Why Some High-Conflict Personality Women Kill
Last week’s article Theresa Riggi Kills Her Children in Bitter Divorce Battle: Does She Have a Personality Disorder? asks the question what makes the unthinkable thinkable for some high-conflict people (HCPs) and/or some individuals with personality disorders? Why do some cross the line and commit murder, while others are content to perpetrate psychological violence like stalking, harassment, property destruction and parental alienation? How does the kind of woman who kills her children or husband (or gets someone else to do it for her) differ from your HCP wife, girlfriend or ex or your husband’s or boyfriend’s HCP ex?
Most high-conflict people or individuals with personality disorders aren’t violent and/or homicidal. However, I’d be willing to wager that women like Theresa Riggi, Susan Williams, Leisa Jones, Elaine Campione, Teresa Lewis and Clara Harris, for example, meet the criteria for being high-conflict people (HCP) and might also meet the criteria for full-blown personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD), Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) or Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). For simplicity’s sake, let’s refer to these individuals as HCPs (high-conflict people) with the caveat that not all HCPs become violent nor do all HCPs have personality disorders.
Why some HCPs slide down the slippery slope of emotional abuse to violence and murder:
1. HCPs are always right. No matter how egregiously vindictive and destructive her behavior, an HCP believes she’s right. She’s always right. If she trashes you to the kids, destroys your property, tries to get you fired and/or badmouths you with outrageous lies to anyone who will listen—you deserve it. In her warped mind, she probably sees herself as delivering some kind of twisted vigilante justice when she harms, smears, bullies and attacks others. You wronged her (probably just in her own mind), so you must pay.
2. No empathy or selective empathy. This allows the HCP to hurt others without batting an eye. She doesn’t seem to feel remorse for hurting people she’s splitting black (a person she sees as all bad), unless she’s confronted with her bad behavior by someone whom she wants to think well of her, then she feigns remorse. In which case, she’s remorseful about getting caught; not about whatever abusive, inappropriate or criminal thing she’s done.
Additionally, any admission of wrong-doing or remorse is usually followed with a BUT . . . (insert reason why her bad behavior is really someone else’s fault—usually the victim’s). This individual typically only has empathy for her own pain and for people whom she’s currently splitting white (a person she sees as all good).
3. It’s never her fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. As previously noted, the person she’s been victimizing typically gets blamed. “Yeah, I punched him, but his stupid nose got in the way of my fist, so it’s his own damned fault.” It’s not a stretch to see how someone like this could just as easily justify homicide.
“He was exposing MY children to his new whore and I’d rather MY children be with God.” Or, “He broke my heart. He made promises to me. He swore to be with me until death us do part. Now he knows how it feels. He deserved it.” Or, “I killed his children to punish him.” To this day, former socialite stay-at-home-mom Betty Broderick still feels no remorse for killing her ex-husband, Dan Broderick, and his second wife, Linda Kolkena, and blames her victims for their own murders despite the fact Betty broke into the couples’ home and shot them repeatedly while they slept.
4. People aren’t people. People are objects. Many HCPs don’t see others as individual human beings with feelings, needs and rights. We’re objects. We’re either good objects who make them feel good about themselves or we’re bad objects because we make them feel bad about themselves (splitting). We’re really bad objects when we complain about being treated badly by them.
Most HCPs can’t make the connection that it is their own behavior that elicits negative responses from others. They’re fine; everyone else is the problem. HCPs dehumanize most people to justify their bad behaviors—especially people they feel have wronged them in some way. Perhaps killing a husband has the same emotional and moral impact as squashing an ant to some HCPs. He had it coming because he wouldn’t let me have my way. Many HCPs view healthy boundaries and limits as abuse or an attempt to control them and will go on the attack when you implement parameters for their behavior.
5. The Perfect Storm. HCPs don’t handle rejection like most people. Specifically, most people don’t become vindictive stalkers or snap when they’re rejected or things don’t go their way. The fear of abandonment, the fear of ridicule, the fear of exposure and the fear of being ignored coupled with the propensity for narcissistic injury-narcissistic rage can be deadly.
An HCP doesn’t even need to experience real rejection to go off the deep end—any perceived criticism or slight, questions about her behavior or challenge to her control can cause her to go ballistic. Rejection or just the thought of “losing,” having her lies/delusions exposed or appearing foolish can cause a narcissistic injury, which then triggers white hot narcissistic rage. This is when an HCP is most dangerous.
