High-conflict people are identified by their blaming of others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors. (Credit: Alexandra Mirghes / Unsplash)
Some people seem predisposed to cause chaos and conflict in their lives. Their every discussion regresses into an argument. Everywhere they go, something goes wrong and someone else is to blame. And they can’t let anything go, seeing even the smallest mistake as an affront to their worthiness.
These are some of the signs of what lawyer and therapist Bill Eddy calls “high-conflict people,” and chances are you’ve encountered one before. They could be that coworker whose ego you have to tiptoe around at the office, the family member who adds drama to every holiday visit, or the friend who reacts explosively to the mere suggestion that they’ve misremembered some trivial fact.
The question is: How do you tell the difference between a high-conflict personality and simply two personalities that conflict with each other? In an interview, Eddy shared the four key characteristics you can use to identify such personalities.
How to identify high-conflict personalities
The first of these characteristics is a preoccupation with blaming other people. When something goes wrong or a fault is revealed, the high-conflict personality will set their crosshairs on a “target of blame” and launch all the responsibility their way.
“The target of blame […] could change over time, but [a high-conflict person] sees that person as the cause of all their problems,” Eddy said. “And so they want to control or eliminate or destroy or humiliate that person.” While the target can be anybody, Eddy adds, it is typically an intimate relation or someone in authority.
The second characteristic to look for is all-or-nothing thinking. From the high-conflict person’s perspective, there are good people and bad people. Blame is absolute, or it is moot. And there is only one way to solve any conflict: Their way.
Third, high-conflict people may display unmanaged emotions, and those emotions roll straight into the fourth characteristic, which is extreme behaviors. A high-conflict person may yell, start crying, punch a hole in the wall, or storm out of the room for reasons that cannot be discerned by others. It just seems to happen because the triggers are so minute. Even so, the emotional outburst is unrestrained.
“HCPs are in every occupation, every culture, and every country. This has nothing to do with intelligence. Some HCPs are very smart, while others are not — like the whole population,” Eddy writes. “They tend to have more substance abuse, more depression, more anxiety, and other problems. This is often because their ways of interacting don’t work, which frustrates them as well as everyone around them. Yet, they aren’t able to reflect on themselves, and you can’t make them.”
With that said, it’s important to note that “high-conflict” isn’t a personality disorder — that is, a long-term pattern of feelings and behaviors that differ significantly from what’s expected. Psychologists currently recognize — and debate over — 10 personality disorders. These can be informally catalogued into three groups: Cluster A (eccentric), Cluster B (erratic), and Cluster C (anxious). While high-conflict people do share certain traits with Cluster B disorders — such as volatile emotions and inappropriate behaviors — they are also distinct….
Pilates has seen a jump in popularity recently thanks to a spate of celebrity endorsements, including the Kardashians, model Hailey Bieber and actress Kate Hudson. Even elite athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Andy Murray incorporate some form of pilates into their training to improve performance.
Pilates is said to be good for your balance, posture, strength and flexibility, as well as improving your core strength. And the best part about it is that anyone can do it, not just celebrities and athletes. But does research show that it’s as good for your health as many people claim?
There are two main types of pilates. The simplest is mat pilates – which you only need a yoga mat to do, and can be done both at home or in a class. The other type of pilates (which is becoming increasingly popular) is reformer pilates. This uses a specialised apparatus (called a reformer) – a bed-like frame with a flat platform on it.
The platform moves forward and backwards on wheels within the frame. The platform is attached to one end of the frame by springs and these produce tension. Most reformer pilates involves pushing or pulling the platform, or holding it steady as it’s pulled on by the strings. This movement engages several muscles – particularly the core.
What the evidence says
Pilates is a form of muscle strengthening exercise, which is well-known to be important for maintaining good health. Strength training is important as it helps us prevent the slow muscle deterioration that occurs as we get older. It also increases muscle mass, which can in turn increase metabolism – which is important for maintaining a healthy weight.
