How to Survive the Holidays with an Antisocial Relative
© 2012 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. [excerpted from It’s All Your Fault! by Bill Eddy] Don’t Get Conned While Antisocial “Con Artists” are the best at lying and manipulating information, all of the High Conflict Personalities lie some of the time. In your everyday life, from now on, you’re wise to be a little more cautious with the information you believe—especially from strangers. Handling Antisocial HCPs 1. Be alert for unusual stories that require you to do something. We naturally believe people who tell us they were victimized. The key point with Antisocials is that they want something from you. They’ll say anything to get it. If someone’s story requires you to make a leap of faith and make a donation or put your energy into something unfamiliar, say “I’ll think about it”—and get more information. 2. Pay attention to your gut feelings. Antisocials will seek and find your soft spots. You’ll feel uncomfortable around them before you consciously know why. Pay attention to your gut feelings and feel free to ask questions. They’ll use many clever and fast words to distract you from your doubts about what they’re saying. They’ll try to put the burden on you, but only if you let them. 3. Be skeptical when anybody tells you someone else is an evil monster. Antisocials are constantly blaming others for terrible deeds that didn’t occur, or at least not the way they describe them. Decide for yourself whether someone is not trustworthy, dangerous, or has made dramatic threats. Consider the source. People who speak in extremes are often projecting their own negative viewpoint onto others. People “get it backwards” more often than you realize. 4. HCPs have distortions much of the time and lie some of the time. This should be obvious, but people get fooled every day. There are people who will knowingly hurt you. Others honestly believe what they’re saying, but it’s false information. Be aware that this occurs. 5. Remind yourself every day to maintain a healthy skepticism. When we get fooled, most of the time it occurs because we didn’t consider that this nice person could be insincere with us. HCPs are often in a lot of pain (with Internal Upsets) and very emotionally persuasive. It helps to remind yourself that you can be easily misled. Antisocial Con Artists chronically spin tales of being abused by their victims. Don’t be misled. While the holidays can be a stressful time, arming yourself with knowledge will go along way toward helping you deal with this type of HCP and ensure that your season is a bright one. BILL EDDY, LCSW, ESQ. is the co-founder and Innovation Director of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. He pioneered the High Conflict Personality Theory (HCP) and is viewed globally as the leading expert on managing disputes involving people with high-conflict personalities. He has written more than twenty books on the topic, developed methods for managing high-conflict disputes, and has taught professionals in the U.S. and more than ten countries. He is also co-host of the popular podcast, It’s All Your Fault, and writes a popular blog on Psychology Today.
Prevent the Next Shooting: Focus on the Youth Deficit!
© 2012 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. I have tremendous empathy for the children, parents, teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. They became the “targets of blame” for a young man with serious problems and no rational connection to his targets, except that they were vulnerable like him when he decided to become powerful. In the coming weeks, we will hear a lot about the shooter. But my concern is more about the next shooter. He is watching and learning from today’s news. The shooting in Connecticut is part of a pattern – and there will be more. We just don’t know where, but they will occur more frequently unless we understand the pattern to these events. Ironically, it appears that we are creating the problems we’re trying to solve. We know that these are mostly young men (15-25), who are socially isolated, often children of divorce, who have some mental health problem that is untreated. The solution to their frustrations, failures and fantasies is violent power. They have easy access to weapons. It’s only a question of who will be their “target of blame.” Here are suggestions for prevention: Understand “high conflict” personalities. They become preoccupied with blaming others for the problems, conflicts and deficiencies in their own lives. They can look fairly normal on the surface, but they have too much all-or-nothing thinking inside, often-unmanaged emotions and extreme behaviors or solutions to problems. Many of them have personality disorders, which means that they are stuck in defensive thinking, have chronically dysfunctional relationships and regularly feel powerless. Those with personality disorders (or lesser traits) who focus on a specific individual or group as their “target of blame” have “high-conflict” personalities and will remain stuck in their way of thinking, despite negative experiences. They usually have some combination of in-born and childhood problems that grow over time. Some may also have an onset of paranoid schizophrenia, which occurs in their early 20’s. If you see someone’s social behavior becoming odd, speak up about it to someone. They need mental health treatment. More mental health services. In the 1980’s, I worked in a psychiatric hospital with adolescents, including some who were physically abusive toward other children or their parents. I remember one 13-year-old boy who weighed more than his mother, and he had grown used to hitting her when he was upset. Yet with our intensive hospitalization for him, including individual therapy, family therapy (that was my job) and activity therapy, he learned to control himself much better and as far as I know he has lead a positive life. However, such services have been cut. Neither insurance companies nor governments care as much about kids like this anymore. Until this changes, we will have more incidents of out-of-control youth who feel vulnerable acting out in dramatic and desperate moments. Some will simply kill themselves (adolescent suicide is way up right now) or others. Don’t allow social isolation. Teenage boys – especially from divorced families – are at a higher risk of becoming socially isolated and absorbed in fantasy video games of great power and violence. It helps them compensate for feeling weak and vulnerable – and having no friends. Today’s families are much smaller and in the case of divorce, often one child lives alone with one parent. In many of the mass shootings over the past 30 years, the young man has been a child of divorce with the other parent almost totally out of his life. The problem isn’t in having a single parent, it’s the tolerance of social isolation for the young man. He needs to be expected to socially engage and work on his social skills when there’s problems. Often the single parent feels guilty about the divorce or about working a lot, so he or she tolerates the social isolation. Or, the lone single parent has mental health problems of his or her own, which intensify rather than moderate the young man’s isolation and distorted perceptions. More youth social activities. In the 1970’s, I was a school teacher and the director of a summer recreation program that was federally