Last month, my husband and I attended a workshop called Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt. Yes, it sounds a little corny, but over the years, I’ve learned that corny can be surprisingly effective! The core idea of the workshop is to cultivate a healthy brain—a state of mind that feels safe and free from danger, rather than operating in survival mode (fight, flight, or freeze).

There were many powerful takeaways, but three stood out to me, and I’d like to share them with you to see if they resonate:

1. Affirmations and the Value of an Evening Appreciation Practice

Each evening, my husband and I take turns sharing three things we appreciate about each other and why. This simple yet powerful practice fosters warmth and strengthens our bond.

To enhance the impact, the recipient can reflect back what they heard by saying something like, “Let me see if I got this. Here’s what I heard…” and then checking for anything missed with, “Did I get it all? Is there more?”

To make it even cornier (and more memorable), we close with the phrase: “You are Wonderful. I am Wonderful. And That’s the Truth.” The intention is to bring a sense of awe, mystery, and wonder to the relationship.

2. Honoring Boundaries

In this practice, when either my husband or I want to speak with the other, instead of interrupting or barging in, we check if it’s a good time to talk or if it would be better to schedule a later time. While it might seem counterintuitive to schedule conversations with someone you live or work with, this approach respects the fact that everyone has their own internal dialogue and mental ‘movie’ playing at any given moment.

It’s as simple as asking, “Is now a good time to talk? If not, when would work for you?” This small change has created a calmer atmosphere in our home, reducing unnecessary tension.

3. The Zero Negativity Challenge

This challenge involves shifting from judgment to curiosity and affirmation, and consciously avoiding shaming, criticizing, or blaming. The world can often feel like a hostile place, and this practice creates a more peaceful and trusting partnership while reducing everyday anxiety.

What is Negativity? Negativity is any behavior that someone else experiences as harmful or critical. It’s rooted in our innate negativity bias—a tendency to focus on what’s wrong with people, situations, or the world. To improve relationships and boost happiness, we need to actively ‘do the work’ to be more positive.

Examples of Negative Behaviors:

• Showing irritability or impatience while someone is talking.
• Immediately correcting or refuting what someone else says.
• Interrupting or changing the subject to yourself.
• Dismissing or denying the other person’s experience.

By moving away from these habits and replacing them with curiosity and validation, we’ve created a more peaceful and harmonious feeling in our partnership and home.

Applying These Practices Beyond Personal Relationships

While these practices are designed to enhance the quality of romantic partnerships, I believe they have valuable applications in organizational settings as well. I challenge you to experiment with these ideas and see which ones resonate in your work or community environments.

Sometimes, the smallest changes can make the biggest difference. Why not give it a try?

Additional Resources:

• Click here to read How to Talk with Anyone about Anything: The Practice of Safe Conversations by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. and Helen Lakely Hunt, Ph.D.
• Click here to read Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. and Helen Lakely Hunt, Ph.D.

One of the most common issues clients share with me is their struggle with individuals whose behaviors create conflict and chaos, making communication and everyday life difficult rather than fostering collaboration and ease.

This month, I am sharing resources created by Bill Eddy–a lawyer, therapist, and mediator–to help navigate these difficult individuals and situations.

Eddy defines a high-conflict individual (HCI) as someone who exhibits an ongoing pattern of behaviors that increase conflict rather than resolve it. These individuals make up about 10% of the population and they often struggle with emotional regulation, display rigid thinking, and find it difficult to accept responsibility for problems. Their actions tend to escalate disputes and create tension in relationships, both personally and professionally.

Eddy’s strategies focus on reducing conflict, promoting cooperation, and fostering healthy communication. He emphasizes empathy, respect, and boundary-setting as essential tools for effectively managing high-conflict situations. The frameworks Eddy outlines below are not only widely applicable when working with high-conflict individuals but also serve as valuable resources for enhancing communication in general and across all interactions, both professional and personal.

Below are Eddy’s communication frameworks and strategies: BIFF, EAR, New Ways for Professionals (formerly New Ways for Families), Soothing Statements, Avoid Triggering Responses, CARS, and The Four Forgets.

1.    BIFF (Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm)

The BIFF method is a communication framework designed to handle difficult conversations or written communication, particularly with high-conflict individuals.

