Ever felt trapped in a conflict that seems impossible to resolve?
In this episode, I sit down with Bill Eddy, a world-renowned expert on high-conflict personalities, to explore why some disputes spiral and what you can do about it.
Bill introduces his proven BIFF response method (Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm) and shares practical strategies for handling intense situations in relationships, workplaces, and family law.
We also discuss how neurodivergence, like ADHD, can shape conflict dynamics and what therapists, parents, and professionals can do to respond effectively.
Whether you’re a therapist, parent, leader, or navigating a personal dispute, this episode will leave you with tools you can use right away.
Resources for After the Show:
Our Resources: The Dig Deeper Blog, especially The OG: The ADHD Resource Hub.
About our Guest: Bill Eddy is an attorney, therapist, mediator, and Director of Innovation for the High Conflict Institute based in Arizona and California. He has trained professionals in managing high-conflict personalities worldwide in over 40 states and 14 countries. He is the author of several books, including: Mediating High Conflict Disputes, High Conflict People in Legal Disputes, BIFF for CoParent Communication, and BIFF for Lawyers and Law Offices.
Find Bill: It's All Your Fault Podcast | Website
Find Christina (CRPO #3908): Website | Find a Therapist | Instagram | Podcast page
A gentle reminder that this is not therapy, and Christina is not your therapist. If you would appreciate one on one support or treatment, please check out the links posted above or our Resources page on our website.
LISTEN OR SUBSCRIBE for free in your favourite podcast app:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Welcome to the Christina Crow podcast where we connect the
dots and search for more balanced mental health.
Today your host psychotherapist Christina Crow that's me is
talking to Mr. Bill Eddie, the Co founder and training director
at the High Conflict Institute. Bill Eddie is an attorney,
therapist, mediator, and director of Innovation for the
(00:30):
High Conflict Institute based inArizona and California.
He's trained professionals in managing high conflict
personalities worldwide in over 40 States and 14 countries.
He's the author of several booksincluding Mediating High
Conflict Disputes, High ConflictPeople in Legal Disputes, BIFF
for Co Parent Communication, andBIFF for Lawyers and Law
(00:51):
Offices. He's the developer of the New
Ways for Family Skills training method for High Conflict
parents, the new Ways for Mediation method for high
conflict disputes, and the New Ways for Work coaching method
for difficult employees. He served on the adjunct faculty
of the Strauss Institute of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine
(01:12):
University School of Law for 16 years and he is the Co host of
the podcast It's All Your Fault with Megan Hunter.
His website is www.highconflictinstitute.com.
Welcome to the show Mr. Hedy. I'm so thrilled to have you
here. Thank you, Christina.
I'm really glad to be on. And you can call me Bill.
(01:34):
I will, I will as as I gushed before when we were just kind of
speaking, you know, I've been following your work for quite
some time now as a psychotherapist to works.
There's an intersection with thestandard emotional dysregulation
and hard things that come with having ADHD treated at various
(01:55):
levels, right? Sometimes it's well treated,
sometimes it's not well treated.And it takes this ongoing
ability to self monitor and workwith people and work with
yourself through that. That being said, there's a lot
of people who are undiagnosed even.
And Russell Barkley, who's a researcher and really well known
psychologist in our field, says where are all the undiagnosed
(02:17):
people hiding? And one of the things he says is
in family court, right? And having worked with people
who are in high conflict divorces and in really not great
Co parenting ways of communicating, I'm often looking
for expertise that goes far beyond my scope to help us out.
(02:38):
And I found the BIFF method and a few of the other algorithmic
methods that are incredibly helpful because they're simple
and they're easy to understand. I just wonder if you can tell us
a little bit about the development of all that.
How'd you end up doing this? Well, it's interesting.
It started out as a social worker and working with children
(02:59):
and families. And I became a therapist
starting in 1980 with a child guidance clinic here in San
Diego where I'm based. And as I worked with families
over the next dozen years, a lotof them had legal issues,
whether it was a divorce or a teenager was in trouble.
(03:19):
And then juvenile court system, things like that.
And I learned about mediation and solving people's disputes
out of court. And I thought that'd be
interesting and got involved with mediating disputes, but
there really wasn't jobs in that.
And so I saw lawyers were starting to do mediation, so I
(03:42):
decided to go to law school. So graduated in 1992.
And because of my family counseling background, I decided
to focus on family law and divorce mediation.
But I figured I need to go to court for a couple years to
practice, get familiar with thatso I can tell families what
(04:05):
would happen in court. Well, I found that my background
was perfect for family court andsince I had the mental health
training and was dealing with issues, substance abuse, child
abuse, personality disorders, etcetera.
And some ADHD seems to be show up there and people really
(04:29):
needing skills and realizing, you know, it's it's stop
pointing fingers and give peopleskills.
And so that's what kind of led me to starting to write about
high conflict cases and methods for managing high conflict cases
for professionals, but also for parents going through divorce
(04:52):
process with another, with a partner.
They call these themselves. As my colleague Megan Hunter
likes to say, people have different operating systems.
One's better than another, but they're different.
We need to have methods that work with the different
operating systems. So that's kind of how I got
(05:15):
going. I saw all this happening in
family court. I took cases for 15 years in
family court and then another 15years in mediation.
So I kind of slowly start developing all this stuff to
take a problem solving approach instead of a blaming approach,
which is very tempting but doesn't really help a lot.
(05:37):
It doesn't deal with the emotional stuff, right?
I've often said it's so difficult that when it comes to
having these really hard, hard conflicts in our relationships
that ultimately if we can't workthem out and it crosses over
into stuff we shouldn't be doingor stuff that's hurting other
(05:59):
people. The mechanism we have in our
world to deal with that is actually the law and court and
people who are strangers and don't know us.
And what the law is concerned about is not necessarily having
you leave that interaction feeling better.
It's doing what they deem to be the right thing or from what
they can see in their slice of this situation.
(06:21):
This is the way to move forward,to diffuse, to manage the
dispute, to come up with some sort of compromise, which is
it's like functional, it helps you move forward, but it doesn't
deal with any of the emotion that is like in a text message,
20 years of history with somebody.
How do you keep that from from derailing Everything that you're
(06:43):
doing is you're trying to createa new future or a new way of
communicating together. And so thank you for that
background that you shared, because then when I found your
book that explained the BIFF method to me and the ear method
as well, maybe I'll get you to explain both.
I thought, oh, this is the most incredible thing and, and it has
(07:03):
been truly, I implemented in lots of different ways, but it's
been, it's been pretty awesome to have that as a tool.
Excellent. Yeah, we find the BIFF method is
our most popular method and we think actually over a million
people are now using it from ourbooks, our trainings, our code,
(07:24):
all of that. And that everyone that learns
BIFF tends to teach at least oneother person so.
I can teach as many people as I can.
We got more than one man, so it really helps, kind of helps you
restrain yourself a little bit by thinking through what you're
writing. We have a checklist, we have 10
(07:47):
questions you can ask yourself. And basically just keeping it
brief, informative, friendly andfirm.
Usually just a paragraph just calms a lot of conversations
instead of sending them up into outer space with the conflict
and more conflict so things calmer.
(08:08):
Yeah. So brief, informative, friendly
and firm and your message reply to somebody, be it a text or an
e-mail or a verbal communicationor how you bring yourself to a
situation, it kept that's like alot of stuff to distill down or
filter out in any given communication.
So it's not that anyone can necessarily be good at this
(08:31):
right away. It takes a lot of practice.
Exactly, and the more you practice it, the easier you get.
So let me give you a quick example.
So you get an e-mail from your Co parent.
Let's say it's a divorce case and you've got a 10 year old
child and the other parent says you're so irresponsible you
(08:52):
never share information about what's going on.
I don't even know what time the school play is tomorrow.
And if you were more responsible, we would keep track
of all these things. And our poor son or daughter is
just caught in the middle of this and it's all your fault.
(09:12):
How do you respond to that? Right.
Only one thing in there you needto respond to.
And that is what time is the school play tomorrow?
So a biff response might be, youknow, thanks for telling me your
concerns. The play starts at 3:00 tomorrow
(09:33):
in the auditorium at the school.Hope to see you there.
You know, that's it or something.
There's no need to respond to every single thing that was
thrown out there. You.
Don't have to prove anything to the other person and sometimes
you get like 2 pages of angry stuff and your response might
(09:58):
just be a paragraph. Who, what, when and where.
No arguments, insults, defenses,all that stuff.
By keeping it focused on information, you kind of step
above the battleground. You start looking at the
process. And if your emails end up in
court and today's more emails and texts end up in court,
(10:21):
you're going to look like you stepped above the conflict.
You didn't get down in the mud, and you're going to look better
when you do that. So if for no other reason, it'll
make you look good. Yeah, it's so interesting to me.
I'll take you into my world of working with adults with ADHD,
right? So, so emotional impulsivity and
(10:44):
our higher thinking going offline at the moment of
something that's close to the chest being a trigger, like
criticizing the kind of mother Iam, for example, in the example
that you used, because of the neurobiological piece, we're
not, this is like bottom up behavior.
We're not talking about the ability to think clearly and
regulate that first whoosh of emotion and physiological
(11:06):
response that happens is what necessarily makes it more
difficult to do something logical in that moment or even
think through. Holy geez, of all of those
things that that parent put out in that text message, like for
to 0 in on the one thing I should respond to is actually
quite difficult. And so one of the things, and so
one of the therapies I practice is in a personal psychotherapy.
