Therapy can offer a life-altering experience. Compassionate and competent counselors are able to provide a safe environment to facilitate personal growth and authentic experience. Individuals who have felt stuck or otherwise stymied are finally able express their pent-up feelings. This form of self-liberation can be freeing—self-discovery often translates to successful careers and healthy relationships. However, advocating self-expression during a high-conflict divorce can have catastrophic consequences; instead, therapists should promote self-preservation. In almost every high-conflict divorce case, one or both parties have a personality disorder. Even if therapists and attorneys recognize the issues, managing them can be a laborious process.
Although most professionals are familiar with personality disorders, the truth is that even a competent therapist can be fooled by the calm and charismatic demeanor of a well-liked, upstanding professional in the community. In contrast, the reasonable individual who is falling apart may seem like a crazy person, anxious, and out of sorts. It follows that the therapist may prescribe problem-solving, conflict management, or collaboration as a course of treatment—but this is mistake.
3 Ways a Therapist Might Not Work For You During a High-Conflict Divorce
1. Collaboration With High-Conflict Personalities Will Lead to Disaster
Collaboration equals enabling. It feeds into their agenda of engagement. The high-conflict personality has no intention of moving on; their unconscious motive is to keep the relationship going one way or another. They are likely to view your self-discoveries as points of weakness, instead of authentic vulnerability, so they can be used against you. High-conflict personalities are not able to naturally grieve the loss of their marriage; instead they are driven to sniff out areas where blame can be inserted.
“If you were not so rash or otherwise upset all the time, we could have worked things out. The kids would have a family….” Manipulative tactics are a hallmark of the high-conflict personality and are used to provoke re-engagement which commands your attention. Instead, don’t bite. Keep your feelings and thoughts to yourself.
2. High-Conflict Personalities Don’t Solve Problems, They Create Them
Any attempt to work with them on problem-solving efforts is set up for failure. High-conflict divorce is driven by individuals who are unable to grasp their issues. They are perpetual victims who are looking for someone else to blame. Their conflict-laden selves seek an external source to dump (or project) their problems upon. It’s much easier for them to say, “You are always angry at me for one reason or another. That’s what makes it so hard to co-parent with you,” instead of stating, “I can see you are irritated with me for refusing to give up my parenting time 15 minutes earlier so you could get across town and miss the 5:00 p.m. traffic.”
By nature, therapists are trained to solve problems; in fact, solution-focused therapy aims to find techniques to do so. But in this case, no amount of solution-focused therapy can make a difference. The high-conflict personality is geared toward blame and defensiveness; they don’t know other ways of relating to conflict. The non-personality-disordered spouse needs to find a support group to discuss their experiences and learn how to handle tirades of unaccountability, while also working to preserve their self-dignity.
3. Conflict Management During a High-Conflict Divorce is Like Sawing Your Arm Off
It’s brutal and painful to try to resolve conflict with a relentless ex-spouse. Their goal is to be ahead, to win, to be the good guy. In doing so, the other person, namely you, must be the bad guy or the loser. Conflict management by nature requires you to find mutual needs, empathize, and compromise. These are foreign concepts to a personality-disordered ex. In fact, like a predator waiting for its prey, conflict management offers an opportunity to pounce in their game of divorce. The best way to combat conflict or manage it is by keeping factual records of your interactions. Do not engage in blaming or shaming messages. If you must engage with your ex for a co-parenting issue, do so in writing. Keep it brief, factual, and on point to achieve an outcome for the children.
Save your cooperative efforts for someone who will appreciate your emotional growth. Not only is it unsafe to go down this route, well-meaning collaboration efforts will backfire in the long run. High-conflict situations by nature require stiff boundaries and decisive, strategic planning. Preserve yourself and take measures to protect your authentic expansion from exploitation.
I am stunned that a social worker wrote this. I will be sharing it. It is singularly the most irresponsible, short-sighted article on high conflict divorce that I’ve ever read. I certainly hope that if the author is still practicing social work, she will check her bias. How on earth can you justify telling a parent that the other parent is trying to “behead” them? I question your professional ethics here. The language is out of line. And telling people that the other parent is just evil so don’t collaborate? This is highly inappropriate.
I agree with the article as I witnessed it myself. There os a manipulator (parent) and a manipulated (Therapist/Social Worker). In this case the other parent find him/her self in the middle of conflict, meanwhile the Therapist become “bias” listening to the Manipulator. Not everyone can raise their voice and recognize the symptoms and “genuine” behaviour. In this case in my opinion a Psychiatrists/Psychologist should be involved to able to recognize different type of behaviour and to treat before both parties can attend healthy couple therapy.