• Brief: Keep the response short and to the point, avoiding unnecessary details or arguments.
• Informative: Focus on providing relevant, neutral information. Avoid opinions, emotions, or blame.
• Friendly: Maintain a polite and respectful tone, regardless of the other person’s behavior.
• Firm: Set boundaries and end the communication clearly, without inviting further unnecessary discussion.

BIFF (Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm) Example

If someone sends an aggressive email, you might reply: “Thank you for your email. I understand your concerns. The next steps are outlined in the attached document. Please let me know if you have any further questions. Best regards, [Your Name].”

2.    EAR (Empathy, Attention, Respect)

The EAR approach is used to de-escalate high-conflict situations by fostering a sense of understanding and mutual respect.

• Empathy: Show understanding of the other person’s feelings or experience.
• Attention: Actively listen and give your full attention to their concerns.
• Respect: Maintain respect in your tone and actions, regardless of their behavior.

EAR Example:

If someone is upset, you might say: “I can see this is really frustrating for you, and I want to help. Let’s go through this together.”

3.    New Ways for Professionals (formerly New Ways for Families)

This is a structured method Eddy developed for managing conflict in family settings. This concept is also useful in professional settings. It emphasizes skills-building in four key areas:

• Flexible Thinking: Encourage open-mindedness and alternatives.
• Managed Emotions: Focus on controlling emotional responses.
• Moderate Behaviors: Promote calm and reasonable actions.
• Checking Yourself: Teach individuals to assess their own role in conflicts.

4.    Soothing Statements

Eddy suggests using calming language to diffuse anger or defensiveness.

Examples include:

• “I hear what you’re saying.”
• “That’s an interesting perspective.”
• “I’ll think about that.”

These statements help avoid escalation and signal to the other person that they’ve been heard without agreeing or arguing.

5.    Avoid Triggering Responses

Eddy advises avoiding behaviors that provoke further conflict, such as:

• Defending yourself too much.
• Arguing or correcting their perceptions.
• Minimizing their feelings.

Instead, use strategies like BIFF or EAR to manage the interaction constructively.

6.    CARS (Connecting, Analyzing Options, Responding, Setting Limits)

This framework is designed for working through conflict with high-conflict individuals:

• Connecting: Establish rapport with empathy and respect and create a foundation for constructive dialogue.
• Analyzing Options: Collaborate to identify potential solutions without judgment or defensiveness.
• Responding: Respond clearly and calmly, using BIFF if needed.
• Setting Limits: Set and enforce boundaries assertively but respectfully.

The Four Forgets: Outlines common assumptions people often forget when dealing with high-conflict individuals (HCIs). These “forgets” highlight the typical reactions and expectations that can escalate conflict instead of resolving it. By recognizing and avoiding these pitfalls, one can approach HCIs with realistic expectations and effective strategies, helping to manage interactions constructively.

1.    Forget About Insight

• What it Means: Don’t expect high-conflict individuals to gain self-awareness or insight into their own behavior. HCIs often lack the ability or willingness to reflect on their actions or recognize their contribution to conflicts.
• Why This Matters: Trying to “make them see reason” or understand their impact is usually futile and can lead to further frustration or escalation.
• What to Do Instead: Focus on managing the situation rather than attempting to change their perspective or behavior.

2.    Forget About Change

• What it Means: Don’t assume that high-conflict individuals will change their behavior, even with explanations, logic, or feedback. Their patterns are often deeply ingrained.
• Why This Matters: Expecting rapid or meaningful change from an HCI can lead to disappointment and ineffective interactions.
• What to Do Instead: Set clear boundaries and focus on managing the current conflict rather than trying to “fix” them.

3.    Forget About Forgiveness

• What it Means: Don’t expect HCIs to forgive or let go of grievances easily–if at all. They often hold onto blame and perceived injustices, often obsessively.
• Why This Matters: Hoping for reconciliation or forgiveness may be unrealistic, and pushing for it can reignite tensions.
• What to Do Instead: Accept that they may not move past their grievances and focus on resolving the situation in a way that minimizes further conflict.

4.    Forget About Agreement

• What it Means: Don’t expect HCIs to reach mutual agreement or compromise easily. They are often rigid in their views and unwilling to negotiate in good faith.
• Why This Matters: Trying to force consensus can lead to more arguments or a complete breakdown in communication.
• What to Do Instead: Aim for clear communication and realistic outcomes. Set limits where necessary and focus on achieving what is feasible rather than complete agreement.

