One of the most surprising—and shocking and terrifying—things about all high-conflict people (HCPs) is that they attack those closest to them. From those who perpetrate domestic violence to the workplace bully to high-conflict politicians, HCPs turn against those who are on their same team: their family, their community, their party, their nation, and their allies. These are their Targets of Blame. They repeatedly criticize them, laugh at them, publicly ridicule them, damage their property, and harm their relationships; some HCPs even physically assault or kill their targets of blame.
I call this emotional warfare because it’s communicated emotionally, not rationally, and it triggers overwhelming emotions in their targets and those around them. It makes no sense logically to be attacked like this. Often, HCP targets start to feel crazy and become immobilized. If you’ve ever been one, you know what it’s like.
All HCPs engage in this. They are at war with the world—mostly the world around them. Here’s how it works.
The Emotional Warfare Pattern
This pattern has four steps that I have identified:
1. Seduce negative advocates.
2. Attack targets of blame.
3. Divide their community.
4. Dominate everyone.
It’s very important to learn this pattern so that when you are someone’s target of blame, you can understand what is happening to you and that it is not something you caused. No one deserves this. Targets often don’t know how to react because they never expected to be treated this way in a cooperative society. But HCPs have highly aggressive behavior. When you see them viciously attack someone else, be aware that sooner or later they may attack you too. They can’t stop themselves, so others need to stop them.
Seducing Their Negative Advocates
The concept of negative advocates first arose for me in legal disputes, when I saw HCPs gathering family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and others to advocate for their distorted thinking and to help them attack their targets of blame. Since they usually have no basis for most of their legal claims, these HCPs resorted to emotional pressure to win their cases. By bringing their negative advocates to court, they could make it appear that they had a strong case based on the credibility of these advocates and the size of their support.
However, since the legal process focuses on facts and evidence (in contrast to the political process), HCPs often lose because they don’t really have a case. But with some juries and a few judges, they occasionally win their cases through emotional persuasion and the presence of their negative advocates.
Narcissists and sociopaths are the most seductive personalities and are both skilled at gathering such advocates. They know how to tell the stories that get people to fall in love with them and support their fights against their targets. They want advocates to worship them and defend them, so they build an emotional relationship from the start. HCPs tell their potential negative advocates that they love them and they expect to be loved in return.
Attacking Their Targets of Blame
While they are recruiting their negative advocates, HCPs are also constantly verbally attacking their targets of blame. This helps them establish a stronger bond with their negative advocates: It’s us against them! They teach their advocates that their targets are evil, powerful, and plotting against them.
They also train their advocates to join in attacking their targets. It is in this way that they get their followers to do their dirty work while at the same time denying any responsibility for leading them and teaching them to do it. It’s just words, they say.
Targets of blame are usually caught off guard and feel crazy. What did I do to deserve this? I thought we were friends—a community of people with shared goals! Normal people don’t treat their family/friends/colleagues/allies this way!
Dividing Their Community
When HCPs teach their negative advocates to attack their targets of blame, this divisive behavior is part of a psychological process called splitting. This term is associated with personality disorders, including narcissism, and applies when that person sees other people as either “all good” or “all bad,” or simply as “winners” or “losers.” For HCPs, there’s no in-between. When they communicate this splitting, they do it so emotionally that others absorb the split and start viewing the identified people as all good or all bad themselves—often without even realizing it.
Narcissism Essential Reads
By speaking constantly about these all-good or all-bad people, HCPs divide groups by spreading rumors, making veiled threats, pitting citizens against each other, and occasionally by switching sides to keep everyone else off balance. In a cooperative society, it’s easy for HCPs to simply pick off individuals by attacking them publicly and blaming them for any problems they wish. This stirs up the whole community and causes everyone to make an emotional decision for or against that person. Since the targeted individual is not used to having to publicly defend themselves in a cooperative society, they often become terrified and immobilized.
Dominating Everyone
This intense drive to have power over other people can be impulsive, automatic, and intuitive, and it doesn’t turn off until the people or groups the HCPs are trying to dominate submit to them or are eliminated. Those who have become their negative advocates—their followers—are happy to submit to them. Those the HCPs have targeted in their community either submit, leave, or are destroyed.
Conclusion
This way, one by one, HCPs gain power over everyone. Many people believe they will eventually stop themselves and become reasonable. But they are never satisfied and continue without self-restraint until they are stopped by a larger force.