6. Knowing the difference between right and wrong or “The rules don’t apply to me.” Many HCPs don’t seem to know the difference between right and wrong. Well, they believe they’re always right and everyone else is wrong, but it’s not really the same thing, is it? Many HCPs can judge the behavior of others to be right or wrong or immoral, but they don’t appear to be able to do the same with their own behavior. For example, “It was wrong for Joe to cheat on his wife because all men are lying, cheating scum, but I had my reasons for cheating on my husband. It’s my husband’s fault I cheated on him.”
7. Greed, entitlement, professional victimhood and public perception. Judging by the behavior of many HCPs, they seem to lack a moral compass and sense of personal responsibility when it comes to money. They think the world owes them a living (especially their ex-husbands). As for their children, many HCPs seem to see their kids as just another marital asset to be stripped from their husband, so they can do a victory lap around the courthouse parking lot.
Many HCPs see assets, and I include children in this, as trophies to be won to prove they’re right and their exes wrong. In other words, if she can get everything, including the kids and destroy her husband in the process by leaving him financially, physically and psychologically devastated, she believes the court and her friends and family will see her as the perfect, innocent victim and her husband as the nefarious SOB.
Based on the news stories of women who kill or attempt to kill their husbands and children, the decision to commit murder seems to occur the moment they realize they’re not going to get the outcome they want in court. Their reasoning seems to be, My husband can’t win custody if the children are dead. Or, I’ll get to keep the house and his pension if my husband is dead. Don’t forget, even when it’s blindingly obvious to almost everyone that the HCP is the aggressor; she still believes she’s the one who’s being victimized.
8. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. And she doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. It’s just more of the same old-same old it’s all about meeeeeeeeeeeee! One wonders if the only thing that keeps some HCPs from crossing the line of lethality is the fear of getting caught, which is why some may enlist negative advocates to do their dirty work for them.
9. Negative advocates. A negative advocate (NA) can be even more impassioned about destroying the HCP’s target than the HCP herself (Bill Eddy writes about this in his books about HCPs). Oftentimes, the NA believes the HCP’s tale of victimhood and sees himself or herself as the HCP’s savior/avenger.
What does the HCP get from an NA? Having an NA go to bat for her probably hits a couple of HCP sweet spots. First, this type of individual loves getting others to do work for her that she could easily do for herself. Some HCPs have a lazy streak and see any kind of work as beneath them.
Second, it feeds her *C*O*N*T*R*O*L* needs. She gains a sense of power from pulling people’s strings—she is the Puppet Master and the NA is her wooden headed dummy. You see this with HCPs who are professional victims/waifs that get unwitting suckers to bully, mob and/or attack their targets for them. It’s also pretty crafty because if and when they get busted, they can say, “Hey, it wasn’t me, these other people did that,” which kinda makes them sneaky cowards.
What does an NA get out of championing an HCP? He or she feels like a powerful hero—especially if the HCP is love bombing the NA with adoration for coming to her “rescue.” In reality, most NAs are unwitting dupes. If and when the truth comes to light and the police get involved, the HCP will often throw the NA under the bus and claim that her former hero was abusing/controlling/victimizing her and the NA is then left holding the bag.
10. Their hard wiring is scrambled. Sorry, but reasonable, good people do not think it’s okay to destroy or kill others because they didn’t get their way, want to keep the house or are hurt/angry for whatever reason. In fact, most of the really nasty and destructive things HCPs perpetrate on their targets don’t even enter into the realm of possibility for the rest of us—or if they do, we don’t act on them and are embarrassed to admit we even had those kinds of thoughts in our darkest hours.
It’s beyond our comprehension, which is why we’re so gobsmacked and initially defenseless when attacked by HCPs. This is also why it doesn’t pay to try to do battle with them on their terms. You can’t out-think or out-crazy the crazy and malicious things they dream up on a 5-minute coffee break. The best thing we can do is to protect ourselves legally, document everything and keep a safe distance.
If you’re in a divorce and/or custody dispute with a woman or man whom you suspect is high-conflict or has high-conflict traits, take every precaution. Never underestimate their ability to cause long-lasting damage to you and the people you love.
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Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
40 Responses to “Why Some High-Conflict Personality Women Kill”
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I wonder if high conflict people are those that get overly angry talking politics, religion and or are they also argumentative? I feel high conflict because I’m always at odds with myself trying figure out life’s living. Now that causes conflict within me. I’m always conflicted over something or other. Though not with people, well, not in the last few years, I just keep it all to myself now, argue with myself over this or that. I wonder if that makes me high conflict or am I just confused all the freaking time. Especially when it comes to a girlfriend. Oh well.
Great article,T.
