High-Conflict Personalities: we all know them and loathe them. The business colleague who is entirely ego-centric. It is all about me, me, me, ME. If you don’t fluff his ego as much as he wants as often as he wants, he will launch a vengeful attack on you. Remind you of anyone? The airline captain with a superiority complex masking deep insecurities. He feels he has to dominate everyone he meets. He’s clever and he can do it. The running club “friend” who is charmingly witty until he insults you so maliciously you want to crash your car into his. The pilot’s wife who so fears abandonment she perversely does the exact opposite of what she should do to the man who loves her. She harasses him over little details making his life a misery not for days on end but for weeks.
Then there’s Donald “I Am The Chosen One” Trump. You could write a whole doctoral thesis about him. If you’re a dictator who writes in complimentary terms to him, Trumpf will exult about your “beautiful letter”. If you’re a Prime Minister who rejects his daft proposal to buy Greenland, he will call you “nasty” and cut diplomatic ties. Throw international trade norms out of the window and hike tariffs on the world’s second most powerful country. Look at me, me, me, ME. Dump the Iranian anti-nuclear accords and set the Middle East on a potential path to another war. Wow! Look at me, me, me, ME.
High-Conflict Personalities (HCPs) are examined in a new book entitled “5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life”. Author Bill Eddy, co-founder of High Conflict Institute, lists these people you really do not want to know but unfortunately you do: Narcissistic HCPs (our business colleague and Trump), Borderline HCPs (the pilot’s wife) Anti-Social or Sociopathic HCPs (our running club “friend”) Paranoid HCPs and Histrionic HCPs. The author says about 10 per cent of the people you meet and have to deal with will fall into one of these categories.
Eddy advises that when you identify such people — and we bet you can right now — do not confront them by saying, “Hey, you’re HCP.” He says treat them respectfully and politely but firmly end all contact. Be careful, however, in rare cases such people can become violent.
The book is thought-provoking and may wake you up to the personality type you find impossible to deal with. Eddy writes there are four primary characteristics of HCPs: all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, blaming others, and extreme behaviours. “This is regardless of where they live, their level of intelligence, occupation, or social position.” He says they:
- Won’t reflect on their own behaviour
- Won’t understand why they succeed in the short term but fail in the long term
- Will lack empathy for others
- Will be pre-occupied with drawing attention to themselves
- May bully others
- May assault their Target of Blame financially, reputationally, legally, physically
- Will demand loyalty from others and tell them what they need to do
- Will turn on family and friends in an instant
- Will have few if any real friends over time
- Will not be happy most of the time, except when people agree with them
- Will have high intensity relationships, starting with intense attractions, but ending with intense resentments and blame
- Will create many of the problems that they claim to are trying to solve
- Will lack self-restraint, even when it is in their best interests
- Will split those around them into all-good and all-bad people, triggering conflicts
Eddy’s book is worth buying. We got our copy from Sai Kung’s Kidnapped bookstore.
Be the first to comment