(11:29):
There's a component of that called communication analysis.
And in communication analysis, we, we were quite thoughtful
about what it is we want to communicate.
And then how do we choose to communicate?
How do we set up the communication?
How do we set up the communication that is best for
both ourselves and the receiver,which is really difficult to do
(11:51):
in text messaging. I mean, traditionally, probably
the model is set up to look at it in real life, right?
You're in the same room with theperson you want to have a tough
conversation with. And so you know, I'm going with
the flow, right? Like of what what our world is
doing, what people need in the moment.
And one of the things that's been really interesting to do
and, and I'll probably insert a caveat at the top of the show
(12:14):
about relative confidentiality and and mindfulness about using
ChatGPT or AI tools. There's quite a few that do it.
But one of the things that's really interesting is ChatGPT
knows how to biff already. So if you ask ChatGPT Biff a
response to this text message and you copy and paste the text
messaging, you know you're not including any identifying
(12:34):
details and all that kind of stuff.
It immediately becomes very clear what a non a response
where you take the emotion out of the response versus what you
would have said out. And it's not like you have to
pull out your phone and Chat GPTA response all the time,
because in that moment, your brain sees it and understands
(12:56):
it, like the beauty of neuroplasticity.
So when you practice doing that,either with your therapist in
the moment, being able to stay regulated and look at a process,
not take it personally. And and just like you did, zero
in on the one thing I need to respond to, then the rest of the
the biffing can happen. It can flow, right?
(13:18):
So I'm dealing with the part that comes right before that.
And I just, it is such a beautiful thing to show people
because people learn so much about themselves and how they
communicate and how their messages must be landing versus
what their intention is. Yeah, let me say a few things
about that, because GPT is creating some issues for us.
(13:42):
First of all, they never asked if they could use our method and
teach it, so we don't. We're not.
Irritated with them? Of course not same same here all
my methods. Let's get more practical.
So they're out there, they're going to exist.
Yep. So what I encourage people to do
is to get themselves used to a process.
(14:07):
The first thing, and it can be fun, is if you can print out the
message and then cross out everything.
You don't have to respond to yes, See what's left.
So the text or e-mail that I described, there's one sentence,
what time is the school play tomorrow and everything else.
And it's actually kind of fun crossing out all this stuff that
(14:31):
I don't have. To I'm.
Sure. And then when you look at that
one sentence with that question,it's not as triggering.
It would slow people down quite a bit.
And it's fun. It's fun crossing out the other
person's nasty sentences 100. Percent.
Takes away all their power. So then we encourage people to
(14:53):
write. Try to write your own BIFF and
then ask yourself 10 questions first.
Is it brief? Is it informative?
Is it friendly? Is it firm?
Does it contain any advice? Because we call it the AAA's
because we're not asking for your advice.
You know, if I responded to thate-mail or text with no, let me
(15:16):
tell you who's the one that's being stupid here.
So no advice, no admonishments. Like you should know better than
to write that way things. That's an admonishment.
No apologies, because when you apologize to someone who's angry
with you like this, they are notuse it as ammunition against
(15:38):
you. See, you said it's all your
fault. No, I didn't say it's all my
fault. I'm said I'm sorry for this tiny
little thing. But better not to put apologies
in a biff response then. How do you think the other
person's going to respond then? Is there anything now I would
take out or change? And then is there anybody else I
(15:58):
want to look at it before I sendit out?
That way you teach yourself so you don't have to rely on
ChatGPT if you really want to gothrough that process and then
look at what ChatGPT would say. But the problem is ChatGPT gives
you the average of the whole Internet of how to respond with
(16:23):
a BIFF to this e-mail. It doesn't know the other
person, It doesn't know the larger context, doesn't know the
history. So your response is actually
going to be more specific than Chat GPTS.
So that's why I am to try to really learn the method so that
(16:47):
if you look at ChatGPT, you don't rely on it.
I think there's another. So that's a long response, but.
It is. I think that's absolutely the
way to go because I, and so the first place I found which I'll
link it in the show notes if youguys still have them, is on your
website. You guys actually do have
downloadable worksheets that people can use for a model,
(17:11):
right? Yeah, we have an article that
describes this as an example. So isn't exactly a worksheet,
but we have like 100 articles for our techniques and then we
have the books and the book BIFFfor Co parent communication has
I think 30 examples of, you know, doctor's appointments,
(17:34):
dance lessons, football games, changing the schedule, holidays,
birthdays, all the things peoplecould have upset communication
about and gives examples of how not to do it and then how to do
it. So you kind of get used to the
method and it makes it more routine and it also gives
(17:56):
samples is there? Is you know how there's apps for
Co parents to use to track theirspending and communications?
Is there one that incorporates these methods?
There's different apps we actually coordinate with our
family wizard. OK, that was the one I was.
Saying, actually we're in discussions with them right now
(18:18):
about how to use the BIFF methodwithin their app, so they're
looking at that. That would be really useful.
Ideally, I agree with you like the way you know when we know
that when you write something pen to paper you process it on a
deeper level, you learn it on a deeper level.
So I mean, we know those things and it just becomes the place
(18:39):
where the willingness of people to slow down long enough to give
themselves the time to dedicatedto this.
And I, you know, at the end of the day, it's high conflict
already because there's already stuff happening.
So it's not like every run-of-the-mill divorce.
There's already barriers in place for whatever reason to
make it difficult for people to do these things.
(19:00):
I'm kind of a fan of like experientially understanding the
what's in it for you and being able to provide that example
with a client in session and then when they leave, being able
to remember and find a way to access that right.
It's it, it can be very difficult.
And you know, in the olden days when we only had therapy in
(19:21):
person and if I was going to give somebody a handout or a
take away, I would do it. I would be handing them like a
piece of paper they could hold and shove in their briefcase
with her purse. And now you've got to log into
your account and find your placeand download it.
Not everyone, apparently not everyone has a printer these
days, right? So because, you know, like,
(19:43):
there's actually very little youneed to print anymore.
And so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm always trying to find ways to
make these things accessible. But going through these basic
principles, there's something just so helpful about even the
permission that you actually don't need to respond to.
Everything in this message is really important for people to
(20:04):
hear. Right.
And I think because Biff is easyto to remember BIFF that it's
like, oh, I've got to Biff this person.
Oh brief, that's right. I got to be brief, maybe a
paragraph that it's, it's not that hard to bring back up even
under stress. That's why all of these are
(20:25):
short. All of these are short and
simple methods. So.
Tell us about EAR. So EAR, EAR is your statements.
Biff is generally for writing, although you take that approach
in a conversation. EAR is really designed for a
live conversation, whether it's on on the virtual like this or
(20:50):
or in person or over the phone. The idea is to make a statement
that shows empathy, shows that you'll pay attention, and shows
that you have respect for the other person.
Now, this may be the opposite ofwhat you're feeling at the
moment, 100%. But if you can can get used to
(21:14):
thinking of a statement that shows like empathy, like
somebody's really frustrated andthey're getting ready to blame
you, or maybe they're not getting ready to blaming you.
You know, Bill, it's all your fault.
And rather than saying no, it's not, it's your fault, is instead
saying, wow, you know, I can seehow important that issue is to
(21:36):
you. And I know this is a hard time
and let's talk about what we cando.
You know, So my response, ratherthan fighting back is like
connecting with them. It's like, hey, let's work this
out together, we can solve this problem.
I know this is an important issue to you, so I want to help
(21:59):
work this out or I'll pay attention.
Tell me more. I want to understand or, you
know, I respect the work you're doing.
I respect your relationship withour child.
I respect your time. These are words that calm people
down. Very easy to use.
(22:19):
It's just you have to overcome the urge to be angry back and it
takes practice. And we teach professionals this
a lot because professionals aren't as involved in the
conflict and are able to respondlike that, like a thyroid
sterile lawyer or a mediator. But we started teaching parents
(22:41):
this more because it's a tool. They really can calm their acts
down a little bit if they're having a discussion and they're
getting to be blaming or gettingangry or whatever.
So it's a verbal in real time discussion that you can calm the
(23:02):
other person down. We find you can calm people down
in 30 seconds once you get good at this method, but takes a
while to get good to take some practice.
It requires, I think, I mean correct me if I'm wrong, the
ability to step outside of the interaction, to not take it
personally. You know that someone else is
(23:23):
upset in the way something is affecting them and they're
coming at you isn't necessarily about you, even though you're
the recipient of it. And to be able to be able to see
yourself in that or to leave some possibility for that starts
to bring a lot of wiggle room and freedom that some people
(23:44):
could argue and say, you know, it's a luxury to think about
that. Not everyone's got, you know,
the ability. There's all sorts of excessive
intersectionality pieces that come into play at the end of the
day, you know, there's a lot of hard things going on for lots of
different people for lots of different reasons.
And a little bit of, you know, the empathy part is like, you
(24:04):
know, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, giving
each other a little bit of grace.
But I think more and more the scarcest resource of all, of all
that I hear you're really reinforcing is the time to be
with yourself, to think about your own understanding and
experience of what's going on sothat you don't feel like you're
(24:26):
being railroaded. Just slowing it down.
Yeah, that's what we find with this.
And also, if you just can't think of a your statement, don't
stress yourself about that. But it can calm people down,
especially to get used. And we encourage people to
practice this. And this is something that
(24:47):
people can practice with their therapist is pretend.
Yeah, this is how we practice. We do it role play two ways.