There’s some evidence that doing eight weeks of pilates for one hour a day, four times a week can increase metabolism and reduce obesity in obese women. In older adults, a review of research showed pilates training improved balance and helped prevent falls.
Another study even showed that inactive women who began performing only one hour of pilates a week for ten weeks had improved muscle mass, flexibility, balance and core strength. Research also shows that pilates may even be used to treat low back pain and improve balance in adults with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s’s disease.
The evidence shows us that pilates can certainly lead to several health benefits. While more intense types of strength training – such as weight lifting – are likely to confer even greater benefits, pilates can still be a great way for people to control their weight and build strength. The best part about it is that this workout can be done by almost anyone anywhere, and doesn’t require a lot of equipment or a gym membership.
Reformer v mat pilates
Among people who do pilates, there’s a lot of discussion about which type is superior: mat or reformer pilates.There’s actually little research out there comparing the two types. One study looking at the treatment of low back pain found that both reformer pilates and mat pilates worked equally well to improve back pain in people who did the workout for six weeks.
Both types also equally improved people’s ability to undertake daily activities, such as getting out of bed or doing the dishes. But when participants were followed up four and a half months later, the reformer pilates group continued to experience improvements in their daily life compared to the mat pilates group.
Another study from Brazil also showed both reformer pilates and mat pilates used the same number of muscles and activated them to the same extent – suggesting there’s no difference between the two methods, and that both are equally effective. But this conflicts with the findings of another study, which showed reformer pilates caused people to burn more calories (2.6 calories per minute) than mat Pilates (1.9 calories per minute).
The reason for the slight differences between these two types of pilates comes down to how they’re performed. While mat pilates uses your body weight as resistance during the movements, reformer pilates uses the unstable platform and springs to create resistance. This might create greater resistance and activate more muscles. Though this wasn’t supported by the Brazilian study, they only looked at one movement, so more research is needed.
Although research can’t quite agree on whether mat pilates or reformer pilates is better for you, that doesn’t mean that reformer pilates isn’t still great for your health. For example, one study showed that people who did reformer pilates for nine weeks had improved cholesterol levels and lower insulin resistance, suggesting that it can help maintain weight and lower the risk of certain diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.
As you can see, pilates is becoming popular for good reason as it provides many health benefits. People of all ages and abilities can do it, including pregnant women. How you decide to do it is entirely up to you, but if you have health difficulties or are pregnant, you may want to consult your doctor first.
This study investigates whether Pilates and yoga lead people to adopt generally health-promoting lifestyle elements and feel better about their physical and mental fitness. To this end, we designed an 8 week exercise program of Pilates and yoga reviewed by veteran practitioners and conducted an experimental study through which we collected the data from 90 volunteered adult subjects between ages 30 and 49 (mean age = 35.47), equally represented by women and men without previous experience with Pilates or yoga.
In the 8 week long experiment, we assigned the subjects to three groups, where subjects in the two exercise groups regularly took part in either Pilates or yoga classes, and the control group participated in neither exercise classes. All participants completed two surveys, the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLP II) and the Health Self-Rating Scale (HSRS), before and after their assigned program. In our analysis of pre- and post-treatment differences across the three groups, we ran ANOVA, ANCOVA, and Sheffé test, implemented using SPSS PASW Statistics 18.00.
Our results indicate that Pilates and yoga groups exhibited a higher engagement in health-promoting behaviors than the control group after the program. Subjective health status, measured with HSRS, also improved significantly among Pilates and yoga participants compared to those in the control group after the program. The supplementary analysis finds no significant gender-based difference in these impacts.
Overall, our results confirm that Pilates and yoga help recruit health-promoting behaviors in participants and engender positive beliefs about their subjective health status, thereby setting a positive reinforcement cycle in motion. By providing clear evidence that the promotion of Pilates or yoga can serve as an effective intervention strategy that helps individuals change behaviors adverse to their health, this study offers practical implications for healthcare professionals and public health officials alike.
