In this episode, Andrew and Barbara talk with Bill Eddy, co-founder of the High Conflict Institute, about how to recognize and deal with high-conflict people.
Note: This podcast was originally hosted on Barbara La Pointe’s website, which has since gone offline. I’ve reposted the episodes here so people still have access to the materials.
Transcript
Andrew Folkler: Right, and welcome everyone to another episode of Broken Families, where we host conversations on divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. My name is Andrew Folkler.
Barbara La Pointe: And I’m Barbara La Pointe.
Bill Eddy: And I’m Bill Eddy.
Barbara La Pointe: Yay.
Andrew Folkler: Welcome back.
Barbara La Pointe: Welcome. Today we are going to discuss high-conflict personalities in depth, and who better to lead that conversation than the man that pioneered the high-conflict personality theory.
Barbara La Pointe: Bill Eddy, welcome. Bill Eddy is the co-founder of the High Conflict Institute and the author of best-selling, life-changing books like The Biff Strategy, Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life, Don’t Alienate the Kids, and It’s All Your Fault at Work: Managing Narcissists. Bill Eddy provides training to professionals worldwide on the subject of managing high-conflict personalities.
Barbara La Pointe: Not only has Bill been a family mediator, a family lawyer, a therapist for over 15 years, he has a lot to share with us today. So without further ado, Bill, thank you for joining us on the Broken Families podcast today.
Bill Eddy: My pleasure. I’m looking forward to discussing all of this with you.
Barbara La Pointe: Bill, I wanted to jump right in and start right away with something that millions of people are talking about online.
Barbara La Pointe: These people wreak havoc in family court systems and in the workplace. And of course, you know a lot about this subject. So if we could start with narcissism, that would be incredible.
Bill Eddy: Yeah. So narcissism is very popular on the internet now, and I think because it is a real problem. And many people think traditionally of narcissists as people who are self-centered, you know, it’s all about me.
Bill Eddy: But narcissistic personality disorder is much more serious because it’s not just that the person is self-absorbed, but they also have to see themselves as superior to people. And to be superior, you have to have people beneath you. And so they put a lot of energy into a narrative that reframes ordinary human relationships into winners and losers, and they keep identifying who they think the losers are so that you’ll see them as the winner.
Bill Eddy: And this takes a lot of effort because human beings are human beings. We all make mistakes. We have strengths, weaknesses, and all of that. But we’re not really superior human beings to each other. So they have to create this narrative that they are wonderful, that they’re perfect, that they’re, better than everybody else.
Bill Eddy: And to do that, they’re constantly walking all over other people. And it’s interesting you mention the book, It’s All Your Fault at Work because this isn’t just in families. We’re seeing this in the workplace. We see this in communities. We see this in every occupation. It’s not dominated. It’s a percent.
Bill Eddy: The research suggests that about 6% of people have this narcissistic personality disorder But I think most people know somebody with some of these traits, so it’s really more... Some people have traits, some have disorder. And let me just clarify, the disorder means that they’re stuck. It’s a rigid, narrow pattern, and so they’re going to be like this, they’ve been like this, and they’re gonna be like this.
Bill Eddy: They don’t just fade away or become reasonable, because you thought of the perfect thing to say to them. And that’s personality disorders, it’s an enduring pattern of dysfunctional interpersonal behavior. So that’s kind of the nutshell.
Barbara La Pointe: Excellent. If you’re on the receiving end of some of those behaviors, it can be deeply wounding and painful to understand.
Barbara La Pointe: And I know I operate a practice for women, and I’ve heard women say, “Bill Eddy is my hero,” because you’ve offered up so many strategies for women, and I thought you might speak to how can we deal with narcissistic people that you say are never gonna change?
Bill Eddy: Yeah, so there’s many levels of this.
Bill Eddy: The first level, I think, is what you tell yourself, and you need to have a different narrative from the narcissistic narrative, a narrative that says, “I’m okay,” you know? “I’m as good as anybody else. It’s not about me.” You know, what he’s saying, and two-thirds of the time it’s a he, what he’s saying is about more about him and his way of seeing the world rather than about me.
Bill Eddy: So just being able to tell yourself, “I don’t have to believe that.” If nothing else, if you’re sitting in a room and you don’t feel safe, like you can escape or whatever, and you’re getting a barrage of criticism, is at least tell yourself, “This is more about him than it is about me.” So I think at the first level is just your own self-talk because what happens is people start to absorb that and tell themself those things, like, “Oh, I was so stupid to do this or stupid to do that.”
Bill Eddy: And let me tell you a quick story that I experienced. So here I am, I’m a therapist in my background and a lawyer, and so about 10 years into my law practice, I was driving home from work one day and I was going, “Bill, you know, you’re really not that smart and, you know, this might not be the right place for you.