So first, let's say the client. Let's say I'm the client and
you're the therapist. And so first I would tell you
(25:07):
what the upsetting person would say to me, and then you can
respond within your statement and then we'll switch roles and
then I can practice that. So I say, you know, you're a
terrible parent. You're doing everything wrong.
And Bill, you know, you just so you just don't get it.
(25:29):
You know, you're so insensitive and and we've got to do
something about this soccer registration.
Right. And so, so I'm being criticized
live right then. So I'm telling you that's what
she'll say to me. I might say, you know, like
(25:50):
you're in this position where you're trying so hard to do the
best that you can and bring the best side of yourself forward to
raise this kid together. And it can just feel like in
that moment, that's not being seen.
OK, yeah, because she's saying, oh, we got to do something about
this soccer registration. You're a lousy.
(26:13):
Just give your, you know, I think I'd be like, just give
yourself a beat to like be OK with yourself.
You're doing the best that you can.
And then the the like are you are you asking like what I would
say about trying to help with? Facilitating the registration
I'm I'm let's call her name Anneso Anne's my ex and Anne
(26:36):
criticizing me and wants to get this soccer registration going
so she'll say it like this it's a live conversation so I'm.
Pretending 2 of them are together.
So what's that are? You saying the two of them are
together? They're on the phone.
Oh. OK, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
I didn't set this up very well. Yeah, no, I'm sorry.
I thought I was just with you. So pretend, no, pretend you're
(26:59):
me and that I'm Anne. So Anne saying these things.
So what do you think I should say back to Anne?
What would you suggest as my therapist?
What should I say? You're clearly man managing, you
know, you're the point person for getting everything set up
(27:20):
for this. And I can see that it's a lot.
And this is really frustrating when you haven't heard back from
me. Thanks for paying attention to
it. And I'm going to right now open
up my book and tell you the dates that work for me or when I
can get the payment to you. Excellent.
It's acknowledge it's getting the ego out of the way, right?
(27:40):
I don't defend myself. I know I haven't answered your
emails. I don't think I got more
important things to do. I'm just.
Going to know. OK, so now let's switch roles.
OK. So you be in and say those nasty
things to me and that you want to get this soccer thing
(28:01):
registration and I'll say something like what you just
said. OK, so I'd say, you know, I'm,
I'm tired of being the only one having to do this.
I'm the only one that looks after these things.
And then I'm waiting for you andwaiting for you and I can't get
anything going. It's just really, really
aggravating. Well, and you know, I can see
(28:21):
that, you know, it's hard being the point person on this and I
appreciate that you're doing that and I know that, that you
worry about these things. So I, I appreciate that and I, I
respect your efforts And I'll, I'll open up my e-mail right now
and find out what I need to do. So I can appreciate that.
(28:44):
Thank you for doing the hard work on this.
Wow. Do you have a new therapist, New
book? What is it?
Yeah, it completely diffuses it.I was going to say, pretending
you were in. How did your feelings change
when I responded that way? I mean, it's like a shock.
It's like, oh like it completelytake the fight out of someone
(29:06):
when you acknowledge that it's reasonable that they're upset
about something. Yeah, it's really because this
really happens and we we have these conversations, we help
clients have these conversationsin the nation.
I guide people to have these conversations.
And you're right. It's like the fight just drains
(29:27):
right out because it's like 2 people playing a tug of war and
there's mud and you're on both sides pulling the rope and it's
like you let go of the rope. It's like let go of the fight.
That's a great visual of lettinggo of the just letting, dropping
the fight like over the rope. I love that.
(29:48):
My other analogy is it's pouringcold water on the flames, like
splash. You know, I can understand.
Look at how hard you're working.Thank you for that.
What what gets in the way, like pride, unresolved stuff from the
relationship ending, all that kind of stuff.
People not wanting to feel like they're going to give in.
(30:09):
Yeah, I think our amygdala gets in the way.
Major fight. Yeah, people who you have to be
in the mindset, I guess what I'mtrying to say of of today and
forward not still wrapped up in everything that happened in the
past. Yeah.
And you don't need permission tobe in that mindset.
(30:29):
You don't need your ex to release you, figuratively
speaking, for you yourself to bein that mindset.
Right, exactly. That's the key that you can do
this without anybody else havingto do anything else.
You can do this if you're alone.You can do this if there's
people for support and encouragement.
(30:51):
Sure, that helps. But it not always going to have
that things are going to come upon your own.
You can turn the conversation. That's the thing that people
don't really realize. And I know a couple months ago I
was in an argument with a professional about some critical
comments and things, and I just felt really defensive.
(31:14):
And I realized I'm doing exactlywhat I teach my clients not to
do. It's like, no, you're wrong, you
know? And then, you know, I don't have
to fight about this. Right.
And this leads us to one more technique.
Right. And that's giving yourself
encouraging statements. And this is something that we
(31:38):
find real helpful teaching people so that when you're in a
conflict, you're playing, you'reencouraging statement to
yourself quietly. And my favorite one is it's not
about me when you know, when people are blaming and angry and
stuff, it's tough stuff that's going on for them.
(31:59):
And there's no situation where it's appropriate for someone to
just give a blast of anger at someone else and demeaning them
and shaming all. There's no, no justification for
that. That's not problem solving.
That's just venting, which we know doesn't work.
So having a defense in my own brain, being able to say, you
(32:21):
know, Bill, it's not about you. You don't have to engage in
this. This isn't about you.
And so having someone criticize me and I tell myself it's not
about you, Bill, it's not about you, Bill makes their voice not
as loud and makes my voice louder in my brain.
When you're talking about like real time in the moment of the
(32:43):
conflict, yeah, you could almostchange the contact of this
person's name in your phone to it's not about you.
So when they text you, because I'm a real like back to the
executive function piece, right?So you see that people get
triggered by the craziest things, like the minute you see
the text, like your phone buzzes.
And if you've been in this thing, the process has already
(33:04):
started. You're right.
From the amygdala to the physiological response, cortisol
flooding, higher thinking offline, right?
And for some people can recover in the moment.
For some people, it takes 48 hours.
For some people it takes two weeks.
We're always trying to reduce the interval for recovery,
soothing with other people over,you know, all the things that
(33:25):
you look at in your work as well, right?
But then I think we can give ourselves permission to do funny
things. So you know, it can go from
changing their contact name in your phone to, if that's what
pops up, some sort of parenthesis reminder, as long as
it doesn't show up texting on their end.
Yeah, just the theory. It's not about.
(33:46):
You. Yeah.
It's not about you, Bill, Eddie and my phone, right?
But it's it's important. Yeah, no, I agree.
And reminders we suggest people put like post it stickies in
their bathroom mirror. Absolutely.
Calls them one or two or three things.
It's not about me. I'm doing a good job.
(34:07):
I'll get through this. I've gotten through harder
things before. Yeah.
And those are probably three of the most popular ones.
Yeah. At first blush, this might sound
like we're talking about doing affirmations.
And to be clear, that's not whatthis what?
Yeah, this is quite a bit more specific than that because
you're not just doing it, you'redoing it in a moment of
(34:31):
emotional heightened, being heightened cognitively, you need
to perform, right. So there's a little bit of task
tension there in terms of remembering what what it does is
it reminds you to be in the roomin this communication instead of
completely centering the other person because because you know,
(34:52):
there's this like it's all aboutthem in that moment and you
forget everything that is important to you.
Even oftentimes people's own values about behaving in a way
that's more congruent with how they they want to behave in
general. And then something happens and
boom, it's all out the window, right?
So this is quite much more involved than doing an
affirmation. I think it's really important
(35:14):
what you're saying. Yeah, and it is.
You're right, it's situational, so something to use.
But the thing that surprised us is because we taught people to
do this, tell themselves encouraging statement while
someone's criticizing them. But what we didn't realize till
we did this many times teaching people is they go, you know, the
(35:36):
other person's voice isn't as loud when I'm doing that, and my
voice is louder and in my head. And so I don't get as triggered.
It's like, you know, OK, there'sthis voice saying these things,
but they're not powerful. And it's like let's solve the
problem. Emotional distance.
(35:59):
It's interesting. It's a brain science thing.
I think it's awesome, 100%. There's for sure like some
really cool neuroscience in this.
So I think that's really, reallyneat to, to layer that on top of
it. I, I, I guess I bring that stuff
up. I mean, maybe all therapist
wouldn't, some of them might. It's just that I find people
really like to understand why something is working in real
(36:22):
time in that moment. So I like kind of making those
connections with people as, as they describe things because I
think then that's, I think that also probably reassures people
because they're taking their nervous system out of my session
room back home with them. So if they know that they've got
all the tools, they don't need me, right?
So I think it, it also encourages independence from
(36:43):
therapy and from the therapist. Like you can do this without me
because you've got everything you need right underneath your
skin, right? People can train their brain to
some extent to do these things. The method, the ear statements,
a lot of it's practice. And that's what's good about
working with a therapist becauseyou can practice these things as
(37:05):
to who isn't going to yell at you.
You can practice and then you know when you deal with a person
who is yelling at you that they're being inappropriate, so
you already know how to respond.I've heard here in Toronto that
there is, and I don't know specifically which ones, that
there's family court judges thatmandate that your book be
(37:28):
purchased and bought whenever they have parents coming up to
them who are having conflicts about they can't, they can't
finalize their parenting order, all those kinds of things.
So it must be pretty cool to hear that, right?