Among many kinds of physical activity programs, it is noteworthy that Pilates and yoga have gained increasing popularity amongst the general public over the past two decades. Pilates and yoga are particularly appealing due to their direct benefits on physical wellbeing—including weight control and improved posture, flexibility, and cardiovascular function—that come with low risks of sports-related injuries
. According to an annual survey conducted by IDEA(International Dance Exercise Association) Fitness Programs and Equipment Survey in 2007, Pilates ranked sixth on the most frequently offered exercise programs, a vast improvement since 1999 . In the same year, yoga also ranked 13th, although its position has undergone gradual declines from its peak in 2002. In annual Fitness Trends Surveys carried out by a United States (US)-based association of Sports Medicine, Pilates and yoga have been frequently listed as Worldwide Fitness Trends since 2008.
Evidence of the direct health benefits of Pilates and yoga is growing. For example, some studies showed that regular engagement in Pilates is associated with a boost in functional autonomy, balance, flexibility, and muscle strength . Other studies show that regular yoga participation helped individuals alleviate muscle-related pains, especially among adults with sedentary lifestyles or suffering from chronic illnesses
If you have money, property, or other assets to pass down when you die—or if you’re a beneficiary expecting an inheritance from a relative—you want to make sure all gets distributed according to plan.
But it’s not unheard of for family conflict to complicate or completely derail the allocation of an inheritance—and this can even devolve into a type of theft known as “inheritance theft,” or “inheritance hijacking,” which could be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony. So what exactly does it involve, and how can you protect your money?
Charging excessive fees for services related to executor or trustee duties.
Marrying under false pretenses for the purpose of benefiting from an inheritance.
While inheritance theft can be perpetrated by professionals aiding in estate planning or execution, it’s more likely to occur within a family or among close caretakers. Emotional manipulation is one common tactic, and usually involves a family member who is after someone’s assets trying to get closer to that person, often by doing them favors. Similarly, family members may bad mouth each other to convince the person to reallocate their inheritance.
Note that stealing assets from an older adult or forging documents related to finances is considered a form of elder abuse.
How to protect your assets from hijacking
First and foremost, start your estate planning process early, and with the help of a lawyer who specializes in this area. An experienced attorney can help you draft a sound estate planning agreement. Keep multiple sets of extensive records of anything related to your estate, and discuss your wishes clearly with those involved.
You may also consider distributing assets early so they are dispersed the way you want, says Jason Porter, a UK-based senior investment manager with Scottish Heritage SG. This could prevent coercion or diversion, though you’ll want to work with a tax prep expert to understand the impact of large gifts.
Again, because emotional manipulation among relatives is a more likely scenario than any sort of professional theft or fraud, employing legal and financial professionals who specialize in estate planning can be your best protection. You may also consider having multiple executors who are accountable for distributing your assets according to your estate plan.
How to protect your inheritance
Let’s say you’re an heir, and we’ll assume you have the best intentions to honor a relative’s wishes and be above board legally. You can watch for family members acting weird or cozying up to a relative they’ve had a lot of conflict with. Financial abuse and exploitation—mismanagement or misuse of money—can be difficult to spot, but warning signs may also include sudden changes in banking, large or unexplained withdrawals or asset transfers, and unpaid bills.
The laws governing inheritance theft and the penalties for violations vary by state, but if you suspect this is occurring, an estate planning attorney or forensic accountant can help you pursue these concerns. You can also report elder abuse to your state agency.
The reason we create estate plans and wills is that we want to feel assured that our assets will pass on to the intended recipients. Unfortunately, our best-laid plans can go awry when Inheritance Hijacking occurs. One of the most frustrating things about inheritance theft is that it is often committed by relatives. This not only means that their actions can ruin family relations, but also that they are likely to get away with it if no proper measures are in place.
You can increase the odds that your assets reach the intended parties after you die if you take certain steps now. For example, it can be useful to discuss your estate plan with all your intended heirs present at the same time. This way, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page, making it much more difficult for the various forms of will hijacking to occur.