Bill Eddy: You’re really not good at law, and you’re really not good at therapy.” It’s like, why do you think you understand this stuff? And I go, wait a minute. Why am I so hard on myself today? That I have a narcissist in my caseload today, and I worked back to my 10:00 appointment was a narcissist who was just so superior to everybody, and I absorbed that without even realizing it.
Bill Eddy: Here I am, 10 years as a lawyer, succeeding by objective standards with a therapy background. I think that’s really helpful today, and here I am feeling like I’m stupid. And so that happens to everybody. You absorb that. So trying to undo that with your own narrative. But the next thing is find one or more people who are reasonable in your life and talk to them and get their encouragement, whether it’s a counselor or a coach, a friend, but someone who can say, “Hey, that’s not you.
Bill Eddy: That’s him. That’s his stuff,” you know? You don’t have to buy into that. So you need people around you. You really, it’s hard to do this alone. In some ways, you know, it takes a village to manage narcissists today. And then of course getting away from the person. And that’s not necessarily easy and going through high-conflict divorces aren’t easy but people can do them and afterwards they often really do feel better but they have to manage going through the process.
Bill Eddy: So I’d say your self-talk, supportive people, and then decide. And some people decide like for the kids or whatever reason they’re gonna stay with a narcissist, then get your support, your respect, your empathy from other people in your life ‘cause you’re not gonna get it from the narcissist.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s a good point, Bill.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s a very good point. So what would you say to a woman going through a high-conflict divorce with a narcissist getting involved in a smear campaign if you will? What might you say to her or him?
Bill Eddy: Well, first of all, I would encourage her to read my book, Splitting, because it gives a lot of tools, and the subtitle is Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone With Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Bill Eddy: And there’s a lot of encouraging words in there. My co-author, Randy Creger, who of course wrote Stop Walking on Eggshells. So there’s a lot of encouragement there. But I think that you have to respond in most situations, and usually smear campaigns are on the internet, social media, maybe emails.
Bill Eddy: Someone sends an email to you and copies it to 20 of your family and friends and says, you know, “You did everything wrong, and it’s all your fault,” and stuff like that. And a lot of people go, “Well, no one’s gonna pay any attention to that. I’m just gonna ignore it.” But I don’t agree with that. I think most of the time you want to respond to that, and we developed a method called the BIFF response: brief, informative, friendly, and firm.
Bill Eddy: And you mentioned that in the introduction.
Andrew Folkler: Oh, thank you.
Bill Eddy: And I do wanna say, we now, as of November, have a new book specifically for co-parents, and it’s BIFF for Co-Parent Communication. Okay. And we have 28 sample conversations, so whether it’s about healthcare or changing the schedule or a birthday party, all of those issues, it gives you a way to respond.
Bill Eddy: But I think when there’s a smear campaign that includes other people, that you wanna do a BIFF response to the other people that are included. So let’s say they copied 20 people on their email to you and said you’re all these, doing all these things wrong. You wanna send something back that’s brief, like a paragraph, that’s something that’s straight information and it has a friendly tone, and yet is firm.
Bill Eddy: So it ends the hostilities. It doesn’t put a hook out there to draw people in but just says... Well, let me give you a quick example. No, please. Just the idea that you say, like, “Dear friends and family, you’ve been included in an email that is really about a private divorce matter,” or whatever.
Bill Eddy: “And if you... You don’t have to get involved at all, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I appreciate your friendship and support, Mary or Barbara or Andrew,” whoever it is. And just so people know you’re not defensive about it. They know that you’re open to answering questions, and yet you don’t have to answer everything that was said in it.
Bill Eddy: The message is clear. And frankly, people don’t wanna get involved if they can avoid it. Now, the tricky thing, and I was recently consulting with somebody like this who said, “I think my ex copied about 100 people on this email. It was, like, school parents and stuff like that, and it was blind copied. So I don’t know who it was.”
Bill Eddy: And so we talked about her talking to principal, talking to teacher and just clarifying and the parents that she was close to, clarifying to them. But I think it’s a mistake to be passive and not respond at all if you have a chance to respond with something very general and non-attacking like I described.
Barbara La Pointe: Some really good points there.
Barbara La Pointe: Really helpful...
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, one thing, I remember watching one of your previous videos where you talk about how narcissists and high conflict people will try and create a crisis to get into a position of leadership, and it almost sounds like they’re trying to get all these other people under their following.
Andrew Folkler: Could you speak more on that?
