: Bill Eddy
: High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
: Unhooked Books
: 9781936268757
: 1
: CHF 9.40
:
: Allgemeines, Lexika
: English
: 286
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
People with high conflict personalities (HCPs) clog our courts as plaintiffs with inappropriate claims against their personal 'targets of blame,' and as defendants who have harmed others and need to be stopped. Everybody knows someone with a High Conflict Personality. 'How can he be so unreasonable?' 'Why does she keep fighting? Can't she see how destructive she is?' 'Can you believe they're going to court over ______?' Some HCPs are more difficult than others, but they tend to share a similar preoccupation with blame that drives them into one dispute after another-and keeps everyone perplexed about how to deal with them. Using case examples and an analysis of the general litigation and negotiation behaviors of HCPs, this book helps make sense of the fears that drive people to file lawsuits and complaints. It provides insight for containing their behavior while managing and/or resolving their disputes. Characteristics of the five 'high-conflict' personality disorders are explored: Borderline Narcissistic Histrionic Paranoid Antisocial
Introduction to First Edition (2006)
In 1992, after a dozen years as a mental health professional, I became an attorney. I went to law school to become a full-service mediator: to be able to write binding agreements, inform clients about the law and have the credibility of being an attorney.
While I enjoyed counseling, I was particularly drawn to mediation, a method of resolving interpersonal disputes out of court in a counseling-like process. I had been involved in mediation since I heard about it in 1975, mostly as an unpaid volunteer handling a wide variety of disputes in schools, communities, businesses and families.
By the late 1980s, the courts were promoting mediation and I realized that I could make it a paying career if I became an attorney.
The Beeper
When I opened my law and mediation office in 1993, I decided to keep my beeper. I still had a dozen counseling clients and still occasionally received a crisis call. “I’m in the kitchen. I have a knife and I feel like hurting myself,” one of my clients with Borderline Personality Disorder1 cried one Saturday night after beeping me as I waited in line outside a movie theater.
I was familiar with her case. “Put the knife away,” I insisted. “Go to your room and write out two cognitive therapy worksheets. Bring them in when we meet next week. And remember what we talked about.”
And she did.
But such calls were rare from my counseling clients. It was my law clients in various states of crisis who beeped me the most.
“We have to file a new declaration. It’s absolutely urgent,” said one new client.
“But it’s the weekend,” I explained. “I can’t file anything until Monday.”
“It’s so important I called you right away, so you could think about it.”
The most common beeper calls were always about visitation crises. “He’s twenty minutes late. He always does this to me. I can’t wait all day. You have to do something about this!”
Most of my law clients handled these problems just fine on their own, or we addressed them during office hours and took appropriate legal action. But some of my attorney clients were frequently overwhelmed by emotions, suddenly and intensely angered, and constantly demande