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Dealing with High-Conflict People: Use the W.E.B. Method to Spot High-Conflict Personalities, with Bill Eddy, Lawyer, Therapist and Author, 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life
The WEB method I developed to help people spot high conflict personalities as quickly as possible. And so it’s made up of focusing on their words, your emotions and their behavior. So if you’re seeing somebody using extreme words – all or nothing, blaming words, you know, that person I just saw is just the worst in the world, things like that. If their words have those extremes, if their words are unmanaged, they can’t control themselves, they say offensive things that you cringe because they’re around other people. If they’re talking about threats, things like that. Those are words that will help you spot high conflict people. Your emotions. If you feel intense emotions – it could be intensely negative, you’re afraid, you’re angry. Or intensely positive – you think this is the most wonderful person you’ve ever met. This person could be your best friend. That’s often a warning sign because high conflict people start out quickly trying to be super friendly, super superior, super nice. I call it a sugar coated personality to make up for the negativity that’s going to come later on. So watch out for those extreme emotions. And then behaviors – and here’s where the 90 percent rule helps. With 90 percent of people do the behavior they’re doing or is this something more extreme. Would you ever do the behavior you see them doing. So basically that’s the WEB method for spotting high conflict personalities.
A lot of people say oh, he’s narcissistic or she’s being narcissistic doesn’t mean they have a personality disorder or they’re a high conflict person. The ones that you want to spot are the ones who go to the extent of having a personality disorder and a target of blame which potentially could be you. So you want to avoid that. So the way you would spot that first of all is extreme charm. Narcissists start with extreme charm. They say wonderful things about themselves. They often say wonderful things about you at the beginning. And it’s very seductive. And if no one else is saying wonderful things about you this week you may get sucked into this person, this relationship whether it’s at work, a business deal, a neighbor or a dating partner for example. So very charming. They’ll say you’re special. They’ll also say they’re special. This idea of being special but it starts to seem extreme. So if you hear words that are these extreme words that get your attention, sometimes they don’t grab you but your emotions do.
So if your emotions feel too intense. You go wait a minute, something is strange here. I either love this person or I hate this person or I’m afraid of this person. But at the beginning with a narcissist beware of being too charmed and feeling too excited. This person’s a ten on a scale of zero to ten. And be suspicious of that. Most people that you want to be around are seven, eights, maybe some nines. Tens often aren’t real. So the narcissist will come on like they’re special, they’re really good. They’ll tell you how brilliant, how famous, how well connected they are. All of that and that’s a sign you may be dealing with a narcissist. And they don’t seem to notice you’re there and they just keep talking and they don’t ask about you.