Bill Eddy: Yeah. So it’s interesting, we see narcissists at all levels of society. So the theme is to be superior. And so there’s kind of family narcissists, and they just bother the people in the family. There’s workplace narcissists, but when you have leaders like a boss or a head of an organization or people in the community, and certainly we’re seeing today in politics around the world, is narcissists feel like if I can be seen as the great leader then I’ll be seen as superior.
Bill Eddy: And they’re really looking for endless admiration, endless power, grandiose ideas, all of this. And frankly, from studying all this really 40 years, I first started learning about personality disorders in 1980, when I was training to be a clinical social worker. And I’ve become convinced that part of this is genetic, and that maybe and a lot of other researchers are saying maybe 50% of personality is genetic. Certainly early childhood is a huge part of when things go off track and people become difficult and abusive, and also the culture people grow up in. Those are the really three factors. But the genetic factor seems to me more recently that I’m recognizing this really seems to be the case.
Bill Eddy: And if you think about it, well, why would we have this? Why would this be in our genes? Why would the personality gene pool have people kind of aim to be narcissists? And I really think it goes back to ancient times when, you know, everything was more or less adversarial, and so there was a lot of competition.
Bill Eddy: Who’s gonna be the leader? And narcissists have kind of a leader personality in a win-lose situation So if you end up in a war, you probably want a narcissist or someone with some of those traits as one of your leaders because they’re gonna be good at gathering people together, building an army. The thing is, in the modern world, we don’t want people building armies.
Bill Eddy: We want people solving problems. And so this ancient personality kind of mucks up the works. And until people realize, wait, this is the personality, and people are starting to catch on about narcissists, because there’s a lot of warning signs. And once you realize, oh, I’m dealing with a narcissist, I’m not giving them my power.
Bill Eddy: You know, I’m not getting too close. I’m not gonna be too supportive. In the workplace, you have a narcissist says, “Pick me, pick me. I’ll lead the work group.” And people go, “Oh, fine. I don’t care. If that person really wants it, they can have it.” Well, don’t do that. If you think they’re a narcissist, have somebody else run to be head of the work group, because they’re gonna make your life miserable, they’ll take credit for your work, and they’ll blame their mistakes on you.
Bill Eddy: So that’s kind of a long story about how they try to become leaders. I think they’re, some of them are born to try to become leaders and it’s really can be destructive and we have to learn how to set limits on them.
Barbara La Pointe: Getting back to more of the context of a relationship, what about when, a term you use is when a narcissist places a target on your back?
Barbara La Pointe: And you’ve mentioned some red flags too, that you said there’s lots of them. So what are they and what is a target on your back?
Bill Eddy: Well, what’s interesting is narcissists and the other high-conflict personalities seem to always need targets of blame. And so they kind of pick somebody, “Okay, I’m gonna blame everything on you.”
Bill Eddy: And of course the most popular target of blame is their partner. And so if you’re their co-parent and you have a child together, if they’re superior, then that means you’re doing everything wrong. And so little things get blown way out of proportion. And so with that, you get a lot of language of disdain, blame, all or nothing thinking.
Bill Eddy: It’s all your fault. If you wanna watch out for this, there’s really four key warning signs, I think. One of them is that all or nothing thinking. And we actually wrote a book, my business partner Megan and I wrote the book called Dating Radar. And in it we talk about you see these signs early on you know, keep your eyes wide open and don’t make any big commitments for at least a year, because they’re good.
Bill Eddy: Often narcissists are some of the most charming people in the world. So excessive charm is actually a warning sign. So if somebody, oh, you’re head over heels, this is the perfect person, they’re so much better than everybody else, that’s a warning sign. So doesn’t automatically mean that they’re a narcissist, but you gotta check that out.
Bill Eddy: As somebody in our research for that book said, you know, don’t go for someone who’s a 10, go for someone who’s a 7 or an 8, because that’s probably more realistic. If, you know, you think of a scale of dating people 0 to 10, is go for the 7s and the 8s, because they can sustain it and it’s real. The 10s typically aren’t real and it’ll work against you.
Bill Eddy: So yeah, so warning signs. So all or nothing, preoccupied with blaming others. Things are always someone else’s fault, and probably yours they’re gonna say. Unmanaged emotions, that they make a lot of their decisions emotionally, and they may be, angry a lot or just taken over by emotions.
Bill Eddy: And not all people show that but a lot of the narcissists do. And things really bother them, little narcissistic injuries. It’s like, “Oh, you know, that’s terrible, you can’t say that,” or, “That’s not good,” or whatever it is. And the fourth is if they do extreme behaviors, if they do things that most people would never do, that’s a warning sign.
Bill Eddy: Like maybe they punched a hole in the wall and they go, “Well, you know, I was just upset.” Well, yeah, but everybody gets upset, and 90% of people don’t punch holes in the wall.