Ensuring that you have an attorney involved who will also be able to assist the family can help keep conversations consistent, and diminish the ability for anyone to fabricate what was said or what was intended.
You may also want to appoint two executors to your estate. This can reduce the chances that anyone will abuse their position. It can be especially helpful to nominate a non-family professional as one of the two executors.
It is also worth considering giving assets to your heirs before you die. Not only will this keep family members from fighting over them after you are gone, but you will also get to witness your heirs enjoying your gifts while you are still around.
It can be quite difficult to prove your case if you don’t know when the theft happened or aren’t sure who is to blame. You will need to do some detective work to get the evidence you require to prove your claim in court.
If you suspect something has been stolen but aren’t sure what it is, you’ll need to conduct your own inventory of the decedent’s estate. You may notice large withdrawals from bank accounts or changes in beneficiaries with life insurance policies, retirement accounts, or of other assets. If someone else is named as the beneficiary instead of the family member or if a title was transferred to another person, you will likely need to prove that the decedent was coerced into making those changes or manipulated by someone stealing your rightful inheritance.
If the theft was of money from a business or other fraudulent activity, you may need a forensic accountant to go through the records. Of course, you won’t need to take care of all this yourself. Your probate attorney will hire someone with experience in this area.
For physical items, you may have difficulty proving the person has possession of it. If the theft is of real property or large items, such as their classic cars, the title or deed would have to be changed. You would need to prove that the decedent was manipulated or threatened into giving them the property.
For smaller missing items, you may have difficulty proving they exist. If they have significant value, these items may have been insured, such as with expensive jewelry or artwork. Many times, the thief will sell these assets quickly to get the money and remove the item from their possession.
An estate plan that is prepared in collaboration with an experienced Santa Cruz will and trust attorney is much less susceptible to inheritance hijacking than one that you prepare yourself. A seasoned lawyer can help you arrange your estate plan in a way that protects your interests and those of your heirs, leaving far less room for confusion and making it much less likely that your will could be successfully contested.
If you would like professional assistance with this process, we invite you to contact our Santa Cruz office or one of our offices located throughout the state of California by calling (800) 244-8814.
Closing your laptop at 5 p.m. Doing only your assigned tasks. Spending more time with family. These are just some of the common examples used to define the latest workplace trend of “quiet quitting.” Some experts say it’s a misnomer and should really be defined as carving out time to take care of yourself.
Ed Zitron, who runs a media consulting business for tech startups and publishes the labor-focused newsletter Where’s Your Ed At, believes the term stems from companies exploiting their employees’ labor and how these businesses benefit from a culture of overwork without additional compensation.
“If you want people to go ‘above and beyond,’ compensate them for it. Give them $200. Pay them for the extra work,” Zitron told NPR over email. “Show them the direct path from ‘I am going above and beyond’ to ‘I am being rewarded for doing so.'”
Quiet quitting doesn’t actually involve quitting. Instead, it has been deemed a response to hustle culture and burnout; employees are “quitting” going above and beyond and declining to do tasks they are not being paid for.
How employees have changed their approach to work
Workplace culture has gone through many changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, including with the “great resignation.” Some workers are negotiating for better work conditions and benefits with newfound leverage.
Some workers have expressed a desire for a less rigid line between their work and personal selves. Professionals told NPR’s Morning Edition how during the pandemic, they have made changes in their work lives, from how they dress to their career field, to align more closely with their personal values.
“I started to realize that all of the hang-ups about being away from work to spend time with my kids, that was all me wanting to be a really good employee,” Kristin Zawatski told NPR’s Morning Edition. “But my work speaks for itself.”
Zawatski works in project management, a job that has afforded her the flexibility she needs as a mom of two. Although she would always make sure her work was done, she felt guilty whenever she needed to leave early or take a day off. That changed with the pandemic.
“Knowing that life could be short, I didn’t want to waste it anymore all the time just worrying about what kind of employee I was, because my kids don’t care what kind of employee I am,” Zawatski said. “My kids care what kind of mom I am.”