How to Apply the Four Forgets: When dealing with HCIs, it’s important to adjust expectations and focus on what can be managed:

• Use frameworks like BIFF (Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm): Communicate effectively and minimize escalation by keeping responses clear and focused.
• Prioritize boundary-setting: Protect yourself and maintain structure by setting and enforcing clear limits.
• Stay emotionally regulated: Rely on strategies to self-manage and avoid the temptation to escalate or mirror their behaviors, maintaining your composure throughout interactions.
• Focus on practical solutions: Aim for achievable outcomes rather than striving for emotional resolution or complete agreement.

Additional Resources:

• Click here to listen to Huberman Lab Podcast with Bill Eddy: How to Deal with High Conflict People (2 hours, 39 minutes)
• Click here to learn more about Bill Eddy and Megan Hunter of the Conflict Institute

This month has been particularly challenging for many of the leaders I partner with—marked by the election, divisive politics, global wars, and difficult business conditions, to name a few. I continue to work with leaders to focus on slowing down, hitting the pause button, and embracing the world as it is. Together, we engage in “the work” of self-management—whether through walking, meditating, praying, exercising, being in nature, or whatever practices resonate with them—so they can remain grounded, stable, and show up with a positive attitude for themselves and others.

I will also share these thoughtful and inspiring words by Pema Chodren that capture this spirit ….

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, and dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You’re able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.

This month, I’d like to share with you The Drama Triangle, a psychological model that offers valuable insights into different relationship roles and dynamics, especially when conflict arises.

The Drama Triangle model not only illuminates potentially destructive relationship dynamics but also provides us with the tools need to break away from negative patterns and foster healthier relationships.

Learning about the Drama Triangle model has numerous benefits. It can help you improve your self-awareness, conflict management, social awareness (empathy), communication, boundary-setting, relationship management, and resilience.

And as a leader, whether in your workplace, community, or within your family, incorporating the Drama Triangle model into your toolkit can be a valuable asset for navigating conflicts more effectively. Moreover, this model empowers leaders to offer coaching and support to individuals who may be struggling with relationship challenges, ultimately contributing to the cultivation of a healthier organizational culture, as opposed to perpetuating cycles of drama and dysfunction.

What is The Drama Triangle Model?
This model sheds light on a normal human dynamic where we engage (triangulate) among three different mindsets or roles: the victim, persecutor, or rescuer. These roles represent patterns of communication and behavior that can be unhelpful and stem from fear–driven efforts to meet our needs, regain a sense of control and avoid feelings of uncertainty, vulnerability, and powerlessness.

While we may typically lean toward a preferred role or evoke certain roles in others, we are also capable of shifting among these three mindsets.

The Drama Triangle is a valuable model for understanding, taking ownership of, and reducing negative drama in our lives. It does so by helping us recognize the role we (and others) might be stuck in and offering guidance on how to break free from it.

Note1 – This model is based on Stephen Karpman’s drama model and the book Radical Responsibility by Fleet Maull, Ph.D. It reflects normal adult human behavior and is not relevant for children or someone who is truly victimized.

The Three Mindsets: Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer

VICTIM

• Description: In the Victim role, a person may find themselves dissatisfied with the course of their life and may attribute their dissatisfaction to external factors, which can include other individuals or challenging circumstances.
• Belief: They tend to believe their happiness depends on changes in circumstances beyond their control. For example, they might think, “I will be happy when person X, over whom I have no control, changes their behavior. “
• Mindset: This role often reflects a mindset characterized by perceived limitations, a sense of powerlessness, and moments of helplessness. Individuals in this role may employ this mindset to assert control or manipulate others.
• Context: It is often associated with a “Poor me” attitude.
• Actions: Behaviors associated with the Victim role can include complaining, blaming, seeking attention, throwing tantrums, and manipulating.
• Orientation: Typically, individuals in this role tend to focus on problems and complaints.
• Mode: Tends to be reactive and engages in blaming.
• Feelings: Those who embody the Victim role often experience feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, anxiety, fear, hurt, afraid, and depression.

PERSECUTOR

• Description: Similar to the Victim, the Persecutor tends to attribute the cause of their feelings to external circumstances.
• Belief: This role is often activated by a fear–based strategy in which the person, feeling powerless and out of control, takes charge to regain a sense of control.
• Context: It is often associated with an “I’m right” attitude.
• Actions: Behaviors associated with the Persecutor role can include criticizing, judging, blaming, controlling, dominating, attacking, and abusing.
• Orientation: Typically, individuals in this role, tend to focus on problems and complaints.
• Mode: Tends to be reactive and inclined toward attacking behavior.
• Feelings: Those who embody the Persecutor role often experience anxiety, fear, anger, feelings of superiority, righteousness, and defensiveness.
• Underlying position: Victim.