And don’t forget the recent case of Susan Wright – the woman who stabbed her husband 200 times tying him to the bed (mutilating him while he was alive first) and then burying him. I read the chilling details on a crime website and was horrified for days. (She had played the victim waif before getting married and claimed he abused her, when some former girlfriends testified he in fact was gentle. Whatever the case, if there are problems with a husband, then leave and divorce – don’t murder and claim the insurance money! The story she concocted about his ‘absence’ claiming he had abandoned the family was pretty devious too.) There is a crime website which has the true details. Forensics completely proves premeditated murder with the husband tied up, now she is claiming ‘self-defense.’What was also interesting is how she changed her appearance in the court to elicit sympathy.
Also the German pop-singer Nadja Benaissa who knowingly gave HIV to her ex-boyfriend as revenge on a break-up sex encounter and was acquitted with a suspended sentence as she cried and claimed ‘deep remorse’ in court. And he was not the first she tried this ploy on, though the other man thankfully did not get HIV. She played the victim so much in court all was forgiven.
These cases should act as warnings that when red flags appear, run, really run for your life (and your privates, if you read the awful details of Susan Wright’s stabbing process.) Had these crimes been committed by men, would the jury have had problems imprisoning them? Full blown double standards.
Loved the article. Very insightful. Keep up the GREAT work! David M.
Here’s a current case of a probable HCP killing her kids, in Canada: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/11/14/16138721.html
Last word I heard was that the jury’s been out for 5 days. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they’re going to give the mother a pass based on “temporary insanity”. If they only knew.
It’s like reading from a textbook. This case hits all the behaviors listed in last week’s article.
I can’t even begin to imagine the Hell the father is going through.
Looks like the jury didn’t buy her tale of woe. Guilty of first degree murder: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/11/15/16148926.html
Unfortunately, no death penalty in Canada, so she’ll be eligible for parole in 25 years (though I’m sure she’ll appeal this).
Followup story of the impact on the father: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/11/17/16192696.html
Check out the comments. Unbelievably, some women think the mother should get a free pass, because she “claims” the husband abused her. No proof. Charges were dropped. Totally unproven allegations. But he’s a man, so he must have done it!!!
Ah, someone who recognizes manipulation when he sees it!: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/alan_shanoff/2010/11/19/16228646.html
I am very happy that my wife found this site and showed it to me. Just today, I had an incident where my HCP ex-wife stole something from me. If you can believe this, it was something as dumb as School Pictures. She refused to give them ALL back. I sent her an e-mail telling her to send them back or I would pursue further action. She said NO (she thinks she’s above the law). I called the police, they called her and then she gave the pictures back. It might sound trivial, but this is an every occurrence thing with her. She really believes I am the one who causes the trouble.
Thank you for letting me post on here, I will be reading all the articles I can about this. It’s nice to find out that I’m not alone in this battle.
I realize this article discusses women, but I can’t believe men don’t suffer from this too – my children’s birth father exhibits all of the symptoms described above to the tee. I consider myself lucky to get my kids somewhere safe before things escalated to accomplish his threats (now many years ago).
I also have a couple of male friends who’ve been married to women who seem to fit this description but again in varying degrees.
It’s hard for anyone outside of a relationship to know all the dynamics that go on inside – but I can certainly empathize with the father in the current Toronto-area case. The advice that served me best: keep a record, and keep to strict, easily verifiable facts wherever possible – these people often make accusations that may be proven nonsensical if you’ve got a recorded history and can avoid the natural defensive reactions.
Guys can definitely be HCP… but the point of this website is to help guys figure this stuff out. In our society, most of the attention to abuse/victimization in relationships has focused on women being victimized/abused by men. Dr. T is trying to bring to light the fact that it works both ways – and at a high frequency. There are a LOT of men who take a s**tload of abuse from their wives/GFs… but again, our societal norms are such that men could NEVER be abused by women! Not the case. And many times, guys feed right into that. We’re clueless and never stop to think that maybe the person we are intimate with is actually the source of our despair. Men are “go with the flow” types… we try to be tough. Some of us see the best in people (and/or project our own naivete onto our significant others). We don’t WANT to be the “victim!” Plus, girls talk a lot more amongst themselves, and it’s probably more likely for another woman to say “I think you’re husband is emotionally abusive.” Guys don’t roll like that. IF we talk about it, it would be a miracle for another guy to know what emotional abuse was, let alone to say “hey, buddy, your wife is abusing you.” It just doesn’t work that way with guys.