I agree with your comments. The insidiousness of pathological behavior makes it difficult for generalist therapist to discern and address them with strategic intervention and behavior management. Often, traditional therapy process can create triangulation and splitting. In his book, “Splitting,” Bill Eddy, a high conflict divorce expert, clearly outlines how to protect and prepare yourself. You might find this book very helpful. He also has an institute for professionals to receive the methods on handling high-conflict.
This article is spot on – collaboration is enabling with high-conflict individuals. People that don’t understand that, have not truly attempted discussions with a truly high-conflict individual, who will use the time to continue to bully, manipulate and exploit. It is counter-productive and exposes the other partner to continued unnecessary abuse.
I agree with the article. After 5 years, the other parent still has a need for my attention. He causes conflict and when I don’t feed the problem, he tries even harder to get me to engage. I have often suspected a personality disorder, but I would never know because nothing is ever wrong with the other parent. I wish the other parent would go away, but I guess I should be thankful that the children have a relationship with him. I just do my best to e-mail only and stick to what is written in our order.
This is exactly what I am going through and have been going through for the past 6 years. My ex is a manipulator, is never wrong, and I’m always the bad guy. He is completely hypocritical in the sense that the rules don’t apply to him. He cannot let go of the past and to do this day still tries to control me and make my life hell. Our co parenting counselor always takes his side and I’m at a complete loss. I’m afraid to speak up at all in counseling because it will be turned around on me one way or another. I wish he would just leave me alone. He is remarried with a new child and claims to be so happy, then why is he always so worried about what I’m doing and trying to make my life miserable? We get nowhere in counseling. We start to make progress and then he goes back on his word and the counselor just goes along with it. I don’t engage and that just makes it worse. I don’t know what to do anymore, he cares more about making me miserable than about our son’s happiness. He even tried to stop me from taking my son on a vacation to Disneyland! Yet he takes his vacation on my time and I let it happen because I would never deny my son an opportunity to go somewhere fun. I just want him to go away.
Thank you sharing, it sounds like a very challenging situation. Since this is your co-parenting counselor, additionally, having a high-conflict therapist in your area who is well versed in such matters would be very beneficial for you.
Dear Sonia and all others, thank you for your great article and everyone else for sharing your stories. I read my current situation in all your words. J.L seems to set a perfect example of a high conflict parent here, so I shall appreciate his comments as proof of how crucial it is for us to have a therapist who understands a child’s well being in such conflicts.
Sonia, I am in search of a family therapist in NYC. Would you please have any recommendations? Thank you again!
I think the article is spot on. I have two children with two different dads and two step moms; one that I co-parent great with, and one that I’ve been in court with for nearly 10 years. I understand how you can be stunned by the article if you haven’t experienced first hand what a truly high conflict co-parenting situation is like. And perhaps this is at the higher end of a high conflict situation, but this article is spot on for what I’m experiencing and in line with what several written authorities say in regard to coparenting with a toxic/narcissistic ex. I realize there are “high conflict” situations in which this wouldn’t apply (and I’d argue that most should quickly recognize when it doesn’t apply to them), but there are a growing number of situations in which this article is very much applicable. As an example, imagine a time before the “me too” movement, and a situation in which a superior military officer rapes a subordinate soldier and that soldier becomes pregnant and has a child… the army protects the superior officer and the good old boys find a way to get rid of the subordinate soldier. Despite a pattern of behavior, the superior officer, again, had no consequences, and no written documentation of the incident (s). Now imagine they also are in the psychological operations field and retire with honors. Life then becomes one big war at home and their child’s other parent becomes the new ‘Charlie’. It’s sick and twisted; and sounds crazy, I know. The reality is that it’s inconceivable until you’ve experienced the harassing manipulative and crazy making behaviors first hand. I was given full legal and physical custody of our child a year ago and it only made things worse in different ways; and sadly our child suffers most. I know that the motions will not stop until our child is an adult and I can deal with that, but what’s hardest to deal with is watching our child suffer, knowing it should be better. She sees my other child’s dad and step mom and I get along and tries to make sense of things but, like many, cannot. To attend coparenting therapy with my ex was counterproductive and far more traumatizing than healthy or helpful.
I agree…stick to email or Our Family Wizard and the Court Order as best you can. Don’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction or outburst. Any deviations from the Court Order will likely be transactional in nature, because they need to feel they gained something in return regardless of what the child stands to gain or lose. And use the ‘gray rock’ method in response to provocation. I suspect that by the time you’ve learned to identify and label these behaviors and what it is you’re experiencing and dealing with, however, you’ve either created your own version of the method naturally and preserved your sanity, or you’ve gone off the deep end and fell prey in response. I hope it’s not the latter. It’s never too late to change though if it is. Godspeed.