Understanding High Conflict Personalities

An overview is provided of five high conflict personality disorders, traits of which drive most high conflict cases, including:  Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic, Antisocial and Paranoid. Common conflict behaviors of these personality types and some related brain research will be presented, which explains what not to do when working with these clients.

Managing High Conflict Personalities and Cases

Managing people with high conflict personalities (HCPs) often involves skills that are the opposite of what we feel like doing. We will address working with individual clients by Connecting with empathy, attention and respect (EAR); Analyzing Options with clients and others; Responding to hostility and misinformation with responses that are Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm (BIFF); and Setting Limits on misbehavior with clients and others. We will also present options for managing high conflict behavior in litigation, negotiation and mediation.

Practice Exercises

In the final hour of the training, attendees will conduct practice exercises adapted from real-life situations, including the EAR Statement method for calming angry conversations and the BIFF Response method for replying to hostile emails or texts.

Presenter:

Bill Eddy is a family mediator, lawyer and therapist, and the Chief Innovation Office of the High Conflict Institute based in San Diego, California.  He has provided training to mediators, lawyers, judges, mental health professionals and others on the subject of managing high-conflict personalities in over 35 states, 9 provinces in Canada, and twelve other countries.

As a lawyer, Mr. Eddy was a Certified Family Law Specialist (CFLS) in California for 15 years, where he represented clients in family court. Prior to that, he provided psychotherapy for 12 years to children and families in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). Throughout his forty-year career he has provided divorce mediation services, including the past 15 years as the Senior Family Mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego, California.

Mr. Eddy is the author of several books, including:

Mediating High Conflict Disputes

High Conflict People in Legal Disputes

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Calming Upset People with EAR

BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People

BIFF for CoParent Communication

BIFF at Work

BIFF for Lawyers and Law Offices

So, What’s Your Proposal: Shifting High Conflict People From Blaming to Problem-Solving in 30 Seconds

Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High-Conflict Divorce

He has a continuing education course for Mental Health professionals titled “It’s All Your Fault!”: Working with High Conflict Personalities. He has a Psychology Today blog about high conflict personality disorders with over 6 million views. He taught Negotiation and Mediation at the University of San Diego School of Law for six years. He has served on the part-time faculty of the National Judicial College in the United States and has provided several trainings for judges in Canada for the National Judicial Institute. He is currently on the part-time faculty at the Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law teaching Psychology of Conflict Communication each year. He teaches once a year on Advanced Communication Skills as Conjoint Associate Professor at Newcastle Law School in Newcastle, Australia.

He is the developer of the New Ways for Families® method for potentially high-conflict families, which is being implemented in several family court systems in the United States and Canada, as well as an online co-parenting course (Parenting Without Conflict by New Ways for Families).

He is also the developer of the New Ways for Mediation® method, which emphasizes more structure by the mediator and simple negotiation skills for the parties.

He obtained his JD law degree in 1992 from the University of San Diego, a Master of Social Work degree in 1981 from San Diego State University, and a Bachelors degree in Psychology in 1970 from Case Western Reserve University. His website is: www.HighConflictInstitute.com.

Details: Thursday, February 29, 2024, 12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. 3 Standard CLE Credits to be applied for. Register on Zoom