There is a lot of reading material out there for women to read about abusive men… us guys don’t have much! I started by doing a “Google” search for “domineering wife” and “what is emotional abuse” (because my parents actually said they thought my wife was emotionally abusive – I had NEVER considered that)… I found this site, and I seriously almost started crying when I started reading this stuff. It was my life, spelled out. Men need sites like this. We need to be educated, because we’re different than women. But men being abused by women is real, and it’s dangerous. I was already in therapy when I found this site… I took some of the pages to my therapist, and said it was like a gut punch… she told me, “some lessons are harder than others to learn.” She knew. I didn’t. Dr. T knows too… THANK YOU SO MUCH, DR. T.
Read this and was intrigued by the concept of ‘Negative Advocate’. I received an email from what appears to be an ex-friend, who my actual ex spends way too much time with. Her email was long and read just like my ex had written it, same vitriolic tone, same diatribe. How I abandoned the kids, how I should have stuck it out, how my ex is wonderful person. She is totally on board with my ex and am wondering when she’ll get thrown under the bus. My ex has always latched on to people who she can manipulate and shut out people who would push against her. I mean, our marriage counsellor was useless and did nothing for her (because the MC called her out in session 4 and proceeded to talk about how we should get divorced), child impact classes were useless, etc.
I wasn’t really going to post this until my parents contacted me.
My ex had been sent a copy of this email by her new recruit and proceeded to forward it to my mother, stating what a horrible person I was, “see, someone else things the same, your son is a liar”.
I didn’t and will not respond to these communications. I’ve learned the hard way that only adds fuel to the fire.
Everything here reads true to my marriage. Thankfully I have a therapist to speak with, a loving partner who isn’t BPD/NPD and feel strong to continue having a healthy relationship with my two children. It’s sad so many of us went through the same thing, in the name of love, but it’s also good to be in the company of those who understand. Thanks Dr. T. Keep up the great work.
Unbelievable – I live in South Africa and the following link is another example of a coldblooded and frustrated woman hiring two hitmen – in this case to murder her daughter’s ex boyfriend that she fell in love with – and then showing no emotion or remorse after being arrested when the Nigerian “hitmen” set her up with the police and victim’s cooperation.
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Cougar-wanted-Bulls-player-killed-20101119
Dr. Tara, is there really a solid basis for the popular notion that “abusers were abused?” I question this because of my own very personal and lengthy experience living with two cluster b disordered parents. I am familiar with the family dynamics, both the way they were and continue to be treated by their parents, as well as how my parents treated their own children.
My mother is BPD. Father NPD. Both were raised without boundaries. The difference is my mother was spoiled and adored as the only girl (really the only child, as her brother was considerable older and grown by the time she came into the picutre). My mother brags that she never needed to be disciplined. This is a woman who throws tantrums like a toddler in the terrible twos, has to be right all the time, demands to be the center of attention at all times or else pitches an abusive tirade, competes with her own daughter (jealousy is a BIG issue), smashes dishes and knives, anything at her daughter and especially her husband. Has rabid, violent fights with her husband in front of the children, etc, etc. But my mother was conditioned by her parents to expect to remain the center of attention for life; to get her way; to always be right; to never have to face consequences for her bad acts; In short she was raised to expect the same treatment as a toddler. If anyone dares ask her not to behave abusively, she goes ballistic and does everything she can to isolate and discredit her victim (smear campaigns, lies, plays the victim). Her parents never disciplined her or corrected her for the entirety of her life.
My NPD father had a slightly different upbringing. For the first several years of his life, his parents treated him the same why my mother’s treated her. Spoiling, never parenting, overindulgence. They outsourced parenting to wealthy camps and private schools. They weren’t a presence in his childhood. What contact they did have, they doted on him but never actually parented. However, when his spoiled brat behavior grew too big to ignore they DID suddenly (too late) try to discipline him. Which he of course reacted like any PD abuser does. Violently, abusively rejecting any boundaries. He was throwing chairs at his teacher and calling the c-word, getting in fights with students, everyone, irresponsable, late to class, skipping, stealing cars, never studying…and would react with righteous fury if anyone tried to reason with him. His parents came 10 years too late when it came to parenting. They now had a spoiled, tantrum throwing toddler on their hands in a 6’6 body. In the first half of his childhood he was idealized, spoiled, could do no wrong (in their eyes, even though he WAS), they looked the other way and never instilled boundaries. They taught him to be a little king, just as my mother’s parents raised her to be a little princess. Incapable of wrongdoing. Untouchable, unanserable to consequences. But in the second half of his childhood, I’m sure my father found it very invalidating. The repeated attempts to reign him in must have felt invalidating. Constantly being told he isn’t doing right, being unable to focus, the reputation for being bad, a loser, etc must have been a hit to his ego, which has previously been built to believe he was invincible, righteous, entitled to get his way. I think there is some shame to NPD.
