Josh Powell Case: Times of High Risk ARE Predictable
© 2012 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. None of us can predict who is going to commit a family murder, such as the murder-suicide of Josh Powell and his two young sons this week. But we can predict people of high risk and times of high risk. Randi Kreger and I wrote about this in our book SPLITTING: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Many people with these two disorders, plus antisocial personality disorder, engage in extreme relationship behavior, although most are not violent. Because of the nature of these disorders they have a great inability to handle loss, so that there are key times of risk for extreme behavior, as we said in the following excerpt from SPLITTING: Key Times of Risk of Extreme Behavior You say you want to separate. You separate. You make requests (no matter how reasonable) that represent loss to your partner. You serve papers on your partner that request court orders he won’t like. You attend a court hearing to get orders your partner won’t like. The court makes orders against your partner. Your partner loses more time with the child than she expected. Your partner has less contact with you than he expected. Your legal case ends. You start a new relationship, get married, or have a child. Your former partner experiences a major setback in his own life later on. You or your partner seek to modify custody, support, or both later on. You may view each of these events with a sense of hope and relief. Finally, you are bringing an end to the chaos, fear, and emotional and financial drain on your life! But first, you must protect yourself from physical danger and prepare for the court process (even while making efforts to resolve your case out of court). Physical Safety The news features more and more stories about people who are undergoing a divorce seriously harming a partner, the children, or both. While such stories are still very rare, they are a warning to consider physical danger at the key times just described. Since people with BP and NP (and antisocial) traits have predictable patterns of behavior, think about your partner’s past behavior. Has your partner made threats of violence toward you or your children? Does your partner have a history of violent or impulsive behavior? Does your partner have a substance-abuse problem? Does your partner have easy access to weapons? All of these items are potential risks for physical harm when you’re involved with someone with BPD, NPD, or ASPD, and all must be taken seriously. In most murder cases, there were warning signs of serious danger—but not always. Sometimes you will have a gut feeling that tells you physical protection may be necessary. In many cases, there was a series of recent losses, such as: A job loss Loss of a house Separation from a partner Significantly reduced contact with a child A change of custody The loss of a pet or other property Some people with BPD, NPD, and ASPD can’t handle this growing series of losses when they sense no hope for their future. With domestic violence perpetrators (who, in Bill’s observation, are mostly people with BPD, NPD, and ASPD), the risk of violence can be highest at the time of separation, because the partner with the PD tries to stop the losses of control, attachment, and inflated self-image. Repeated losses at court may add up to an increased risk of danger later in the case. Many cases in the news refer to the violent actions of a distraught partner who expects to lose contact with, or custody of, a child at an upcoming hearing. In some cases, the risk is highest when the battle finally ends and the fantasies of continued contact and control of you through the court process are over. If you’re concerned about your physical safety, find out about resources in your area, and consult a therapist or lawyer as soon as possible to evaluate your risk. Ideally, you should do this before even discussing a separation or divorce. But consider physical safety throughout your case, especially at each of the key times previously described. Bill Eddy is a lawyer, therapist, and mediator. He is the co-founder and Training Director of the High Conflict Institute, a training and consultation firm that trains professionals to deal with high conflict people and situations. He is the author of several books and methods for handling high conflict personalities and high conflict disputes with the most difficult people.
