advice in it? Because usually when people send you a hostile email or text, they're not asking for your advice. And that just that makes it worse. Second is admonishments, talking down to the person. You want to avoid talking down to them like a child. And interestingly enough, we have 4 BIFF books and one is BIFF for Lawyers because lawyers write some of the worst emails to each other. Where did you go to law school? How did you ever pass the bar? Have you ever considered—

I've had a few lawyers as clients And it's always been an interesting thing to see how they interact with each other.

Yeah. So we get that. So no advice, no admonishments, and no apologies. And this surprises people. But what we find is when someone's coming at you in a hostile way, if you start apologizing to them and they have a high-conflict personality, they feel now they can dominate you. That you've put yourself down a step. And what's interesting—

Sorry, but is that like, is the apology almost like an admission of submission or you're subverting power and you're saying, oh, you are right?

Yeah. So you're deferring to them. But when you have a high-conflict person, once you do that, they believe now It's all your fault and you agree with them. And so it's out of proportion. I'm sorry I was 5 minutes late. Well, you blah blah blah. And now they got that and they're going to show everybody else. See, he put it here. He's sorry. He's the problem here. Can't you see? He even admits it. So we recommend against that. Now, there may be a time and place for an apology, but not when someone's coming at you with hostility. They're going to use that against you like ammunition. Then let's see, we're 7 questions. 8th question is, how do you think the other person will respond? Is there anything in here that's going to unnecessarily push a button? And then 9, now is there anything you would add, take out, or change? And the 10th is, should you have somebody else look at it? And for several years, I had a legal assistant who was brilliant at BIFF responses. And I'd give her like a page, my BIFF, and I'd say, what do you think? And she'd cut it in half. She always like took out half of it or more. So you don't need that. You don't need that. This is all you need. And she was right. So trimming it down. Now I want to make— you can verbally do BIFF too. Just keep it brief, informative, friendly, and firm. But I want to suggest there's an issue with AI, and that is AI knows about BIFF now. If you say, ask AI to write a BIFF response to an email that you got, it'll write one for you. But here's the beef I have with that. You don't learn. What I think you need to do is write it, ask yourself the 10 questions, make any edits,. And then if you want, you could see what AI would do with it. But you want to— it's like developing a muscle. It's like AI can't go to the gym and work out for you. It can't learn to write for you. It can't get you to learn to write your BIF responses. You need to practice writing it and asking yourself 10 questions. So that's a caution that I would say with BIF. Now we have another what we call EAR statements, E-A-R. And these are designed more in person. So someone's coming at you and they're angry and upset. Give them some empathy, attention, or respect. Say, wow, I really respect your efforts. Tell me more. I want to understand what's upsetting. Or connect with their emotions. Say, wow, I can see I can see how frustrated you are with how that project turned out or that report. And you can do this in relationships too. In fact, you need to do this a lot in relationships. You know, honey, I can see you're really disappointed. I understand that. Let's talk about what we can do in the future. So you're connecting with the person rather than rejecting. Because as you pointed out, Connor, this is the opposite of what you feel like doing. I want to shake the person. Instead, you go, "Oh, I can see you're upset. I can hear your sadness and disappointment." But by acknowledging what they're feeling, paying attention, letting them know you respect something about any one of those three, tends to calm people and make it easier then to connect and solve problems. So EAR statements is another one. Then we have what we call SLICC solution. All of these have acronyms. S-L-I-C for setting limits and imposing consequences in 2.5 steps. So the first step is setting the limit. Let's say, "You can't talk to me that way." Second is what the consequence is going to be. "If you keep talking to me that way, I'm going to end this conversation." The half step is about half the time, give them a near statement and say, "And I'm saying this because I want us to be able to—" Let's say you're saying it to a 5-year-old.

Lots of practice there. Yeah.

I'm telling you this because I want you to succeed. You know, don't put the glass on the edge of the table because you'll be happier and have less messes to clean up. So I'm telling you this because I love you. But about half the time, you don't want to give an ear statement because they're going to manipulate you. Like you say, I care about you. You don't care about me. All you care about is blah, blah, blah. And so So when you think you're going to be manipulated, don't give an ear statement, just focus on the consequence. But here's the tricky thing. High-conflict people mostly ignore the limits that you set. So you have to have consequences, which of course is like 5-year-olds. They're learning. They don't know yet. But like in the workplace and neighbors and other relationships, With high-conflict people, you say, "Please stop," and they just keep going. So you have to say what'll happen if they ignore the limit. So that's why it's S-L-I-C, not just S-L. And the last one to mention is what we call swipe agreements. S-Y-P— let's see. So, P, yeah, S, S, WYP, that's it. It's new, it's the newest one. I'm finishing this book now. And it stands for, so what's your proposal? So someone's saying, you're doing it wrong. You never took responsibility. You never did this. And you just say, so what's your proposal? Well, that on Friday at 5, you pick up the project and and take it from there. Oh, okay, yeah, I can do that. So you cut through a lot of the blame, a lot of the past and all of that by just saying, so what's your proposal? Now, if you're negotiating with somebody, and this could be formal or informal, so first one person says their proposal, who would do what, when, and where. Let's say pick up the project on 5. Then the other person needs to ask at least a couple logistical questions. High-conflict people often argue with the proposal. Well, that's insane. Why should I do that? It's really your responsibility. It's all your fault. This wouldn't even be a problem if you hadn't done this 10 years ago and that 2 years ago. And you say, so ask me a couple logistical questions. Well, okay, so if I picked it up at 5, where are you going to be at 5? And how big a vehicle do I need? That's useful information. That's focused on problem solving, not reacting, which is a different part of the brain, actually. So proposal, questions, responses, simply, yes, I'll do it. No, I don't agree. Or I'll think about it and how long I need to think about it. So that's BIFF responses. Air statements, slick solutions, and swipe agreements. And that makes it easier to remember in a conflict. But those are 4 areas where you run into trouble with high-conflict people and ways to try to solve them as equals rather than just dominating or being dominated.

