How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

(uptempo music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy is a practicing lawyer, a professional mediator, a licensed therapist, and on the faculty of the School of Law at Pepperdine University. He is a world expert in conflict resolution, in particular, how to resolve conflicts with what are called high-conflict personalities. I should be very clear that these high-conflict personalities, as you'll learn today, are not in a category of so-called personality disorders. Now, it is the case that people with high-conflict personalities often also have borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or suffer from bipolar depression. However, as you'll soon learn, people who have this high-conflict personality type could fall into any one of those three different categories, any combination of them, or none of them at all. These high-conflict personalities essentially come in two flavors. Some are very outwardly combative. They like to argue. They like to generate conflict in a way that's very overt, very obvious. The others, which comprise about 50% of high-conflict personality types, are very passive. They play the victim, or they leverage other people, so-called negative advocates, in order to achieve their goal of creating a lot of conflict where they always appear as the victim. During today's discussion, you'll learn how to identify these high-conflict personality types based on some very simple questions that you can ask yourself about them. He also explains how to deal with these people in the workplace setting, in relationships, and importantly, of course, how to disengage from these people, not just in the short term, but permanently. Now, across today's discussion, you'll realize that Bill Eddy is very sensitive both to the suffering that high-conflict personalities cause for other people, and therefore how to identify them, avoid them, and disengage from them, but he also makes it a point not to demonize these high-conflict personality types. Instead, as a mediator, as a lawyer, and as a therapist, he is really most interested in helping people resolve their conflicts with these people and find the best, most peaceful path forward for conflict resolution. Dr. Bill Eddy is the author of several important books related to this topic and related topics, such as Five Types of People That Can Ruin Your Life. It's an excellent book, I've read it, and I highly recommend it for everyone. He's also written books about adult bullies, which are becoming increasingly common online and in real life, and about mediating conflict resolution in separations and things like divorce, and in family court situations where he spent a lot of his professional career as a lawyer. By the end of today's episode, you will have a lot of new practical tools for being able to identify these high-conflict personality types and learning how to navigate forward and, frankly, away from them in the best way possible. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison. 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With ExpressVPN, I know everything is secure, my web browsing, all my passwords, all my data, and of course, anything that's behind an account wall, like a bank account. It can't be tracked, and no one can access or steal your data, which is terrific. If you'd like to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com/huberman, and you can get an extra three months free. Again, that's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com/huberman to get an extra three months free. And now for my discussion with Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy, welcome.