Bill Eddy: Yeah. Or someone that worked with me, I had a paralegal who worked with me, she was... She went on a new date with somebody, and she said after the first date, she said, “You know, in the middle of things I made a comment and he said, ‘Well, that’s stupid,’ and he patted me on the butt.”
Bill Eddy: And I said, “What’s that about?” She says, “It’s nothing.” And she decided not to date him anymore because that kind of extreme behavior, someone wouldn’t do that on a first date in an ordinary relationship. And someone shouldn’t do that ever, but you know, the idea that the boundary violation showed up so quickly, that’s a warning sign.
Barbara La Pointe: Wow, some good insights there, Bill. Thank you.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, a boundary violation sounds like something that occurs often, and for some reason maybe it’s just the people who have suffered trauma in the past and, or find themselves drawn to narcissists, why do they allow that boundary violation over and over again and subsequently leading into a pattern of abusive relationships?
Bill Eddy: Yeah, I think as human beings we like the familiar. And so we get kind of trained in what relationships look like. So if you have an abusive parent and you kind of figure out strategies for how to deal with them, like there’s things you don’t say and you tiptoe around and different strategies, now you know how it’s like learning a script in a play. It’s like this is the only play I know and I know the script. And people don’t consciously do this. There’s so much unconscious stuff that we don’t realize we’re doing. And so coming out of an abusive childhood, it’s not surprising that people go, “Oh, this person really clicks for me.”
Bill Eddy: And because narcissists in particular have a very charming exterior, it can go, “Well, there’s something familiar about this and he’s a really great guy.” And so you’re drawn to people that are familiar. One therapist, Harville Hendrix, talks about imago theory, I-M-A-G-O, that we have this kind of image that we’ve developed of the ideal relationship, and the ideal relationship is like the one we’re familiar with only this one’s good instead of bad.
Bill Eddy: But the trouble is the stuff that’s familiar includes all that bad stuff. You just don’t see it yet. And so a narcissist is good at covering up at the beginning but then you go, “Oh yeah, this other stuff is very familiar. Now I know what to do. I tiptoe around. I don’t say certain things.” And so people get stuck in that because it’s familiar and that’s why, you know, if someone’s been through an abusive childhood I really encourage people, get some therapy so you don’t repeat that in adulthood, and you also don’t repeat that in raising your own kids.
Bill Eddy: And when I was a therapist, I actually was very pleased to get some clients that said, “I had an abusive history and we’re about to have a child and I really want to not repeat what happened to me.”
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, absolutely. As a follow-up question, is there some sense of trying to... What would be the right way of putting this?
Andrew Folkler: When a person who has already suffered trauma with a high-conflict person and they reenter another relationship with a high-conflict, another high-conflict person, are they, is there some sense of trying to do it better, trying to have the relationship end better almost like you’re righting the original sin or you’re righting the first wrong?
Bill Eddy: Yeah, I think very much people are trying to rewrite, the narrative and come out succeeding instead of being abused, et cetera. And I think that’s part of the attraction is like, “Well, I know how this works, and so I’m gonna do it so that it comes out better.” But that’s not the reality because especially with high-conflict personalities, they don’t change.
Bill Eddy: They have this narrow range of behavior, and you’re not gonna change them. Sometimes I call this the Jack Nicholson syndrome. I don’t know if you’ve seen Jack Nicholson movies, but he’s got several, you know, As Good as It Gets, Something’s Gotta Give, so names like that. And they’re really romantic comedies.
Bill Eddy: And he starts out as this very narcissistic guy, and by the end of the movie, he’s kind of softened and he’s warm and cuddly and respects the woman and, you know, he’s still a little bit rough, but around the edges, but you like him. That is not real. And that, I think, deceives a lot of people and makes a lot of people try to change their partners when they’re not gonna succeed.
Bill Eddy: And so I think people really need to know what you see is very likely what you’re gonna get. And with that in mind, don’t commit for at least a year so it’s easier to get out before you’re in too deep. Sorry. But that’s the reality, and people don’t know that because they listen to the songs and watch the movies and It, it’s sad because we’re dealing with more personality disorders today, more high-conflict people today, and so people really need to be aware of this in relationships.
Bill Eddy: 50 years ago, you know, we say, “Wait a year before committing,” and they’ll say, “Well, my grandparents, got married a week after they met and they’ve had a wonderful 50-year marriage.” And I’ll say, “Yeah, but they didn’t have as many high-conflict personalities to look out for.”
Barbara La Pointe: Well, that’s making me wonder why would high-conflict personalities be on the rise?