Quiet quitting is in line with a larger reevaluation of how work fits into our lives and not the other way around. As Gen Z is entering the workforce, the idea of quiet quitting has gained traction as Gen Zers deal with burnout and never-ending demands.
However, Gen Z is not the first generation to experience burnout, and quiet quitting is not a new idea. Zitron shared his frustrations with the framing of the term, because it mischaracterizes doing the tasks you are paid for with the idea of quitting your job.
“The term ‘quiet quitting’ is so offensive, because it suggests that people that do their work have somehow quit their job, framing workers as some sort of villain in an equation where they’re doing exactly what they were told,” Zitron said. Employers benefit financially from workers doing extra work without compensation and it is reasonable for employees to push back against that, he added.
“It’s part of an overwhelming trend of pro-boss propaganda, trying to frame workers that don’t do free work for their bosses as somehow stealing from the company,” Zitron said. For employers that are dealing with workers who may be exhibiting signs of quiet quitting, Zitron has one simple message for them: Pay them for extra work.
If you are experiencing burnout at work, setting boundaries can help you regain some control. Additionally, working on addressing workplace conflict head-on can make a situation easier — or be a sign it’s time to move on.
Maggie Perkins, a Georgia-based teaching advocate, had been working as a teacher for nearly half a decade before she decided to “quiet quit” her job. The decision didn’t mean she’d leave her position, but rather limit her work to her contract hours. Nothing more, nothing less.
“No matter how much I hustle as a teacher, there isn’t a growth system or recognition incentive,” Perkins told TIME. “If I didn’t quiet quit my teaching job, I would burn out.”
Perkins joins a larger online community of workers who have been sharing their experiences on TikTok, taking a “quiet quitting” mentality—the concept of no longer going above and beyond, and instead doing what their job description requires of them and only that.
The movement comes in the wake of a global pandemic that caused employees to reimagine what work could look like, considering the potentials of extending remote work, not working much on Fridays, or in some cases, amid the Great Resignation, not working at all. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and CEO at Thrive, wrote in a viral LinkedIn post, “Quiet quitting isn’t just about quitting on a job, it’s a step toward quitting on life.”
Why companies are worried about quiet quitting
With worries of an economic slowdown swirling, productivity levels are a major concern to company executives. U.S. nonfarm worker productivity in the second quarter has fallen 2.5% since the same period last year, its steepest annual drop since 1948, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Companies are now looking at productivity scales as a metric for excellence, with some going as far as moderating employees’ keyboard activity.
Major tech companies like Google are signaling that they are slowing hiring and could lay off staff amid concerns about overall productivity. Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest HR society, says remote work has caused severe burnout, Zoom fatigue, and made it harder for some workers to take breaks from home. “I don’t know a company in America that is not sensitized to burnout and the need for employees to step away from the workplace for their mental health.”
Taylor, who, as a CEO himself leads a team of over 500 associates, advocates for his employees taking time off when they’re feeling overworked, but he doesn’t see how embracing quiet quitting will be helpful to employees in the long term. “I understand the concept, but the words are off-putting,” he says. “Anyone who tells their business leader they are a quiet quitter is likely not to have a job for very long.”
Gergo Vari, CEO of job board platform Lensa, also believes the decision won’t serve employees long-term either. “Anytime that you silence your own voice in an organization, you may be depriving yourself of the opportunity to change that organization,” says his spokesperson.
Employees acting on their dissatisfaction at work isn’t only potentially affecting their job security. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report found that job dissatisfaction is at a staggering all-time high and that unhappy and disengaged workers cost the global economy $7.8 trillion in lost productivity.
The decision to step away from “hustle culture” can cause tension between employees and company executives, and can also cause a rift between fellow colleagues who may have to pick up the slack. “Whether people feel like their coworkers are committed to quality work can affect the performance of the organization and cause friction inside teams and organizations,” says Jim Harter, Chief Scientist for Gallup’s workplace management practice…
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High-conflict people are identified by their blaming of others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors. (Credit: Alexandra Mirghes / Unsplash)