Oh yeah? Well, it's interesting because
over the last 1012 years I've spoke probably spoken to judges
in Toronto and some Ontario widejudicial conferences probably 3
(37:54):
or 4 times. So a lot of them are familiar
with this stuff. And I, I used to know the, the
chief supervising judge for family law for Ontario, I
believe it was, I think he's retired.
But it's, the idea is they really want to help people.
(38:16):
And people think of court as a place where the judge decides
who's the bad guy. And judges don't see themselves
that way. They want to be someone that
helps solve problems. And so that's really their
orientation. Yeah, it may not feel fair to
the parties, right? Because you're coming in not to
(38:39):
just discuss the matter at hand.They're coming in with the
entire history of the injusticesthey've suffered to that point.
And the judge doesn't necessarily see that, nor do
they want to see it. I think, to be fair, they don't
want to get involved in all thatstuff.
They just want to deal with the matter at hand.
And I think that's the place where people walk away feeling
(39:01):
like this was not an awesome experience.
Right. Well, the structure of court is
a plaintiff and a defendant, andno one wants to be a defendant.
So that's the idea is they want some help and need some help,
especially going forward. But court tends to focus on the
(39:24):
past and making decisions about the past, and that's not what
families need. They need tools for moving
forward so the problems in the past don't keep happening.
Whether? It's child.
Abuse, domestic violence, alienation, substance abuse,
whatever it is, let's get this on a good path so we don't have
(39:46):
problems going forward. And I think a lot of the judges
really have that approach and I give them a lot of credit for
that. Is this a good lead in to tell
us about something that's upcoming which is slick
solutions? Yes.
Tell us about that and what thatstands for because we love the
acronyms. It is the newest method and the
(40:07):
newest book. In fact, we're finishing writing
it right now and hope to have itby the end of the year.
So here's the title, Slick SLIC Solutions to Conflict, and the
subtitle is Setting Limits. That's the SL and imposing
(40:27):
consequences. That's the IC in 2 1/2 steps.
Now this is going to get people's curiosity.
What's the half step? So I'll call you, tell you
briefly. So the first step is setting
your limit, thinking about what does my limit need to be?
(40:49):
You can't talk to me that way. You can't use those words with
me. That's setting the limit.
A lot of people just stop there.And if they have a high conflict
X, the X says, well, I'll talk to you anyway I want.
And they keep insulting, criticizing, whatever imposing
(41:09):
consequences. If you keep talking to me like
that, I'm going to end this conversation.
And they keep talking like that.OK, I see you've chosen to end
the conversation. Goodbye.
Let's talk when you're ready to talk civil way and hang up.
So that's setting the limit and imposing the consequence.
(41:30):
I think the thing that you just,there's a subtle thing.
I just want to point it out because it's really cool.
So it's not like you just set the limit and then you've kind
of either said to yourself or said a little bit ambiguously.
If you keep talking to me like that, I'm going to hang up.
So you're still talking. I'm going to hang up.
What you actually said was I cansee you've chosen to ignore the
(41:55):
limit. So stating what you observe
rather than getting engaged withthe emotion is like a really
important diffusion technique that we learn and like, you
know, conflict courses and academic settings and stuff like
that. I did like an undergrad in peace
and conflict studies. So I'm a little bit familiar,
(42:16):
but you could almost miss it. So that's why I just wanted to
point it out. It's a really important nuance
is that you, it's not that you just you performed your
consequence. You said I can see this is
what's happening there for if A then B, right?
Yeah, exactly. It's like you chose to continue
(42:37):
violating my limit, so I'm goingto hang up.
It's like it's showing that so the other person can't blame
you. I mean, they can try, but it's
it's not that you just hung up. You hung up because they kept
violating your limit and so theyhad a responsibility.
(42:58):
So let me give an quick example with this.
I, I think of this case as one of the easiest ones for me to
remember is I was representing awoman with two children whose
victim, survivor of domestic violence and her soon to be
ex-husband didn't have a lawyer.So he he could call me up to
(43:21):
negotiate things on her behalf. And so I always encouraged him,
you know, be better if you had alawyer, but he'd say you tell
that blankety blank, blank wife of mine that she better do such
and such. And I said, if you keep talking
that way, I'm going to hang up. You can't talk about my client
that way. Oh yes, I can.
(43:42):
I can say whatever I want, blah,blah, blah.
All right, you've chosen for me to hang up.
So goodbye. But before I hung up, I said,
but I want to work with you. So call me back when you're
ready to talk civilly goodbye. And that's the half.
So the half is give him an ear statement, setting the limit and
(44:06):
imposing the consequence. So it's like, I want to work
with you, empathy, respect, I want to work with you.
Now we call it the half step because half the time you want
to say that, but half the time it may not fit the situation.
The other person may just to be really manipulative and you
(44:31):
don't want to put energy into softening it.
You want to really firm with your limit.
And sometimes people are too nice, they're too focused on.
I don't want to upset you, but please stop doing what you're
doing. And The thing is, just be firm.
This is my limit. This is the consequence.
Well, that's not fair. This is the consequence.
(44:54):
Well, you know, you're not a nice person.
This is the consequence. So you don't engage in an ear
statement probably about half the time because half the
situations you're in, you're being manipulated and you don't
want them to manipulate you. So that's why we call it 2 1/2
steps. I think that's great.
(45:15):
It's nice to really have that specific framework and thank you
for sharing the example. I think the place where a lot of
people, where our worlds kind ofintersect is when people are
aware that either their partner or their parent or whoever the
other person is that they're in conflict with has a mental
illness or a mental health issue, They feel like they have
(45:36):
to accommodate for that. And so sometimes in therapy we
talk about, again, this is an interpersonal therapy technique,
understanding your role in a relationship.
So you're not that person's therapist.
So the way the relationship you have with your therapist is not
going to be the same relationship you have with other
people in your life. And you can't expect it to be,
(45:57):
you know, you're just working with the civilians out there,
right? So if I'm trying to help
somebody that's over accommodating and that
constantly let's the limit be bypassed because they're wishy
washy, it's because they're like, well, this person has this
issue and therefore that's what makes them act like that.
Therefore like they think they're not justified in
(46:20):
continuing to have a limit. It's a real problem.
Yeah. And that's the thing.
We want to give people kind of abackbone for setting limits and
that it's OK and you can do it with empathy, attention and
respect when that's appropriate.But you don't have to do that
where that isn't really appropriate, where you really
(46:40):
just need firm and don't let yourself get manipulated.
That's a really important piece though, right, Is that you
actually can choose a level of compassion and empathy that you
can share. But having it for yourself is
the ultimate demonstration to anybody you're in a relationship
with of what that should look like.
(47:02):
Doesn't mean you don't love somebody.
Doesn't mean you don't care. Means you have respect for
yourself too. Yeah, and actually setting
limits can be a caring thing, especially like with kids.
It's like this will help to learn this behavior is
unacceptable because if you do that here at home and you're
going to do that in public, it'snot going to go very well for
(47:25):
you. Yeah, if, if a then B thing is
like really popular. And in my world in parenting,
you know, it's, it's like choosing your battles with your
kids, being in the proper role. You're the parent, you're not
their friend. You're there to parent them.
And you know, it's like, yes, wecan absolutely go to the park as
(47:45):
soon as your room's clean. So do that whenever you want to
do it. But but that's happening first.
So just come, come, let me know,right, Rather than you must
clean your room now in the next 10 minutes.
Otherwise you're we're not goinganywhere ever again where you're
losing all your privileges. There's a really different
message to a headstrong kit, right?
(48:06):
Right. And part of what you just said
is you're kind of giving them a choice.
Yes, With high conflict people, adults as well as with kids, if
they have a choice, then they have to think it through.
They have to make a decision, which is if you just tell them
what to do, what you do have to do sometimes, but you just tell
(48:28):
them what to do with adult high conflict people, they'll fight
you on it if you say you have a choice.
I'm trying to help you out here.You could do choice A or choice
B. It's up to you, but only choice
B gets me to go to the park withyou.
Right, absolutely. That's absolutely it.
(48:49):
Thank you so much. This is amazing.
I'm going to like link all of these resources in the previous
books because I actually linked on our website now as
recommended books for people, but I'll make sure I put them in
the show notes. And you said Slick Solutions was
coming out towards the end of this year.
Yeah. It should be November, December,
(49:09):
right around that. And what they can do is sign up
for our newsletter at highcomplet.com and the
newsletter we announced new books, new trainings, etcetera.
That is so amazing. Any like last minute takeaways
that you have for audience, which is both clinicians and lay
(49:32):
people alike interested in all things related to adult mental
health, ADHD in particular, relationships, parenting, all
that kind of stuff. There's, there's so many things,
but I guess one of the biggest things is get support and
encouragement for yourself. So much of this, this is a
different world view in terms ofproblems need problem solving
(49:56):
skills and we're stuck so much. The larger culture is so busy
blaming and complaining and venting, which doesn't really
help. It's so much about skills.
So I'd say that's really what we're into.
Simple skills that can be learned and used with each
other, used with kids, used at work, all of these settings.
(50:20):
It's a, it's a perfect world view from the current culture of
blame and drama and all of that.So that's important
encouragement for being positiverather than getting stuck in the
negativity that's out there. Yeah, you're making me think of
game theory and win, win versus there's only probably be like 1
(50:41):
winner. Like everything is so black and
white and so polarized these days.
And I think when people start tocompromise, they feel like
they're sacrificing something really important of themselves.