Bill Eddy: Well, that’s... I’m glad you asked that question because it really seems to me, and I mentioned earlier three factors in personality development, genetics, early childhood, and the culture you’re raised in Genetics haven’t changed. They take thousands of years to change. Early childhood has changed. It’s less stable than it used to be, and so that’s maybe a minor contributing factor.
Bill Eddy: But I really think our culture, in many ways, is teaching high-conflict behavior. And so we have a lot of drama in our culture. So I mean, at one end, you have 24/7 news, and the news is like, it’s always a war zone. You know, these are the bad people, these are the good people, and it’s a new crisis, breaking news, you know.
Bill Eddy: And your brain is, like, on edge, like as if, you know, you’re gonna get shot at or something. But then our entertainment. Look at movies. Movies basically have a terrible crisis, an evil villain, and a superhero. We even have superhero movies. We call them that, you know, all the Marvels and stuff. I read that stuff as comic books, and I knew it was a tiny part of life, but it’s become a big part of life and a part of the culture, is evil villains and superheroes.
Bill Eddy: And I think what’s happening is we’re seeing a lot of really not good behavior, a lot of not good relationship behavior. We see domestic violence on the TV shows and movies. We see a lot of disrespectful relationships. We see relationships breaking up. It’s a funny thing, ‘cause I watched more TV in the last year than maybe my whole life because of COVID, and one day I realized, you know, the only place where you see happy families together is in commercials for medications.
Bill Eddy: And you see all these commercials, like older people, you know, take these meds and then you can have fun playing with your grandchildren, and you see people playing outdoors and they’re swimming or they’re playing a ball game and everybody gets along great in medication commercials. But the shows, people breaking up, yelling, throwing, hitting.
Bill Eddy: So our culture has a lot of unnecessary drama because it grabs your attention. Has more violence, certainly. Even the last 10 years, level of violence is much more in the media. Facebook repeats stuff, YouTube, all this stuff. And so we live in what I call a culture of blame, where there’s always somebody’s bad and people don’t know how to have healthy relationships if you just watch the culture.
Barbara La Pointe: Wow. That’s powerful, Bill. And I think culture has an impact on our lives, on our collective psyche. Almost like it’s rewired our brain.
Bill Eddy: I think it has, but let me give some good news here. And that is, there’s people like you folks talking about things, talking about what makes relationships work.
Bill Eddy: And so people are using the same media that’s teaching us to not get along, to teach people to get along. And so there’s like a window of opportunity here. So I want to give credit to people like you folks for trying to be educational using the same medium.
Barbara La Pointe: Thank you.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. Thank you.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s very empowering.
Barbara La Pointe: It’s empowering to reach out.
Andrew Folkler: One little add on I would wanna throw in there, especially when you were talking about culture, because, for me, personally, I’ve had a very unique experience. I spent my adolescence in Singapore and then I graduated there and came back. I’ve been born in the United States, spent up to my pre-teen years in the United States, moved to Singapore, lived there for five years and then came back.
Andrew Folkler: And the thing I tell people the most is I never expected to have a culture shock coming back to my own country. It was a very jarring experience. Granted, I missed out on the whole teenage adolescence years within the US, but I could see, as you were mentioning, how there’s a focus on blame and a focus on what would be the word, very ostentatious behavior and the center on being.
Andrew Folkler: Everything is a very high conflict situation, you know, whether it’s in the media, politics, or even just day-to-day life versus what I saw in, you know, living in Singapore. While they did have their own versions of this as they were modernizing as a country, it was different considering the cultural values were strictly influenced by, you know, the Buddhists, Hindus, and the Southeast Asian Muslims that lived in those regions versus what we have over here in, especially in the US.
Bill Eddy: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I think, my impression of Asian cultures is that the group is more important than the individual.
Bill Eddy: And in Western cultures, the individual’s more important than the group.
Bill Eddy: And I think narcissism is like being individualistic on steroids. It’s just the extreme, and it’s an overdose of individualism. And what we need is to kind of come back and learn how do we be part of healthy relationships, part of healthy groups? And I think there’s a lot we can learn even from other cultures about how to get along, and I think that’s, to me, I don’t know how to change a culture, but I think we can learn skills so that we can manage our own relationships.
Bill Eddy: And I always say that’s the goal. Like dealing with high-conflict people, you’re not gonna change their personality, but you can manage a relationship with them or avoid a relationship with them.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s fascinating. Fascinating.
Bill Eddy: Yeah. But it’s, I think culture plays a bigger part than we realize, and we keep thinking, “Gee, what’s happened to us?
Bill Eddy: We’re such rude people now, and we’re this and we’re that.” But we’re getting taught how to be this way, and that’s why I tell parents, say, you need to feel comfortable shutting off the TV, turning off the screens and having human time, not just screen time.
Barbara La Pointe: Wow. That’s powerful advice for parents.
