When you are with high conflict people you will soon notice that they need for others to see the world in the same way they do. Any deviation from their own perspective creates a challenge to their own system of survival. To them every challenge feels like you are creating a threat to their very existence.
The difficulties arise when you realize that their thinking is distorted. They don’t see the world the way you do. They leave out some really important information that you think should be included or they focus on something you think is not very important. As you listen to them you begin to realize that their perspective is not arbitrary but necessary. They need to see the world that way to survive.
This is not to say they consciously construct their perspective. They don’t. Far from it. In fact they are generally completely unaware that their thinking is distorted at all. It doesn’t matter because they need to protect this way of thinking and now you are caught in the middle.
They need to see the world with these particular distortions. You see that their perspective is distorted, that it is adding to their difficult situation, that there is another, clearer perspective. You also see that your challenge will bring them discomfort, cause conflict in your life and potentially destroy the relationship. This set-up often leads to one of the following false dilemmas.
Catch-22
Named after the book by Joseph Heller a catch-22 is an impossible situation created by arbitrary rules. In the book the pilots are in a no-win bureaucracy. The thinking goes something like this. Only those pilots who are insane are excused from flying combat missions. Pilots must refer themselves for evaluation regarding their sanity. But the insane do not recognize their insanity and so only the sane would be self-referring. Therefore anyone self-referring for a mental health evaluation must be sane. In the end anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy and should continue flying. There is no way out all pilots will fly.
I knew a family in a similar situation. The wife, a high conflict person, believed that the husband did not show enough gratitude for his life. If he stated, even in the most open and tentative way that something wasn’t working for him then the wife pointed to that as proof of his lack of gratitude and dismissed his right to make such a statement. If he made no complaint then she believed that there was no problem and he loved everything about his life. The husband had no way to talk about what wasn’t working, because the wife felt threatened and belittled by his desire to improve their situation.
Double Bind
The double bind is a catch-22 you cannot talk about. The first bind is the catch-22, the artificial no-win situation designed to protect the distorted thinking of a high conflict person. The second bind is the tacit agreement to keep silent about the first bind.
This added layer makes the double more insidious than the catch-22. It gives the false dilemma much more power and a longer life. In that way it increases the suffering in the relationship a great deal. Though it does give the high conflict person more protection.
In our example of husband and wife, now in addition to not talking about the things in their relationship that are not working, he agrees to not talk about why they don’t talk about it. He is another step removed from having a healthy, mutual relationship, but the wife is more secure in her distortions and system of self-protection. By agreeing to the second bind, the husband gives up a significant amount of his personal power. Instead of working to resolve the conflict in a mutual way, he accepts that the wife makes the rules, even when they are based in distorted thinking and lead to an unfair and uneven relationship.
Why would a husband, or anyone else, accept the relationship on these terms? Because when a high conflict person is challenged, they will fight back or they will leave. When dealing with high conflict people, we often intuitively understand the limits of the relationship.
Knot
A knot is a double bind that has been internalized by the object of the false dilemma. In our example, the husband accepts that his desire for improving something in his relationship with his wife truly indicates that he is indeed ungrateful.
Now the wife is completely secure and her distorted thinking is given an enormous amount of power. It lives on not just in the high conflict person, but also in her husband. He does not need to be so vigilant because the husband will do much of that work for her. It is in this way distorted thinking becomes an institution.
For Three False Dilemmas, part 2 click here
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