funded for low-income youth. Some of those children had divorced parents and the kids really bonded with the staff and parents involved in the program. Of course, those funds ended with the 1980’s government budget-cutting trend that continues today. Where should our priorities be? Yachts or youth? Get guns out of the cities. In 1979, Brenda Spencer shot and killed two people and injured nine others at the school across the street from her house in San Diego. She used a semi-automatic rifle that her father gave her for Christmas 1978. The reason she gave: “I don’t like Mondays; this livens up the day.” (Wikipedia) The 20-year-old shooter in Connecticut apparently used his mother’s semi-automatic guns to shoot and kill 26 people on December 16th. Research shows that children’s brains are not fully developed until about 25 years of age – especially their pre-frontal cortex which helps them control their impulses. What are kids and unstable young adults doing with such easy access to guns? Some can’t control their violent impulses now, but will be able to in a few years. Imagine if they didn’t have semi-automatic weapons nearby when they were angry. And why do we need guns in the cities anyway? I believe that more adults (and their children) get killed each year at home with their own guns, than intruders get killed breaking into someone else’s home. Less media drama about these events. We shouldn’t be giving all this power to “shooters.” I believe their names and faces should not be shown in the news. The news media already withholds the names and faces of juvenile offenders and adult rape victims. We shouldn’t keep building this fantasy of power and fame for the next shooter. No 15-minutes of fame for you! Get help instead. In fact, we would all be better off to turn off the
Coaching for BIFF Response®
© 2012 Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. A BIFF Response® is designed to calm a hostile conversation. They can be written (or said) by anyone, although it takes practice and it helps to have someone review your BIFF Response before you send it. BIFF stands for Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm. This method is described in depth in our book, BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People, Their Personal Attacks, Hostile Email and Social Media Meltdowns. Many people today are trained Coaches who are assisting individuals who are working on improving their interpersonal skills and/or dealing with a high conflict situation. This article is designed for professionals serving as Coaches, but it can be applied by anyone helping anyone write an effective BIFF Response. Since High Conflict Institute was established four years ago, we have coached business partners, human resource professionals, neighbors, parents of adult children, spouses going through a divorce, and many others. We have learned that coaching others to do a BIFF Response can be highly effective if the Coach asks the following ten questions of the individual who has written a draft of a BIFF Response (who I’ll call the “Client” – whether it’s a business client, friend or family member). Is it Brief? Is it Informative? Is it Friendly? Is it Firm? Does it contain any Advice? Does it contain any Admonishments? Does it contain any Apologies? How do you think the other person will respond? Is there anything you would take out, add or change? Would you like to hear my thoughts about it? The Goal of Coaching for a BIFF Response To be the most helpful as a Coach for a BIFF Response, it helps to remember that there is no single “right” way to write a BIFF Response. In many ways it’s like cooking. What works for one person is almost always different from what works for another person. The BIFF Response always belongs to the person writing it. It is very important for the BIFF Response Coach to avoid “correcting” the Client’s BIFF Response as soon as it has been written. The goal is to help the Client learn to write a BIFF Response, so they can do them on their own, if necessary. The only way to effectively do that is to help the Client analyze his or her own BIFF Response. These questions keep the focus on helping the Client do just that. You will notice that the last question is “Would you like to hear my thoughts about it?” You might wonder why that isn’t the first question. You might really, really want to give suggestions right away. But by keeping this question for last, you put the focus on having the client really think about what he or she has written. This means that when you ask the first question, “Is it Brief?” you are careful not to start suggesting how it could be longer or shorter. Let the person think about it for a moment and decide for him or herself. It helps to introduce these ten questions with an explanation like this: “Whenever we write a BIFF Response – and I’ve written many myself – it helps to discuss it with someone else before we send it. When I’ve given my BIFF Response drafts to someone else, they have usually suggested that I trim them down – sometimes even cutting them in half! And I’ve usually agreed! It’s hard to see in our own comments what might trigger more anger or misbehavior from the other person. It’s often easier for someone else to spot those trigger words or sentences. But I want to start out by letting you analyze your BIFF Response, as this will help you get better and better at writing a BIFF Response that accomplish what you want. “So I would like you to read your BIFF Response out loud. Then, I’m going to help you by asking you 10 questions, so you can think about your BIFF Response. And remember, there’s no one right way of writing a BIFF Response. My goal is to help you think about whether it will accomplish what you want with the person you are dealing with at this time.” BIFF Response Writers Feel Vulnerable One thing we have learned about coaching BIFF Response clients is that they often feel very vulnerable, because they are usually dealing with a high conflict person (an HCP) who is criticizing them mercilessly or making the Client’s life miserable in some other way. When they write a BIFF Response, they are trying to regain a sense of balance and peace, so it is a time when they are very vulnerable to the feedback of others. Therefore, it is very important that they feel safe with you, rather than even a hint of criticism, as you help them decide whether they believe it’s going to be an effective BIFF Response. With this in mind, it helps to be supportive and encouraging during the first nine questions, rather than exact. Your response to their answers can be positive, while leaving room for you to make suggestions at the end with question #10. So when your Client says: “I think it’s Brief,” you can say “It looks like that to me too” and move on. Then, when you get to say your thoughts at the end (but only if the person says “Yes, I want to hear your thoughts”), you can say something like this: “While it looks Brief, you might want to take out the third sentence, and make it even briefer. That sentence seems like it might trigger an emotional response because of … But of course, it’s up to you. It’s your BIFF Response. What do you think about that?” You can use a similar response when the person thinks about whether it’s Informative. This questioning process does not need a big response. Most often the person will simply say: “Yes, I think it’s Informative.” Then you can say: “Ok. And