RESCUER

• Description: The rescuer role involves the person playing the expert, hero, and fixer, frequently intervening to save people from themselves, even when it might not be needed. The Rescuer often seeks out individuals who play the Victim role.
• Belief: This behavior is not necessarily driven by a genuine desire to help but rather about fulfilling the rescuer’s own ego needs to feel needed or powerful. Rescuers may treat others as childlike and unable to take care of themselves.
• Context: It is often associated with an “I know” attitude.
• Actions: Behaviors associated with the Rescuer role can include helping, saving, fixing, enabling, colluding, and disempowering others.
• Orientation: Typically, individuals in this role, tend to focus on identifying problems and offering fixes/solutions, occasionally adopting a savior or martyr mentality.
• Mode: Tend to be reactive and centered around fixing.
• Feelings: Those who embody the Rescuer role often experience smugness, superiority, self–righteousness, heroism, unappreciation, and overwhelm.
• Underlying position: Victim.

How do I get out of or off the Drama Triangle?

• Step One: Recognize that you are in a drama triangle. Recognize the physiological signs of drama activation, become mindful of your emotional reactions and triggers, and identify what role you could become or are already caught in. For the victim role, warning signs include upset emotions (hurt, anxiety, anger, etc.), physical sensations (shallow breathing, constricted chest, sweaty palms, tension in the neck and shoulders), and thought patterns (involving narratives of powerlessness, injustice, etc.). For persecutor and rescuer roles, signs of drama activation may manifest in language, tone of voice, posture, and actions directed at others.

• Step Two: Stop. Don’t Act When Triggered. Your primary job is to self-regulate, stay calm, and not make the situation any worse. Make a personal commitment to not act when you’re triggered. Keep in mind the phrase, “When the blood has left your brain, it’s not the best time to make a decision!”

• Step Three: Take Space and Shift Your State. The next step involves state-shifting and engaging in a self–management strategy to intentionally release yourself from the trigger (fight, flight, or freeze response). This enables you to gain access to the rational decision–making capacity of your brain’s executive function. Self-management strategies encompass techniques such as taking ten deep breaths, straw breathing, practicing meditation, going for a walk or run, listening to soothing music, doing yoga or other movement exercises, speaking with a friend, getting out in nature, or journaling.

• Step Four: Own Your Feelings. This means getting in touch with your own emotional state and, instead of using blaming or projective language choosing “I” statements. For example, say, “I’m angry, hurt, or sad,” rather than “You’re always doing this to me.”

• Step Five: Identify Your Needs and Communicate Them Clearly (When Appropriate). Take some time to reflect on what underlying needs you perceive aren’t being met and if it’s appropriate, communicate them to the other person as information or as a request, but not a demand. Some examples of needs include love, respect, trusting relationship, autonomy, self–worth, creative expression, security, sense of purpose, and a connection to something larger than self. Make sure that you stick up for yourself by saying something like this and pausing as you say it, “I’m uncomfortable, can we take a break and come back when it’s more productive?”

• Step Six: Make A Boundary When Necessary. By establishing proper boundaries, we reduce chaos and suffering for ourselves and those around us. Boundaries involve knowing when to say yes and when to say no, both in our interactions with others and in our personal choices. These boundaries cultivate a sense of presence and protective energy. When you have well-defined, clear boundaries, people sense it, and individuals looking to stir up drama will typically avoid you and seek drama elsewhere.

Wholehearted Attention

“When the teachings tell us to “make friends with our emotions,” they mean to become more attentive and get to know them better. Being ignorant about emotions only makes matters worse; feeling guilty or ashamed of them does the same. Struggling against them is equally non-productive. The only way to dissolve their power is with our wholehearted, intelligent attention. Only then is it possible to stay steady, connect with the underlying energy, and discover their insubstantial nature.” ~ Pema Chodron

Always Maintain A Joyful Mind

“Constantly apply cheerfulness, if for no other reason than because you are on this spiritual path. Have a sense of gratitude to everything, even difficult emotions, because of their potential to wake you up.” ~ Pema Chodron

We must always take sides.

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

– Elie Wiesel