Barbara La Pointe: Especially I think, you know, we need connection now more than ever, human connection.
Bill Eddy: Yes. And we can. That’s the thing people don’t realize. You can make your life a whole lot better very quickly by realizing how to relate and find people that are good at relating like that. ‘Cause most people aren’t high-conflict people.
Bill Eddy: I think maybe 10% of people are high-conflict people. And so most of the people you can have in your life are reasonable, and you can even have some high-conflict people if you manage the relationship. But we need to look for people that are reasonable and connect with them.
Barbara La Pointe: Bill, if we maybe shift gears a bit, something that we explore on this podcast often is the subject of parental alienation.
Bill Eddy: And it of that.
Barbara La Pointe: I’ve heard it... Me too. It seems to me that parents involved in an alienation process might themselves be high conflict. I don’t know. What are your thoughts on that?
Bill Eddy: Well, you know, first of all, let me say high conflict personalities tend to have personality disorders or traits, and personality disorders are an enduring pattern of dysfunctional interpersonal behavior primarily And so when you and so people with personality disorders, they’re not all high conflict, but they’re stuck in a rigid, enduring pattern of dysfunctional interpersonal behavior, and it includes a lot of all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, extreme behaviors. Maybe half of people with personality disorders aren’t high conflict because they don’t have targets of blame.
Bill Eddy: They just go, “I don’t know why things happen to me,” but they don’t focus on someone that they blame for things that happen to them. And then the other half seem to be the high conflict personalities. So I think alienation’s related to personality disorders because personality disorders have that all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors.
Bill Eddy: Now interesting... all personality disorders have those three things. The added ingredient for high conflict is the blame. So if you have a high conflict personality disorder, then, and you’re a parent, your child, from the time you’re born, the child learns, from the time the child’s born, the child learns that there’s good people and bad people in the world.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s...
Bill Eddy: It’s all or nothing. And so our neighbor, he’s a bad guy. Oh, okay. Don’t go near our neighbor. I just hate his guts. He’s terrible, evil, everything. And so the child grows up. Wow, you know? Neighbor’s terrible, evil, everything. And here’s mom and dad and I’m living my life. Oops, now dad’s terrible, evil.
Bill Eddy: Okay, well, I know how to do this. I just don’t have a relationship with him. Or maybe it’s mom, ‘cause I really believe parental alienation is not a gender issue today if it ever was. I think it’s really a personality issue. And so the child learns all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotion. You talk to a child, “So tell me about your dad.”
Bill Eddy: “I hate my father.” It’s all emotional. And then, and, “Why don’t you want to spend any time with your dad?” “Well, I don’t like the way he wears his hair. He embarrasses me by the way he wears his hair, so I don’t want him coming to the school. In fact, I don’t ever want to see him again.” You don’t want to have a relationship with your father because you don’t like the way he wears his hair?
Bill Eddy: And it’s like they’re trying to find what the reason is ‘cause they emotionally absorbed it. And alienation, people just don’t get this, even in the court system. Alienation is an emotional process, not a logical process. And so people absorb it emotionally, and kids absorb it emotionally, but they don’t know why.
Bill Eddy: It’s the same thing with prejudice. So by the time you’re five or six, you know who the bad people are, who the good people are, but you don’t know anything about them. You just absorbed it emotionally. And so from parent jokes, from little side comments, from, you know, you get in an elevator in a building, after COVID’s over, and the kids and mom, let’s say, is in the elevator, and a person of a different race gets on the elevator and mom tightens her grip, and the child knows, “Uh-oh, danger.”
Bill Eddy: And that’s how we learn prejudice. I think of alienation as parent prejudice. It’s learned primarily emotionally. It’s learned in lots of little, tiny ways. And that a child doesn’t necessarily understand it, but it’s extreme, it’s all or nothing, it’s emotional, and extreme behavior. I want nothing to do.
Bill Eddy: I had a case where I got a change of custody for a 13-year-old girl to father because mother had been so extreme in blocking, his relationship with her. So there’s a change of custody, but she’s already 13, and next thing we know she’s running away from his home, and this is extreme behavior. You hear about kids feeling suicidal in these cases, extreme behavior.
Bill Eddy: So it’s, I think, related to personality disorders. I’d say I’ve been involved as a lawyer representing clients maybe 20 cases, maybe 30 cases as a high-conflict consultant. Out of those 50, there’s always a personality disorder, and it’s basically all that stuff is contagious, so the child is learning personality disorder behavior because the parent has it and they’re not even conscious of it.
