When No One Believes You About High Conflict

Well, high conflict people generally have a lifetime of dealing with the effects of their personality.

And they often don't really understand themselves and they don't reflect on themselves.

They're very used to seeing everybody else being at fault and themselves not responsible for things.

And so they're experienced at blaming other people.

I think of them as persuasive blamers, that they're really good at persuading other people that it's all your fault.

Even if it's, you know, you may have a tiny part in the situation, but it's not all your fault.

And so you're dealing with, in a sense, a professional high-conflict person.

This doesn't start as adults.

This gets started in childhood and may or may not include a personality disorder.

And people with personality disorders are considered to be about 10% of adults.

maybe even around the world, especially in more urbanized, modernized countries.

So on the one hand, high-conflict people are good at this and good at looking good for a while.

They can hold it together for a while.

But then the other thing is that most high-conflict behavior goes on in private.

So bullying, domestic violence, alienating children, spreading rumors about things people don't know what's true or what's not.

I can't see what's happening inside that house.

So it goes on in private.

So people don't realize how much high conflict behavior there is because in public, people make themselves look good.

So you have a public persona and a private personality.

And that's where, like, you know, you find out your neighbor was a serial killer, but they were so nice when they greeted you in the morning.

They didn't show up with an ax, I like to say.

That's right.

So, you know, there's these two sides.

Psycho-conflict people very much have a public persona that they craft and try to make look good because they've experienced people turning against them because of their bad behavior generally in private.

And so they're skilled at that.