Marriage Conflict Skills: Finding the Balance
Marriage Conflict Skills: Finding the Balance © 2012 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. This week is National Marriage week. As the website http://www.nationalmarriageweekusa.org says: “February 7th to 14th every year is a collaborative effort to encourage many diverse groups to strengthen individual marriages, reduce the divorce rate, and build a stronger marriage culture, which in turn helps curtail poverty and benefits children. Together we can make more impact than working alone.” I agree with those who say that a committed partner relationship is one of the goals for human beings, if not THE top goal. We all want someone to understand us, care about us and share in our life plans. But how do we make this work in today’s society, which seems to undermine working together and reinforce individualism? I believe the key is in finding the balance of being of being an individual AND a couple – for the unique two of you. It isn’t about one “right” answer for everyone or every couple. Here are several skills that I believe help find this balance: 1. Understand the difference between relationship conflict skills and adversarial conflict skills. Relationship conflict skills operate in a moderate emotional range which relationships can handle. Relationship disputes must take into account your needs as an individual AND the needs of the other person, so that you don’t blow away the relationship foundation in an effort to assert yourself – you really can have both. Unfortunately, our current entertainment-based culture reinforces the drama of adversarial conflict skills such as “looking out for number one” and blaming the other person when things go wrong. This seems to justify regularly yelling at the other person (and hitting in about 20% of couples), making disdainful remarks, giving the silent treatment, hiding important information, bad-mouthing your partner to others, etc. But these behaviors are adversarial methods of dealing with conflict, which fail to take the relationship into account. These are the extremes that sit-coms, movies and politics demonstrate for us every day. Relationship conflict skills include saying you’re sorry, such as with repairing statements: “I’m sorry I just said that – I really do love you and respect you.” “Let’s not go to bed angry.” “I’m going to make more of an effort to fulfil the request you just made.” Listening and empathizing with the other person’s pain, even when we are feeling our own. Taking turns, turning toward the other person when they are talking, rather than away. These are relationship conflict skills. 2. Build a bank of goodwill. John and Julia Gottman have studied the science of what makes a good marriage work. One of their conclusions is that happy and healthy marriages have approximately a 5 to 1 ratio of positive statements and experiences to negative ones. So happy couples that bicker a lot succeed because they have five times as many positive things to say and do together. They also found that couples that never seem to argue actually have negative interactions – but also about a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative. Don’t hesitate to make that extra positive comment out of the blue. “Did I ever tell you how much I love it when you do ________? “You’re so good at ___________.” “Thanks for just being you!” 3. Learn about acceptance. Another surprising result of the Gottmans’ research is that approximately a third of conflicts never get resolved in healthy, long-term marriages. This is a great surprise to many spouses, therapists and dispute resolution professionals. But, in fact, a preoccupation with chronically unresolved conflicts tends to have a negative effect on the marriage – it builds frustration rather than focusing on the positive. There will be some habits that the other person simply will not change or cannot change. Expressing our point of view and hearing the other’s different point of view may be as far as we can get on some issues. Agreeing to disagree and accepting certain conflicts seems to be essential to a good marriage. But, there is the flip side to acceptance: If you have been accepting unacceptable behavior in your marriage – such as domestic violence, chronic substance abuse, verbal abuse and other unhealthy relationship problems – then learning that there are limits to acceptance can be an important lesson. There may be a healthy marriage out there for you and it might not be this one. If you aren’t sure about the difference between healthy and unhealthy acceptance, see an individual or couples counselor. Learning about both sides of acceptance is a relationship conflict skill in itself. Most marriages can work – if you can create the proper balance. I started doing divorce mediation over 30 years ago, when I helped two friends figure out a shared custody arrangement of their 8-year-old son. I don’t recommend being a divorce mediator for your friends, but this one worked out okay. Since then, I have been a divorce mediator for approximately 1100 couples. Recently, I have been reflecting on what I have learned about marriage from these experiences. 4. Really listen when you disagree. I have found over and over again that unhappy couples don’t really listen to each other. Many of my mediation clients are good listeners, but their goals have become different, their ways of managing finances are seriously different, or they have drifted apart. But the most unhappy couples never learned how to really listen to each other. They both report a long history of this, before they decided to get a divorce. One or both spouses eventually gave up trying to communicate. Instead, they have focused on how “correct” they are on various subjects and have tried to persuade or bully the other person to agree with them. As soon as one starts speaking, the other turns away. They both acknowledge that this has been going on for years. Yet research by John and Julia Gottman, the marriage researchers, indicates that “turning away” when your partner is sharing something important is
