How to Deal With High Conflict People | Bill Eddy

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
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 and 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 and 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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They have venison steaks, ground venison and venison bone broth. I personally like all of those. In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui Venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. And if you're traveling a lot or you're simply on the go, they have Maui Nui Venison steaks, which have 10 grams of protein per stick at just 55 calories, and they're extremely convenient. You can pretty much take them anywhere. If you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private. It does that by routing your internet activity through their servers and encrypting it so that no one can see or sell your data. Now I'm familiar with the effects of not securing my data well enough. 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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 vpn.com/huberman to get an extra three months free. And now for my discussion with Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy, welcome.