It's interesting because as you were laying that out, I was looking back at what made me successful at Apple, and it was a lot of that. I didn't like— I was doing a lot of that, and I've sort of became the guy that would handle really challenging customers. And that became a skill set of mine and really challenging employees, you know, that were sort of underperforming or having performance issues or they had behavior issues within the work setting. And so that became a skill set of mine. So that's— as you're listing those things off, I was like, oh, man, that's so I was thinking about these very specific interactions with some individuals who were just, I mean, they are the quintessential definition of high-conflict people and being able to sort of work and traverse that. And oddly enough, it feels much easier to have done that than to deal with my 5-year-old sometimes.

The 5-year-old does it 10 times a day. That's right. Your employees may Maybe just once every other day. That's right. That's right.

Last thing I want to get into, Bill, around this, and this has been wonderful. I really love this conversation. I think this is a very, very important dialogue, and the body of work that you're doing is really important for the men that are listening to this. And they are— I was going to say that they have a family member, but I want to even make it more specific, that they are in a relationship with somebody. That is a high-conflict person. How do you traverse that? I mean, that seems— it seems like it's almost a rock and a hard place. If you stay, it's just going to be this consistent thing. Can this person ever move out of this? And, if you leave, that sounds like living hell that they're going to make your life really a huge problem. And so, how do you traverse that type of relationship if you're in a dynamic and you realize that and you can see this person is definitely a high-conflict person? Should you get a mediator? Do they come and work with you?

What does that look like? Yeah, it's tricky because there's a lot of decisions involved. The first thing is to realize at what point you're not going to change the other person. So the goal becomes managing the relationship or leaving the relationship. I always encourage people to try managing the relationship first because there's a wide range of high-conflict people and some are more responsive than others. So using the 4 skills I just described may make a difference. So especially if someone's been arguing a lot, is instead of the arguments, you give your EAR statements and you make your proposals. You know, EAR statements, now here's what I propose we do. So that you can manage the relationship to the extent possible. But I find I do a lot of consultation with people going through this, and it includes men who are trying to decide which way to go or maybe trying to save their marriage, and women that are trying to decide or maybe try to save the marriage. So, so that's one thing that is available that I do. But what seems to happen is people realize, I can't get as much from this relationship as I thought I could, but I may be able to get more empathy, more of my emotional needs met from my friends. And there's many people that keep a relationship that has some high conflict in it or have a high-conflict person because they rely less on that person for emotional support and they get it from their buddies, they get it from their guy friends, their girlfriends, whoever. And I'm not recommending having affairs as the balanced way to make the relationship work. It doesn't usually make the relationship work. But having some friends, having your own time with friends may make it workable. And this is one of the solutions I see when people say, like, we've got our kids are 16, we want them to finish high school, we got 2 more years, and then I'll probably leave the marriage. But I think I can hang in here as long as I've got my friends as well as this this partner relationship. Another is going to counseling, going to couples counseling and saying, "Honey, will you go to couples counseling with me? I'd like to try and make this work. We're not doing well." Now, couples counseling often doesn't work with high-conflict people because the high-conflict person just stays blaming and the therapist may lean on the reasonable partner to make changes to calm the high-conflict person. And that's not a good approach. And some therapists aren't, aren't good at high-conflict couples therapy. So there's that. And then deciding whether to leave. And I've over the years worked on a lot of books. So I'll tell you about another book here. That's Stop Walking on Eggshells for Partners. And I wrote that with Randy Krieger, who has a career of helping people in relationships with people with borderline personality disorder and looking at should I stay or should I go. And that's part of that book. If people decide, I think I do want to end this relationship, then Randy and I also have a book, Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Personality Disorder. A long title, but the general principles apply whether or not those disorders are present. But it's predictive of some of the common problems and also how to deal with family court if you're dealing with a high-conflict former spouse. So there's a lot of information now we've put together and made available for people trying to sort this because it's not a simple, obvious answer. It really depends on the situation.

Great. That is wonderful. I've really enjoyed this conversation, Bill. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing and have done. We'll have the links to your work in the show notes, but anywhere specific that you'd like people to go just so they can go check it out ASAP?

The main thing is come to our website, highconflictinstitute.com, www.highconflictinstitute.com. We've got the books, we've got videos, and we have have maybe 100 free articles about navigating relationships with high-conflict people and dealing with professionals, especially family law therapists, lawyers, all of that. So, and I've really enjoyed this too. Thank you for being so open and interested.

Yeah, you got it. Yeah, well, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for everybody else that tuned in. As always, if you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to man it forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it. And until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.