So I don't hear you talking about sacrificing your core
values or something because you probably don't have a core
value. That's about fighting, you know,
or never giving in, but appealing to other things that
(51:05):
you want to be able to be intentional to direct your life
towards. And this this precious amount of
time we have on this earth, do we want to be, you know, digging
in and fighting and what upmanship?
Or do we want to put something where it belongs so we can get
to the rest of everything else right?
I totally agree and I like what you said.
(51:25):
It's really a win win approach. All the goals are to create win
win interactions and with someone who thinks that you
can't have that, someone who thinks they have to win and I
have to lose, I can turn that around into win win.
And people are happier in win win relationships so.
(51:47):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Thank you so much for coming andfor giving of your time for the
audience. We're very grateful and that
we're going to look for that newbook when it's out at the end of
the year. Thanks so much Christine, I
really enjoy being on with you and encourage you and all your
good work. Thank you.
Welcome to the Christina Crow podcast where we connect the
dots and search for more balanced mental health.
Today your host psychotherapist Christina Crow that's me is
talking to Mr. Bill Eddie, the Co founder and training director
at the High Conflict Institute. Bill Eddie is an attorney,
therapist, mediator, and director of Innovation for the
(00:30):
High Conflict Institute based inArizona and California.
He's trained professionals in managing high conflict
personalities worldwide in over 40 States and 14 countries.
He's the author of several booksincluding Mediating High
Conflict Disputes, High ConflictPeople in Legal Disputes, BIFF
for Co Parent Communication, andBIFF for Lawyers and Law
(00:51):
Offices. He's the developer of the New
Ways for Family Skills training method for High Conflict
parents, the new Ways for Mediation method for high
conflict disputes, and the New Ways for Work coaching method
for difficult employees. He served on the adjunct faculty
of the Strauss Institute of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine
(01:12):
University School of Law for 16 years and he is the Co host of
the podcast It's All Your Fault with Megan Hunter.
His website is www.highconflictinstitute.com.
Welcome to the show Mr. Hedy. I'm so thrilled to have you
here. Thank you, Christina.
I'm really glad to be on. And you can call me Bill.
(01:34):
I will, I will as as I gushed before when we were just kind of
speaking, you know, I've been following your work for quite
some time now as a psychotherapist to works.
There's an intersection with thestandard emotional dysregulation
and hard things that come with having ADHD treated at various
(01:55):
levels, right? Sometimes it's well treated,
sometimes it's not well treated.And it takes this ongoing
ability to self monitor and workwith people and work with
yourself through that. That being said, there's a lot
of people who are undiagnosed even.
And Russell Barkley, who's a researcher and really well known
psychologist in our field, says where are all the undiagnosed
(02:17):
people hiding? And one of the things he says is
in family court, right? And having worked with people
who are in high conflict divorces and in really not great
Co parenting ways of communicating, I'm often looking
for expertise that goes far beyond my scope to help us out.
(02:38):
And I found the BIFF method and a few of the other algorithmic
methods that are incredibly helpful because they're simple
and they're easy to understand. I just wonder if you can tell us
a little bit about the development of all that.
How'd you end up doing this? Well, it's interesting.
It started out as a social worker and working with children
(02:59):
and families. And I became a therapist
starting in 1980 with a child guidance clinic here in San
Diego where I'm based. And as I worked with families
over the next dozen years, a lotof them had legal issues,
whether it was a divorce or a teenager was in trouble.
(03:19):
And then juvenile court system, things like that.
And I learned about mediation and solving people's disputes
out of court. And I thought that'd be
interesting and got involved with mediating disputes, but
there really wasn't jobs in that.
And so I saw lawyers were starting to do mediation, so I
(03:42):
decided to go to law school. So graduated in 1992.
And because of my family counseling background, I decided
to focus on family law and divorce mediation.
But I figured I need to go to court for a couple years to
practice, get familiar with thatso I can tell families what
(04:05):
would happen in court. Well, I found that my background
was perfect for family court andsince I had the mental health
training and was dealing with issues, substance abuse, child
abuse, personality disorders, etcetera.
And some ADHD seems to be show up there and people really
(04:29):
needing skills and realizing, you know, it's it's stop
pointing fingers and give peopleskills.
And so that's what kind of led me to starting to write about
high conflict cases and methods for managing high conflict cases
for professionals, but also for parents going through divorce
(04:52):
process with another, with a partner.
They call these themselves. As my colleague Megan Hunter
likes to say, people have different operating systems.
One's better than another, but they're different.
We need to have methods that work with the different
operating systems. So that's kind of how I got
(05:15):
going. I saw all this happening in
family court. I took cases for 15 years in
family court and then another 15years in mediation.
So I kind of slowly start developing all this stuff to
take a problem solving approach instead of a blaming approach,
which is very tempting but doesn't really help a lot.
(05:37):
It doesn't deal with the emotional stuff, right?
I've often said it's so difficult that when it comes to
having these really hard, hard conflicts in our relationships
that ultimately if we can't workthem out and it crosses over
into stuff we shouldn't be doingor stuff that's hurting other
(05:59):
people. The mechanism we have in our
world to deal with that is actually the law and court and
people who are strangers and don't know us.
And what the law is concerned about is not necessarily having
you leave that interaction feeling better.
It's doing what they deem to be the right thing or from what
they can see in their slice of this situation.
(06:21):
This is the way to move forward,to diffuse, to manage the
dispute, to come up with some sort of compromise, which is
it's like functional, it helps you move forward, but it doesn't
deal with any of the emotion that is like in a text message,
20 years of history with somebody.
How do you keep that from from derailing Everything that you're
(06:43):
doing is you're trying to createa new future or a new way of
communicating together. And so thank you for that
background that you shared, because then when I found your
book that explained the BIFF method to me and the ear method
as well, maybe I'll get you to explain both.
I thought, oh, this is the most incredible thing and, and it has
(07:03):
been truly, I implemented in lots of different ways, but it's
been, it's been pretty awesome to have that as a tool.
Excellent. Yeah, we find the BIFF method is
our most popular method and we think actually over a million
people are now using it from ourbooks, our trainings, our code,
(07:24):
all of that. And that everyone that learns
BIFF tends to teach at least oneother person so.
I can teach as many people as I can.
We got more than one man, so it really helps, kind of helps you
restrain yourself a little bit by thinking through what you're
writing. We have a checklist, we have 10
(07:47):
questions you can ask yourself. And basically just keeping it
brief, informative, friendly andfirm.
Usually just a paragraph just calms a lot of conversations
instead of sending them up into outer space with the conflict
and more conflict so things calmer.
(08:08):
Yeah. So brief, informative, friendly
and firm and your message reply to somebody, be it a text or an
e-mail or a verbal communicationor how you bring yourself to a
situation, it kept that's like alot of stuff to distill down or
filter out in any given communication.
So it's not that anyone can necessarily be good at this
(08:31):
right away. It takes a lot of practice.
Exactly, and the more you practice it, the easier you get.
So let me give you a quick example.
So you get an e-mail from your Co parent.
Let's say it's a divorce case and you've got a 10 year old
child and the other parent says you're so irresponsible you
(08:52):
never share information about what's going on.
I don't even know what time the school play is tomorrow.
And if you were more responsible, we would keep track
of all these things. And our poor son or daughter is
just caught in the middle of this and it's all your fault.
(09:12):
How do you respond to that? Right.
Only one thing in there you needto respond to.
And that is what time is the school play tomorrow?
So a biff response might be, youknow, thanks for telling me your
concerns. The play starts at 3:00 tomorrow
(09:33):
in the auditorium at the school.Hope to see you there.
You know, that's it or something.
There's no need to respond to every single thing that was
thrown out there. You.
Don't have to prove anything to the other person and sometimes
you get like 2 pages of angry stuff and your response might
(09:58):
just be a paragraph. Who, what, when and where.
No arguments, insults, defenses,all that stuff.
By keeping it focused on information, you kind of step
above the battleground. You start looking at the
process. And if your emails end up in
court and today's more emails and texts end up in court,
(10:21):
you're going to look like you stepped above the conflict.
You didn't get down in the mud, and you're going to look better
when you do that. So if for no other reason, it'll
make you look good. Yeah, it's so interesting to me.
I'll take you into my world of working with adults with ADHD,
right? So, so emotional impulsivity and
(10:44):
our higher thinking going offline at the moment of
something that's close to the chest being a trigger, like
criticizing the kind of mother Iam, for example, in the example
that you used, because of the neurobiological piece, we're
not, this is like bottom up behavior.
We're not talking about the ability to think clearly and
regulate that first whoosh of emotion and physiological
(11:06):
response that happens is what necessarily makes it more
difficult to do something logical in that moment or even
think through. Holy geez, of all of those
things that that parent put out in that text message, like for
to 0 in on the one thing I should respond to is actually
quite difficult. And so one of the things, and so
one of the therapies I practice is in a personal psychotherapy.
(11:29):
There's a component of that called communication analysis.
And in communication analysis, we, we were quite thoughtful
about what it is we want to communicate.
And then how do we choose to communicate?
How do we set up the communication?
How do we set up the communication that is best for
both ourselves and the receiver,which is really difficult to do
(11:51):
in text messaging. I mean, traditionally, probably
the model is set up to look at it in real life, right?
You're in the same room with theperson you want to have a tough
conversation with. And so you know, I'm going with
the flow, right? Like of what what our world is
doing, what people need in the moment.
And one of the things that's been really interesting to do
and, and I'll probably insert a caveat at the top of the show
(12:14):
about relative confidentiality and and mindfulness about using
ChatGPT or AI tools. There's quite a few that do it.