Bill Eddy: These aren’t bad people. People don’t choose to have a personality disorder. You get one growing up. And so there’s a connection, and because of that connection, the way out of this is, in many ways, emotional training. So one of the things I tell judges, ‘cause I get a chance to give seminars to judges more and more these days, and I tell them, “Have the parents tell you, how they’re gonna manage their emotions as they go through this divorce.
Bill Eddy: Tell you three ways they’re gonna manage their emotions as they go through this divorce,” ‘cause alienation tends to grow with litigation. And so the more the case is in court, the more alienation you’re likely to see, because it’s all the emotions just escalating But if parents say how they’re gonna manage their emotion, they’re not gonna let the child hear their phone call with the other parent, they’re not gonna cry in front of the child about the child spending time with the other parent, things like that.
Bill Eddy: That’s how alienation grows primarily. I mean, some of it may be intentional behavior, but I think the bigger part is the unintentional emotions.
Bill Eddy: So that’s kind of a nutshell, but I think it’s related to personality disorders, and people don’t realize that.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. One thing I want to highlight that you said that really rings out true for me was the emotional training is how a person who is struggling either with you know, even in points of trauma or especially in alienation is how a person can come through, can really break out of that mold that’s been casted for them.
Andrew Folkler: And I say that as somebody who did that exact thing for how I, at least how I worked through my own alienation process. You know, I was estranged from my mother for about 12 and a half, almost 13 years.
Andrew Folkler: And I reached a state where not only was it... I reached a state in the alienation process where I was apathetic to everything she did, and it was, it was just a light switch for me, you know?
Andrew Folkler: It was any time she was a topic of conversation or even something to be threatened by, I would flick on that sense of apathy. And one thing that I realize now just that that’s impacted me so much, especially with the reconnection with my estranged mother was the amount of psychology books I was reading since I was younger, and if it wasn’t for that little bit of inquisitiveness, that little bit of curiosity, I can’t say I would be in the same place right now simply because the amount of emotional training I got just by reading, and trying.
Andrew Folkler: I can’t say I was a great self-therapist, but at least reading a little bit here and there gave me that ability to just to kind of look at myself a little bit clearer and a little bit better. And especially in a society today where buzzword or buzz phrases like, “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” get thrown out so much and oftentimes are used ironically.
Bill Eddy: Yeah. Well, that’s great. I think, you know, self-awareness is the key, and that’s what I see people who do have high conflict personalities and say, “You know, I think I have it, and what should I do?” And I’ll say, “Self-awareness. Just ask yourself these two questions. First is what’s my part in this problem?
Bill Eddy: And the second is what can I do different next time? And if you can do that, you’re not gonna be a high conflict person.” Because the conflict people don’t do that. It’s all about everybody else. It’s all your fault. As soon as they can look and say, “Do I have a piece of this problem?” the conflict goes way down.
Bill Eddy: That’s nice to hear. I’m glad. Glad for you.
Andrew Folkler: Thank you.
Bill Eddy: And I think for parents who’ve been the rejected parent, I think I really encourage people to continue to reach out. Don’t expect a response. Send birthday cards, holiday cards. Send a note maybe even once a month. Say, “I learned something this week or this month, and I thought you might find this helpful as you get ready to go through your life.”
Bill Eddy: And so just be this helpful parent and make copies of all that. So if your child, like when they become an adult or older teenager, has starts having awareness like you described. And I know a lot of people say, “Well, mom or dad, why didn’t you fight harder to have a relationship with me?” And they can say, “I did, and here’s all the stuff,” so that they know that they’re being reached out to.
Bill Eddy: So I tell parents, “Don’t buy into what you’re being told that you’re an awful, evil person. It’s not about you.” This is not a normal or healthy difficulty. I work with a lot of abuse cases where there wasn’t alienation and cases where you would think a child want nothing to do with a parent, but they do, and they love their parent.
Bill Eddy: They just don’t want to be abused. And so alienation’s a different thing really from like physical abuse.
Barbara La Pointe: Amazing. You shared so much. I thought maybe we might close today, just with the asking about an incredible and hopeful program you’ve designed called New Ways for Families.
Bill Eddy: I’m glad you asked about that.
Bill Eddy: Because I’ve mentioned, like, alienation is very much an emotional process, and New Ways for Families is designed in many ways to help counteract that. So we developed it primarily for high-conflict court cases to try to get people out of the adversarial process and both parents learning skills for communicating, resolving conflicts, and making decisions.
Bill Eddy: So New Ways for Families teaches four big skills: flexible thinking as compared to the all or nothing. Managed emotions as compared to the unmanaged extreme emotions, moderate behavior as compared to extreme behavior, like you don’t cut off relationships, you manage your relationships, and checking yourself rather than blaming others, like those two questions that I just told you, checking yourself.