New Ways in Canada for Separating and Divorcing Families
© 2012 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. On Jan. 24 and 25, I did a whirlwind tour of three cities in southern Alberta in Canada, training 60 judges in the New Ways for Families method. For those who aren’t aware, Calgary and Medicine Hat (a city of 60,000) received 3-year grants from the Alberta Safe Communities Initiative Fund totaling about $500,000 each. This week Medicine Hat starts taking cases and they expect to help about 200 families by the end of 2012. For more information on this method, go to www.NewWays4Families.com. When I say it was a whirlwind tour, I didn’t realize that I would be driving across southern Alberta in 150 kilimeter per hour winds! I rode with the New Ways team from Medicine Hat, including their New Ways Coordinator, Cassidy Sheehan, the driving force behind the grant, Janis Pritchard, and the Medicine Hat Family Services staff person for the New Ways program, Keri. Since the judges rotate around southern Alberta, we trained them where they are now in three different cities: Lethbridge (a city of about 100,000), Calgary and Medicine Hat – and we trained in them all from 4:30 Tuesday to 9:00pm Wednesday. The judges were fantastic! They are committed to helping families stop being high conflict in divorce. They will refer most families who have a parenting conflict that they have brought to court. We discussed the fact that approximately 80% of divorcing parents or unmarried separating parents never ask the court to become involved in their parenting decisions. In other words, it is a clear sign of a serious problem when one parent asks the court to make orders restricting the other parent’s involvement with the children. Perhaps a parent really does need to be restricted (domestic violence, child abuse, alienation, etc.), or perhaps it’s the parent who says the other parent needs restrictions (one making false allegations or engaged in alienating behaviors), or perhaps it’s both parents. In any of these situations, it will help both parents and the children to be ordered into New Ways, so that they can get conflict resolution skills BEFORE the big decisions are made. We believe that after going through the skills counseling of New Ways that many – perhaps half or more – of these families will be able to make their own good decisions with assistance from lawyers, mediators and others, without having to return to court. The judges raised many important questions and we discussed them in depth, regarding how to streamline the case flow from the initial order in the courtroom, to managing the cases that do return to court with the quizzing process of asking the parents what they learned and how they would resolve a new potential parenting conflict if it arose in the future. We compared this quizzing process to taking the bar exam. I believe that it is harder for high-conflict parents to change their high-conflict behavior than it is for lawyers and judges to pass the bar exam. Therefore, it’s very important that parents know that they will be quizzed on their conflict resolution skills if they return to court without making their own agreements. The three skills are: flexible thinking, managed emotions and moderate behaviors – and constantly “checking themselves” to make sure they are using these skills whenever they have a difficult decision to make as parents. Of course, these broad skills are broken down into very specific skills for managing stress, protecting children from their parent’s upset emotions, communicating respectfully by email, how to make proposals, how to respond to proposals, etc. The significant benefit of this method, as the judges pointed out, is that it provides parents with skills as well as decisions. Currently, when parents ask the court to make parenting decisions (custody, access time, etc.), the court just hands down a decision. Parents spend weeks and sometimes months preparing for these decision-making hearings, then leave the courtroom with a decision that one or both parents dislike. Without any new skills, high-conflict parents simply continue the battle outside of court by refusing to follow the court’s order or manipulating the children or preparing for the next court hearing where they hope to change the decision. With New Ways for Families, the parents get skills and practice these skills before the big decisions are made, so that they can make their own reasonable decisions or accept decisions the judge makes. Then, they can go on to raise their children using these skills for years to come – although they often need reminders to use these skills. It won’t be perfect, but we have a study being done by Alliant University in San Diego, so that we can look at what works and what could be improved. Overall, we’re very excited about seeing New Ways for Families® get funding and support from all family law professionals in two court jurisdictions. We want to truly see if we can help families reduce the conflict and raise happy and healthy children – instead of passing high-conflict behaviors from generation to generation, as is increasingly common in up to 20% of cases around the world today when parents get divorced. Bill Eddy is a lawyer, therapist, and mediator. He is the co-founder and Training Director of the High Conflict Institute, a training and consultation firm that trains professionals to deal with high conflict people and situations. He is the author of several books and methods for handling high conflict personalities and high conflict disputes with the most difficult people.