But one of the things that's really interesting is ChatGPT
knows how to biff already. So if you ask ChatGPT Biff a
response to this text message and you copy and paste the text
messaging, you know you're not including any identifying
(12:34):
details and all that kind of stuff.
It immediately becomes very clear what a non a response
where you take the emotion out of the response versus what you
would have said out. And it's not like you have to
pull out your phone and Chat GPTA response all the time,
because in that moment, your brain sees it and understands
(12:56):
it, like the beauty of neuroplasticity.
So when you practice doing that,either with your therapist in
the moment, being able to stay regulated and look at a process,
not take it personally. And and just like you did, zero
in on the one thing I need to respond to, then the rest of the
the biffing can happen. It can flow, right?
(13:18):
So I'm dealing with the part that comes right before that.
And I just, it is such a beautiful thing to show people
because people learn so much about themselves and how they
communicate and how their messages must be landing versus
what their intention is. Yeah, let me say a few things
about that, because GPT is creating some issues for us.
(13:42):
First of all, they never asked if they could use our method and
teach it, so we don't. We're not.
Irritated with them? Of course not same same here all
my methods. Let's get more practical.
So they're out there, they're going to exist.
Yep. So what I encourage people to do
is to get themselves used to a process.
(14:07):
The first thing, and it can be fun, is if you can print out the
message and then cross out everything.
You don't have to respond to yes, See what's left.
So the text or e-mail that I described, there's one sentence,
what time is the school play tomorrow and everything else.
And it's actually kind of fun crossing out all this stuff that
(14:31):
I don't have. To I'm.
Sure. And then when you look at that
one sentence with that question,it's not as triggering.
It would slow people down quite a bit.
And it's fun. It's fun crossing out the other
person's nasty sentences 100. Percent.
Takes away all their power. So then we encourage people to
(14:53):
write. Try to write your own BIFF and
then ask yourself 10 questions first.
Is it brief? Is it informative?
Is it friendly? Is it firm?
Does it contain any advice? Because we call it the AAA's
because we're not asking for your advice.
You know, if I responded to thate-mail or text with no, let me
(15:16):
tell you who's the one that's being stupid here.
So no advice, no admonishments. Like you should know better than
to write that way things. That's an admonishment.
No apologies, because when you apologize to someone who's angry
with you like this, they are notuse it as ammunition against
(15:38):
you. See, you said it's all your
fault. No, I didn't say it's all my
fault. I'm said I'm sorry for this tiny
little thing. But better not to put apologies
in a biff response then. How do you think the other
person's going to respond then? Is there anything now I would
take out or change? And then is there anybody else I
(15:58):
want to look at it before I sendit out?
That way you teach yourself so you don't have to rely on
ChatGPT if you really want to gothrough that process and then
look at what ChatGPT would say. But the problem is ChatGPT gives
you the average of the whole Internet of how to respond with
(16:23):
a BIFF to this e-mail. It doesn't know the other
person, It doesn't know the larger context, doesn't know the
history. So your response is actually
going to be more specific than Chat GPTS.
So that's why I am to try to really learn the method so that
(16:47):
if you look at ChatGPT, you don't rely on it.
I think there's another. So that's a long response, but.
It is. I think that's absolutely the
way to go because I, and so the first place I found which I'll
link it in the show notes if youguys still have them, is on your
website. You guys actually do have
downloadable worksheets that people can use for a model,
(17:11):
right? Yeah, we have an article that
describes this as an example. So isn't exactly a worksheet,
but we have like 100 articles for our techniques and then we
have the books and the book BIFFfor Co parent communication has
I think 30 examples of, you know, doctor's appointments,
(17:34):
dance lessons, football games, changing the schedule, holidays,
birthdays, all the things peoplecould have upset communication
about and gives examples of how not to do it and then how to do
it. So you kind of get used to the
method and it makes it more routine and it also gives
(17:56):
samples is there? Is you know how there's apps for
Co parents to use to track theirspending and communications?
Is there one that incorporates these methods?
There's different apps we actually coordinate with our
family wizard. OK, that was the one I was.
Saying, actually we're in discussions with them right now
(18:18):
about how to use the BIFF methodwithin their app, so they're
looking at that. That would be really useful.
Ideally, I agree with you like the way you know when we know
that when you write something pen to paper you process it on a
deeper level, you learn it on a deeper level.
So I mean, we know those things and it just becomes the place
(18:39):
where the willingness of people to slow down long enough to give
themselves the time to dedicatedto this.
And I, you know, at the end of the day, it's high conflict
already because there's already stuff happening.
So it's not like every run-of-the-mill divorce.
There's already barriers in place for whatever reason to
make it difficult for people to do these things.
(19:00):
I'm kind of a fan of like experientially understanding the
what's in it for you and being able to provide that example
with a client in session and then when they leave, being able
to remember and find a way to access that right.
It's it, it can be very difficult.
And you know, in the olden days when we only had therapy in
(19:21):
person and if I was going to give somebody a handout or a
take away, I would do it. I would be handing them like a
piece of paper they could hold and shove in their briefcase
with her purse. And now you've got to log into
your account and find your placeand download it.
Not everyone, apparently not everyone has a printer these
days, right? So because, you know, like,
(19:43):
there's actually very little youneed to print anymore.
And so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm always trying to find ways to
make these things accessible. But going through these basic
principles, there's something just so helpful about even the
permission that you actually don't need to respond to.
Everything in this message is really important for people to
(20:04):
hear. Right.
And I think because Biff is easyto to remember BIFF that it's
like, oh, I've got to Biff this person.
Oh brief, that's right. I got to be brief, maybe a
paragraph that it's, it's not that hard to bring back up even
under stress. That's why all of these are
(20:25):
short. All of these are short and
simple methods. So.
Tell us about EAR. So EAR, EAR is your statements.
Biff is generally for writing, although you take that approach
in a conversation. EAR is really designed for a
live conversation, whether it's on on the virtual like this or
(20:50):
or in person or over the phone. The idea is to make a statement
that shows empathy, shows that you'll pay attention, and shows
that you have respect for the other person.
Now, this may be the opposite ofwhat you're feeling at the
moment, 100%. But if you can can get used to
(21:14):
thinking of a statement that shows like empathy, like
somebody's really frustrated andthey're getting ready to blame
you, or maybe they're not getting ready to blaming you.
You know, Bill, it's all your fault.
And rather than saying no, it's not, it's your fault, is instead
saying, wow, you know, I can seehow important that issue is to
(21:36):
you. And I know this is a hard time
and let's talk about what we cando.
You know, So my response, ratherthan fighting back is like
connecting with them. It's like, hey, let's work this
out together, we can solve this problem.
I know this is an important issue to you, so I want to help
(21:59):
work this out or I'll pay attention.
Tell me more. I want to understand or, you
know, I respect the work you're doing.
I respect your relationship withour child.
I respect your time. These are words that calm people
down. Very easy to use.
(22:19):
It's just you have to overcome the urge to be angry back and it
takes practice. And we teach professionals this
a lot because professionals aren't as involved in the
conflict and are able to respondlike that, like a thyroid
sterile lawyer or a mediator. But we started teaching parents
(22:41):
this more because it's a tool. They really can calm their acts
down a little bit if they're having a discussion and they're
getting to be blaming or gettingangry or whatever.
So it's a verbal in real time discussion that you can calm the
(23:02):
other person down. We find you can calm people down
in 30 seconds once you get good at this method, but takes a
while to get good to take some practice.
It requires, I think, I mean correct me if I'm wrong, the
ability to step outside of the interaction, to not take it
personally. You know that someone else is
(23:23):
upset in the way something is affecting them and they're
coming at you isn't necessarily about you, even though you're
the recipient of it. And to be able to be able to see
yourself in that or to leave some possibility for that starts
to bring a lot of wiggle room and freedom that some people
(23:44):
could argue and say, you know, it's a luxury to think about
that. Not everyone's got, you know,
the ability. There's all sorts of excessive
intersectionality pieces that come into play at the end of the
day, you know, there's a lot of hard things going on for lots of
different people for lots of different reasons.
And a little bit of, you know, the empathy part is like, you
(24:04):
know, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, giving
each other a little bit of grace.
But I think more and more the scarcest resource of all, of all
that I hear you're really reinforcing is the time to be
with yourself, to think about your own understanding and
experience of what's going on sothat you don't feel like you're
(24:26):
being railroaded. Just slowing it down.
Yeah, that's what we find with this.
And also, if you just can't think of a your statement, don't
stress yourself about that. But it can calm people down,
especially to get used. And we encourage people to
practice this. And this is something that
(24:47):
people can practice with their therapist is pretend.
Yeah, this is how we practice. We do it role play two ways.
So first, let's say the client. Let's say I'm the client and
you're the therapist. And so first I would tell you
(25:07):
what the upsetting person would say to me, and then you can
respond within your statement and then we'll switch roles and
then I can practice that. So I say, you know, you're a
terrible parent. You're doing everything wrong.
And Bill, you know, you just so you just don't get it.
(25:29):
You know, you're so insensitive and and we've got to do
something about this soccer registration.
Right. And so, so I'm being criticized
live right then. So I'm telling you that's what
she'll say to me. I might say, you know, like
(25:50):
you're in this position where you're trying so hard to do the
best that you can and bring the best side of yourself forward to
raise this kid together. And it can just feel like in
that moment, that's not being seen.
OK, yeah, because she's saying, oh, we got to do something about
this soccer registration. You're a lousy.