Bill Eddy: What’s my part in this problem? What can I do different next time? So we teach those. We’ve trained some therapists in some cities, I think about 30 cities we’ve trained therapists to do this as a counseling method. But we’ve also developed an online program which is available anywhere in the world.
Bill Eddy: It’s 12 hours of teaching those four big skills in helping people make decisions, deal with school issues, healthcare issues, schedule change, just all of those kinds of issues. And now we train people to coach with the online program. So the online program’s 12 sessions, typically an hour it takes to read, watch the videos, do the there’s some writing exercises. But coaching, say, getting three coaching sessions with it, so you get a live person to discuss it with and to practice some of the exercises and methods, like writing BIFF response emails. Um yeah. So and that’s available everywhere, and we have two websites now.
Bill Eddy: We have highconflictinstitute.com, and then we have conflictplaybook.com. And Conflict Playbook has the online course available for anybody. Highconflictinstitute.com has it when it’s court-ordered. So people can, if they haven’t been court-ordered and they wanna take that class, they can do it, go to conflictplaybook.com.
Bill Eddy: And we also have... They can pay for it with credit card, so we have a United States portal, we have a Canada portal. And I think it’s, I don’t know, 50 some dollars in US, 67 in Canada, Canadian dollars. And so it’s very, really affordable. So and that’s open for anybody.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s very hopeful.
Barbara La Pointe: It’s a great program.
Bill Eddy: Let me just add, this seems like a good time, is on our High Conflict Institute website we’ve got a lot of books. You mentioned the Don’t Alienate the Kids, BIF For Co-Parent Communication, and other books. We have video training. People can take an hour of a video here or there.
Bill Eddy: And then we’ve got lots of articles. So, a lot of resources. We really wanna help people and have people know they’re not alone in these struggles.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, I think you do that with you really, you’re really making a positive impact in the world with all these resources and support and teaching.
Bill Eddy: So and likewise, you folks. You’re educating people, coaching people, so good for you. So all together, teamwork. We can all make a difference.
Andrew Folkler: It’s definitely been incredibly insightful, everything that you’ve been mentioning. A lot of that is just in alignment with the things that I’ve been building myself upon.
Andrew Folkler: And we model ourselves after you. And...
Bill Eddy: Try to do good... so this is good. And nobody’s perfect, so we’ll stumble along together. That’s what’s the key, I think.
Barbara La Pointe: You... That’s right. Okay.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. I guess, did you have any other last minute statements that you wanted to make, Bill?
Andrew Folkler: I know we’re creeping up right about that hour mark. But was there anything else any closing statements that you would wanna, you wanna make?
Bill Eddy: I think just that people, it helps to understand high conflict people as not evil people, but people who lack skills, who may have even genetic, early childhood training to be difficult, and to have empathy for them even though you may need to have distance, and even though you may need to move away from relationships.
Bill Eddy: But I think it’s so important we don’t see the world as good and evil, that this is really, we’re human beings in this together. We need to help each other, but we need to realize some people aren’t healthy for us to be close to.
Barbara La Pointe: Excellent. Yay.
Andrew Folkler: All right.
Barbara La Pointe: Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you.
Barbara La Pointe: It’s really been insightful and valuable hour of learning.
Bill Eddy: An...
Andrew Folkler: All right. Absolutely. Bill, what would be the best way if listeners wanted to reach out to you? I know there’s The High Conflict Institute is, but if listeners wanted to reach out to you, is there any way they can contact you?
Bill Eddy: Yeah.
Bill Eddy: Basically through High Conflict Institute. So info@highconflictinstitute is where we get all our messages through. And like I said, I do consultation, and they can sign up for that on the website, and then we give... I generally do those Wednesdays and Friday mornings. And so I’ll talk... I consult with lawyers, mediators, but individuals.
Bill Eddy: I get a lot of people who don’t even have a lawyer but wanna solve a problem in their family. So I’m happy to talk to anybody. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a fee, but they can do 30 minutes or 60 minutes, so happy to help.
Barbara La Pointe: Yay.
Andrew Folkler: Looks like that’s all we have time for today. Once again, everyone, thank you for taking the time to be with us, and if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our channel either on YouTube or through our podcast on Spotify and various other podcast streams.
Andrew Folkler: Don’t forget, we include a downloadable document below to help you and your loved ones deal with these challenges of trauma and high conflict. And Barbara, if listeners wanted to reach out to you, what would be the best way to do so?
Barbara La Pointe: Barbaralequaing.com.
Andrew Folkler: Right on. And if you’d like to reach me, you can email me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com.
Andrew Folkler: As always, thank you for taking the time to be with us at the Broken Families podcast, where we discuss and help you find solutions to divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Barbara La Pointe: Thank you.