But my mother’s BPD? She has no shame. Her parents never once disciplined her or did anything but reinforce her idea of herself as a princless, above it all, answerable to no one. They continued to spoil and treat her with adoration from childhood, to adulthood, all throughout her middleage years. My mother more violent than my father, has no sense of shame or guilt. Feels that much more entitled. Never wrong. My father resists facing consequences to his actions too, and he too does all the usual projection, denial, blame the victim stuff…but my mother takes it to a whole new level. She doesn’t back down, she MUST get her way no matter what. And that includes threatening suicide or killing. These are the types that cannot handle not getting their way. They cannot handle owning their abusive behaviors. They would rather kill than face it, and how dare you impose a boundary upon them or talk about what they did to you!
Both of parents were spoiled in their critical childhood years. My mother was spoiled throughout her whole life, my father was spoiled for the first half and his parents made some attempts later in life (too late, he was grown and had already developed a full blown PD) to help him face natural consequences and boundaries. Both parents continue to go through life like spoiled toddlers in the terrible twos. My mother is high functioning and a Dr. Jeykl/Hyde type; perfectly capable of masking her true nature behind a mask of ladylike demeanor in public. My father is low functioning, therefore not capable of doning an appropriate facade in public like my mother, and comes across as an entitled bully. Both parents are selfish, can never be wrong, twist reality in order to achieve that (blaming their victims, isolating their victims, discrediting them). My mother is a much more successful PD because her parents were attentive and doting and present and rewarded her for good behavior…its just they rewarded her for bad as well, putting a blind eye up to poor behaviors, denying them. So my mother grew up knowing how to act normal, is high functioning, but selfish and expecting to get her way at all times and knows how to achieve it. Both are entitled brats. Both are abusers. Both believe they are victims if you ask them to reign in their abusive behaviors and go ballistic. They feel entitled to their behaviors and how dare anyone challenge that! They feel entitled to go through life without ever facing consequences.
Neither of them were abused growing up. The opposite. They were spoiled, adored to excess, and there was a lack of boundaries and discipline in their childhood years. Their parents spoiled them. Their parents failed to instill basic boundaries. This is why cluster B personality disordered types have no respect for boundaries. Entitlement and lack of respect for boundaries are present in ALL abusers. I don’t see how being abused as a child makes one grow into an abuser later on. If a child was abused, how then do they develop the self-centered pathology? The entitlement? Then sense of kingship/queenship? The sense that boundaries and rules don’t apply to them? If they were abused they’d have received the opposite message–>they’d have been torn down, made to feel worthless (not entitled). Abused children don’t become abusers. Spoiled, entitled, children grow up to become abusers. I’m sure all cluster Bs were spoiled during their crucial early childhood development years. If, later on in their teenage years their parents finally decided to address the issue of teaching their child boundaries (too late-the personality has already formed!) then that now disordered teen would react with outrage at any attempts to discipline him, and feel he was being “abused.” This is obviously, not genuine abuse. Cluster Bs were never given boundaries growing up, due to improper parenting on their folks part (be it spoiling or neglect..their parents did NOT discipline or give boundaries when they needed to be given..which is early childhood years). Spoiled, entitled children grow up to be the abusers of tommorow. Cluster Bs weren’t abused as children, but they most certainly will abuse their own children should they have them. They are too selfish, needy, ruthless, and tantrum throwing hysterical at not getting their way to NOT be abusive parents. They have no respect for boundaries (beyond everything is MINE, I get MY WAY, or else I blow up) they cannot possible teach boundaries to their own children. They are toddlers in an adults body. They cannot raise children. Their children will be scrambling to meet their disordered parents needs, which is the opposite of a healthy family.
I am so sick of the “abused people abuse” mantra. It’s b.s.
Hello ginger,
Thank you for registering with Shrink4Men and welcome.
“. . . is there really a solid basis for the popular notion that “abusers were abused?”
Many adult abusers were abused as children, but many were not. Furthermore, not all abused children grow up to become abusers, but many may grow up to be targets for abuse in adulthood.
As you described, many narcissistic bullies were pampered, spoiled children who were rarely held accountable for their misbehavior or told, “No.”
It’s no surprise that emotionally, they remain terrible two-sters and/or petulant, nasty, self-obsessed adolescents.