(26:13):
Just give your, you know, I think I'd be like, just give
yourself a beat to like be OK with yourself.
You're doing the best that you can.
And then the the like are you are you asking like what I would
say about trying to help with? Facilitating the registration
I'm I'm let's call her name Anneso Anne's my ex and Anne
(26:36):
criticizing me and wants to get this soccer registration going
so she'll say it like this it's a live conversation so I'm.
Pretending 2 of them are together.
So what's that are? You saying the two of them are
together? They're on the phone.
Oh. OK, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
I didn't set this up very well. Yeah, no, I'm sorry.
I thought I was just with you. So pretend, no, pretend you're
(26:59):
me and that I'm Anne. So Anne saying these things.
So what do you think I should say back to Anne?
What would you suggest as my therapist?
What should I say? You're clearly man managing, you
know, you're the point person for getting everything set up
(27:20):
for this. And I can see that it's a lot.
And this is really frustrating when you haven't heard back from
me. Thanks for paying attention to
it. And I'm going to right now open
up my book and tell you the dates that work for me or when I
can get the payment to you. Excellent.
It's acknowledge it's getting the ego out of the way, right?
(27:40):
I don't defend myself. I know I haven't answered your
emails. I don't think I got more
important things to do. I'm just.
Going to know. OK, so now let's switch roles.
OK. So you be in and say those nasty
things to me and that you want to get this soccer thing
(28:01):
registration and I'll say something like what you just
said. OK, so I'd say, you know, I'm,
I'm tired of being the only one having to do this.
I'm the only one that looks after these things.
And then I'm waiting for you andwaiting for you and I can't get
anything going. It's just really, really
aggravating. Well, and you know, I can see
(28:21):
that, you know, it's hard being the point person on this and I
appreciate that you're doing that and I know that, that you
worry about these things. So I, I appreciate that and I, I
respect your efforts And I'll, I'll open up my e-mail right now
and find out what I need to do. So I can appreciate that.
(28:44):
Thank you for doing the hard work on this.
Wow. Do you have a new therapist, New
book? What is it?
Yeah, it completely diffuses it.I was going to say, pretending
you were in. How did your feelings change
when I responded that way? I mean, it's like a shock.
It's like, oh like it completelytake the fight out of someone
(29:06):
when you acknowledge that it's reasonable that they're upset
about something. Yeah, it's really because this
really happens and we we have these conversations, we help
clients have these conversationsin the nation.
I guide people to have these conversations.
And you're right. It's like the fight just drains
(29:27):
right out because it's like 2 people playing a tug of war and
there's mud and you're on both sides pulling the rope and it's
like you let go of the rope. It's like let go of the fight.
That's a great visual of lettinggo of the just letting, dropping
the fight like over the rope. I love that.
(29:48):
My other analogy is it's pouringcold water on the flames, like
splash. You know, I can understand.
Look at how hard you're working.Thank you for that.
What what gets in the way, like pride, unresolved stuff from the
relationship ending, all that kind of stuff.
People not wanting to feel like they're going to give in.
(30:09):
Yeah, I think our amygdala gets in the way.
Major fight. Yeah, people who you have to be
in the mindset, I guess what I'mtrying to say of of today and
forward not still wrapped up in everything that happened in the
past. Yeah.
And you don't need permission tobe in that mindset.
(30:29):
You don't need your ex to release you, figuratively
speaking, for you yourself to bein that mindset.
Right, exactly. That's the key that you can do
this without anybody else havingto do anything else.
You can do this if you're alone.You can do this if there's
people for support and encouragement.
(30:51):
Sure, that helps. But it not always going to have
that things are going to come upon your own.
You can turn the conversation. That's the thing that people
don't really realize. And I know a couple months ago I
was in an argument with a professional about some critical
comments and things, and I just felt really defensive.
(31:14):
And I realized I'm doing exactlywhat I teach my clients not to
do. It's like, no, you're wrong, you
know? And then, you know, I don't have
to fight about this. Right.
And this leads us to one more technique.
Right. And that's giving yourself
encouraging statements. And this is something that we
(31:38):
find real helpful teaching people so that when you're in a
conflict, you're playing, you'reencouraging statement to
yourself quietly. And my favorite one is it's not
about me when you know, when people are blaming and angry and
stuff, it's tough stuff that's going on for them.
(31:59):
And there's no situation where it's appropriate for someone to
just give a blast of anger at someone else and demeaning them
and shaming all. There's no, no justification for
that. That's not problem solving.
That's just venting, which we know doesn't work.
So having a defense in my own brain, being able to say, you
(32:21):
know, Bill, it's not about you. You don't have to engage in
this. This isn't about you.
And so having someone criticize me and I tell myself it's not
about you, Bill, it's not about you, Bill makes their voice not
as loud and makes my voice louder in my brain.
When you're talking about like real time in the moment of the
(32:43):
conflict, yeah, you could almostchange the contact of this
person's name in your phone to it's not about you.
So when they text you, because I'm a real like back to the
executive function piece, right?So you see that people get
triggered by the craziest things, like the minute you see
the text, like your phone buzzes.
And if you've been in this thing, the process has already
(33:04):
started. You're right.
From the amygdala to the physiological response, cortisol
flooding, higher thinking offline, right?
And for some people can recover in the moment.
For some people, it takes 48 hours.
For some people it takes two weeks.
We're always trying to reduce the interval for recovery,
soothing with other people over,you know, all the things that
(33:25):
you look at in your work as well, right?
But then I think we can give ourselves permission to do funny
things. So you know, it can go from
changing their contact name in your phone to, if that's what
pops up, some sort of parenthesis reminder, as long as
it doesn't show up texting on their end.
Yeah, just the theory. It's not about.
(33:46):
You. Yeah.
It's not about you, Bill, Eddie and my phone, right?
But it's it's important. Yeah, no, I agree.
And reminders we suggest people put like post it stickies in
their bathroom mirror. Absolutely.
Calls them one or two or three things.
It's not about me. I'm doing a good job.
(34:07):
I'll get through this. I've gotten through harder
things before. Yeah.
And those are probably three of the most popular ones.
Yeah. At first blush, this might sound
like we're talking about doing affirmations.
And to be clear, that's not whatthis what?
Yeah, this is quite a bit more specific than that because
you're not just doing it, you'redoing it in a moment of
(34:31):
emotional heightened, being heightened cognitively, you need
to perform, right. So there's a little bit of task
tension there in terms of remembering what what it does is
it reminds you to be in the roomin this communication instead of
completely centering the other person because because you know,
(34:52):
there's this like it's all aboutthem in that moment and you
forget everything that is important to you.
Even oftentimes people's own values about behaving in a way
that's more congruent with how they they want to behave in
general. And then something happens and
boom, it's all out the window, right?
So this is quite much more involved than doing an
affirmation. I think it's really important
(35:14):
what you're saying. Yeah, and it is.
You're right, it's situational, so something to use.
But the thing that surprised us is because we taught people to
do this, tell themselves encouraging statement while
someone's criticizing them. But what we didn't realize till
we did this many times teaching people is they go, you know, the
(35:36):
other person's voice isn't as loud when I'm doing that, and my
voice is louder and in my head. And so I don't get as triggered.
It's like, you know, OK, there'sthis voice saying these things,
but they're not powerful. And it's like let's solve the
problem. Emotional distance.
(35:59):
It's interesting. It's a brain science thing.
I think it's awesome, 100%. There's for sure like some
really cool neuroscience in this.
So I think that's really, reallyneat to, to layer that on top of
it. I, I, I guess I bring that stuff
up. I mean, maybe all therapist
wouldn't, some of them might. It's just that I find people
really like to understand why something is working in real
(36:22):
time in that moment. So I like kind of making those
connections with people as, as they describe things because I
think then that's, I think that also probably reassures people
because they're taking their nervous system out of my session
room back home with them. So if they know that they've got
all the tools, they don't need me, right?
So I think it, it also encourages independence from
(36:43):
therapy and from the therapist. Like you can do this without me
because you've got everything you need right underneath your
skin, right? People can train their brain to
some extent to do these things. The method, the ear statements,
a lot of it's practice. And that's what's good about
working with a therapist becauseyou can practice these things as
(37:05):
to who isn't going to yell at you.
You can practice and then you know when you deal with a person
who is yelling at you that they're being inappropriate, so
you already know how to respond.I've heard here in Toronto that
there is, and I don't know specifically which ones, that
there's family court judges thatmandate that your book be
(37:28):
purchased and bought whenever they have parents coming up to
them who are having conflicts about they can't, they can't
finalize their parenting order, all those kinds of things.
So it must be pretty cool to hear that, right?
Oh yeah? Well, it's interesting because
over the last 1012 years I've spoke probably spoken to judges
in Toronto and some Ontario widejudicial conferences probably 3
(37:54):
or 4 times. So a lot of them are familiar
with this stuff. And I, I used to know the, the
chief supervising judge for family law for Ontario, I
believe it was, I think he's retired.
But it's, the idea is they really want to help people.
(38:16):
And people think of court as a place where the judge decides
who's the bad guy. And judges don't see themselves
that way. They want to be someone that
helps solve problems. And so that's really their
orientation. Yeah, it may not feel fair to
the parties, right? Because you're coming in not to
(38:39):
just discuss the matter at hand.They're coming in with the
entire history of the injusticesthey've suffered to that point.
And the judge doesn't necessarily see that, nor do
they want to see it. I think, to be fair, they don't
want to get involved in all thatstuff.
