Communication: High Conflict Personalities

In our first blogpost and podcast about communication, “Awareness in Communication,” we talked a lot about what makes communication work and what makes it fail, and how, ultimately, if we can shift our perspective to see the other person as a person with wants, needs, fears, and other emotions, then maybe we can understand and react to their behavior as something other than a personal attack. We can apply this same awareness to ourselves to either prevent unproductive behavior in communication, or stop ourselves in our tracks when we’ve strayed in the wrong direction. 

It is possible you read that blogpost, or listened to the podcast, and thought, “Yeah, sounds real nice, but my ex is a ___________________ and they’re IMPOSSIBLE to talk to.” 

It might certainly be the case that you could be doing all the work, all the right things, and communication still isn’t happening, or things are still getting out of control and turning into hostile conversations, arguments, or even blow outs. By claiming that the other person is impossible to work with, or labeling them with a derogatory name or even psychological disorder (we often times don’t really realize we are doing this when we casually throw around words like psychopath, sociopath, or narcissist), we are really just bundling the person’s momentary behavior, or pattern of behavior/personality trait, into one phrase or term. Our brains like to categorize things like this. Blanket statements or terms can bring us peace of mind because we are just throwing it over the things we don’t understand. This is much easier than trying to understand them, much less working with them, right? However, it is important to break a person down into their behavior and understand what lives behind it. This is the only matter to which we can respond.

I would like to put particular emphasis on labeling the person we struggle to communicate with using personality disorders, because I commonly hear people doing this. I’m not playing psychology police, or trying to send out the message that you shouldn’t be casually throwing around disorders in a name-calling fashion. Rather, I’m trying to point out that regardless of whether the person you are dealing with is just exhibiting behaviors that fit the criteria for a personality disorder or are actually diagnosed (or could be diagnosed) with a personality disorder, either way you are left to deal with their problematic behavior that shows up in communication. So, whatever benefit the labeling or name-calling serves you…fine. But in order to help you communicate effectively with the person, make sure you are understanding the behavior behind the label, and then the motivations behind the behavior, and use this understanding to your advantage.

To demonstrate how, even when diagnosed, personality disorders are in nature clusters of behaviors or personal characteristics that are founded in particular fears and motivations, I am going to describe five personality disorders but without their labels, and rather as five high conflict personality types:

• High Conflict Personality #1: They fear being abandoned, and thus they are always attaching themselves to people, and these attachments can be unstable or seemingly black and white (intensely full of either love or hate). An individual with this type of personality might be overly friendly but have rapid swings in mood, potentially with explosive behavior followed by remorse.

• High Conflict Personality #2: They fear being inferior, and thus always assert themselves superiorly, or hold the belief that they are superior and thus act accordingly. Such individuals might be very demanding, demeaning, and self-absorbed.

• High Conflict Personality #3: They fear being dominated, and thus are always conning. An individual as such might be a law or rule breaker, they might be deceptive, and they might hurt people often without showing any remorse. 

• High Conflict Personality #4: They fear being ignored, and thus tend to be exaggerated and dramatic. They might seem superficial and helpless. In the end, because they fear being ignored, they are desperately seeking attention. 

• High Conflict Personality #5: They fear being betrayed, and thus are always suspicious. They might think they are always being conspired against, or expect to be conspired against. They might counter-attack before they are actually attacked, in protection of themselves (beating the perceived betrayer to the betrayal).

The five high conflict personality types described exhibit traits that also belong to the following five personality disorders, respectively:

• Borderline Personality Disorder

• Narcissistic Personality Disorder

• Antisocial Personality Disorder

• Histrionic Personality Disorder

• Paranoid Personality Disorder

With or without a label, and with or without a diagnosis, and really no matter the personality patterns and traits, there is one thing that is constant: These thought processes and behaviors increase conflict rather than resolving or reducing it. Across all five high conflict personality types or the personality disorders, the following are the true troublemakers for effective communication:

• Blaming others: Focus on attacking and blaming someone else; may find fault with even minor annoyances, but can see no fault in themselves.

• All-or-nothing thinking: Tend to see things as black or white, right or wrong. Because of this, they aren’t able to embrace the compromise and flexibility required to resolve disputes.

• Unmanaged emotions: Tend to become very emotional and react with intense fear, anger, yelling or disrespect. Their emotions are often way out of proportion to the issue being discussed. On the other hand, some are able to maintain calmness and use this to manipulate others.

• Extreme behaviors: Frequently engage in extreme behavior, often related to their inability to regulate their emotions.

In the end, whether dealing with a high conflict personality or a disordered personality, the problem at hand (i.e., the problem that brought you two to the table to have a conversation in the first place) is not the problem. The problem at hand is the individual's thinking that might make resolution impossible. In short, what’s the point in responding to unproductive thinking and behavior with more unproductive thinking and behavior? Once again, awareness is most important. Understanding behavior and responding to what lies behind it, rather than the behavior itself, might be the most productive thing you can do for effective communication or to de-escalate conflict in communication.