They just want to deal with the matter at hand.
And I think that's the place where people walk away feeling
(39:01):
like this was not an awesome experience.
Right. Well, the structure of court is
a plaintiff and a defendant, andno one wants to be a defendant.
So that's the idea is they want some help and need some help,
especially going forward. But court tends to focus on the
(39:24):
past and making decisions about the past, and that's not what
families need. They need tools for moving
forward so the problems in the past don't keep happening.
Whether? It's child.
Abuse, domestic violence, alienation, substance abuse,
whatever it is, let's get this on a good path so we don't have
(39:46):
problems going forward. And I think a lot of the judges
really have that approach and I give them a lot of credit for
that. Is this a good lead in to tell
us about something that's upcoming which is slick
solutions? Yes.
Tell us about that and what thatstands for because we love the
acronyms. It is the newest method and the
(40:07):
newest book. In fact, we're finishing writing
it right now and hope to have itby the end of the year.
So here's the title, Slick SLIC Solutions to Conflict, and the
subtitle is Setting Limits. That's the SL and imposing
(40:27):
consequences. That's the IC in 2 1/2 steps.
Now this is going to get people's curiosity.
What's the half step? So I'll call you, tell you
briefly. So the first step is setting
your limit, thinking about what does my limit need to be?
(40:49):
You can't talk to me that way. You can't use those words with
me. That's setting the limit.
A lot of people just stop there.And if they have a high conflict
X, the X says, well, I'll talk to you anyway I want.
And they keep insulting, criticizing, whatever imposing
(41:09):
consequences. If you keep talking to me like
that, I'm going to end this conversation.
And they keep talking like that.OK, I see you've chosen to end
the conversation. Goodbye.
Let's talk when you're ready to talk civil way and hang up.
So that's setting the limit and imposing the consequence.
(41:30):
I think the thing that you just,there's a subtle thing.
I just want to point it out because it's really cool.
So it's not like you just set the limit and then you've kind
of either said to yourself or said a little bit ambiguously.
If you keep talking to me like that, I'm going to hang up.
So you're still talking. I'm going to hang up.
What you actually said was I cansee you've chosen to ignore the
(41:55):
limit. So stating what you observe
rather than getting engaged withthe emotion is like a really
important diffusion technique that we learn and like, you
know, conflict courses and academic settings and stuff like
that. I did like an undergrad in peace
and conflict studies. So I'm a little bit familiar,
(42:16):
but you could almost miss it. So that's why I just wanted to
point it out. It's a really important nuance
is that you, it's not that you just you performed your
consequence. You said I can see this is
what's happening there for if A then B, right?
Yeah, exactly. It's like you chose to continue
(42:37):
violating my limit, so I'm goingto hang up.
It's like it's showing that so the other person can't blame
you. I mean, they can try, but it's
it's not that you just hung up. You hung up because they kept
violating your limit and so theyhad a responsibility.
(42:58):
So let me give an quick example with this.
I, I think of this case as one of the easiest ones for me to
remember is I was representing awoman with two children whose
victim, survivor of domestic violence and her soon to be
ex-husband didn't have a lawyer.So he he could call me up to
(43:21):
negotiate things on her behalf. And so I always encouraged him,
you know, be better if you had alawyer, but he'd say you tell
that blankety blank, blank wife of mine that she better do such
and such. And I said, if you keep talking
that way, I'm going to hang up. You can't talk about my client
that way. Oh yes, I can.
(43:42):
I can say whatever I want, blah,blah, blah.
All right, you've chosen for me to hang up.
So goodbye. But before I hung up, I said,
but I want to work with you. So call me back when you're
ready to talk civilly goodbye. And that's the half.
So the half is give him an ear statement, setting the limit and
(44:06):
imposing the consequence. So it's like, I want to work
with you, empathy, respect, I want to work with you.
Now we call it the half step because half the time you want
to say that, but half the time it may not fit the situation.
The other person may just to be really manipulative and you
(44:31):
don't want to put energy into softening it.
You want to really firm with your limit.
And sometimes people are too nice, they're too focused on.
I don't want to upset you, but please stop doing what you're
doing. And The thing is, just be firm.
This is my limit. This is the consequence.
Well, that's not fair. This is the consequence.
(44:54):
Well, you know, you're not a nice person.
This is the consequence. So you don't engage in an ear
statement probably about half the time because half the
situations you're in, you're being manipulated and you don't
want them to manipulate you. So that's why we call it 2 1/2
steps. I think that's great.
(45:15):
It's nice to really have that specific framework and thank you
for sharing the example. I think the place where a lot of
people, where our worlds kind ofintersect is when people are
aware that either their partner or their parent or whoever the
other person is that they're in conflict with has a mental
illness or a mental health issue, They feel like they have
(45:36):
to accommodate for that. And so sometimes in therapy we
talk about, again, this is an interpersonal therapy technique,
understanding your role in a relationship.
So you're not that person's therapist.
So the way the relationship you have with your therapist is not
going to be the same relationship you have with other
people in your life. And you can't expect it to be,
(45:57):
you know, you're just working with the civilians out there,
right? So if I'm trying to help
somebody that's over accommodating and that
constantly let's the limit be bypassed because they're wishy
washy, it's because they're like, well, this person has this
issue and therefore that's what makes them act like that.
Therefore like they think they're not justified in
(46:20):
continuing to have a limit. It's a real problem.
Yeah. And that's the thing.
We want to give people kind of abackbone for setting limits and
that it's OK and you can do it with empathy, attention and
respect when that's appropriate.But you don't have to do that
where that isn't really appropriate, where you really
(46:40):
just need firm and don't let yourself get manipulated.
That's a really important piece though, right, Is that you
actually can choose a level of compassion and empathy that you
can share. But having it for yourself is
the ultimate demonstration to anybody you're in a relationship
with of what that should look like.
(47:02):
Doesn't mean you don't love somebody.
Doesn't mean you don't care. Means you have respect for
yourself too. Yeah, and actually setting
limits can be a caring thing, especially like with kids.
It's like this will help to learn this behavior is
unacceptable because if you do that here at home and you're
going to do that in public, it'snot going to go very well for
(47:25):
you. Yeah, if, if a then B thing is
like really popular. And in my world in parenting,
you know, it's, it's like choosing your battles with your
kids, being in the proper role. You're the parent, you're not
their friend. You're there to parent them.
And you know, it's like, yes, wecan absolutely go to the park as
(47:45):
soon as your room's clean. So do that whenever you want to
do it. But but that's happening first.
So just come, come, let me know,right, Rather than you must
clean your room now in the next 10 minutes.
Otherwise you're we're not goinganywhere ever again where you're
losing all your privileges. There's a really different
message to a headstrong kit, right?
(48:06):
Right. And part of what you just said
is you're kind of giving them a choice.
Yes, With high conflict people, adults as well as with kids, if
they have a choice, then they have to think it through.
They have to make a decision, which is if you just tell them
what to do, what you do have to do sometimes, but you just tell
(48:28):
them what to do with adult high conflict people, they'll fight
you on it if you say you have a choice.
I'm trying to help you out here.You could do choice A or choice
B. It's up to you, but only choice
B gets me to go to the park withyou.
Right, absolutely. That's absolutely it.
(48:49):
Thank you so much. This is amazing.
I'm going to like link all of these resources in the previous
books because I actually linked on our website now as
recommended books for people, but I'll make sure I put them in
the show notes. And you said Slick Solutions was
coming out towards the end of this year.
Yeah. It should be November, December,
(49:09):
right around that. And what they can do is sign up
for our newsletter at highcomplet.com and the
newsletter we announced new books, new trainings, etcetera.
That is so amazing. Any like last minute takeaways
that you have for audience, which is both clinicians and lay
(49:32):
people alike interested in all things related to adult mental
health, ADHD in particular, relationships, parenting, all
that kind of stuff. There's, there's so many things,
but I guess one of the biggest things is get support and
encouragement for yourself. So much of this, this is a
different world view in terms ofproblems need problem solving
(49:56):
skills and we're stuck so much. The larger culture is so busy
blaming and complaining and venting, which doesn't really
help. It's so much about skills.
So I'd say that's really what we're into.
Simple skills that can be learned and used with each
other, used with kids, used at work, all of these settings.
(50:20):
It's a, it's a perfect world view from the current culture of
blame and drama and all of that.So that's important
encouragement for being positiverather than getting stuck in the
negativity that's out there. Yeah, you're making me think of
game theory and win, win versus there's only probably be like 1
(50:41):
winner. Like everything is so black and
white and so polarized these days.
And I think when people start tocompromise, they feel like
they're sacrificing something really important of themselves.
So I don't hear you talking about sacrificing your core
values or something because you probably don't have a core
value. That's about fighting, you know,
or never giving in, but appealing to other things that
(51:05):
you want to be able to be intentional to direct your life
towards. And this this precious amount of
time we have on this earth, do we want to be, you know, digging
in and fighting and what upmanship?
Or do we want to put something where it belongs so we can get
to the rest of everything else right?
I totally agree and I like what you said.
(51:25):
It's really a win win approach. All the goals are to create win
win interactions and with someone who thinks that you
can't have that, someone who thinks they have to win and I
have to lose, I can turn that around into win win.
And people are happier in win win relationships so.
(51:47):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Thank you so much for coming andfor giving of your time for the
audience. We're very grateful and that
we're going to look for that newbook when it's out at the end of
the year. Thanks so much Christine, I
really enjoy being on with you and encourage you and all your
good work. Thank you.
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