5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life

Identifying and Dealing with Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other High-Conflict Personalities

De: Bill Eddy LCSW Esq.

Narrado por: Tom Parks

Some difficult people aren’t just hard to deal with—they’re dangerous.

Do you know someone whose moods swing wildly? Do they act unreasonably suspicious or antagonistic? Do they blame others for their own problems?

When a high-conflict person has one of five common personality disorders—borderline, narcissistic, paranoid, antisocial, or histrionic—they can lash out in risky extremes of emotion and aggression. And once an HCP decides to target you, they’re hard to shake.

But there are ways to protect yourself. Using empathy-driven conflict management techniques, Bill Eddy, a lawyer and therapist with extensive mediation experience, will teach you to:

- Spot warning signs of the five high-conflict personalities in others and in yourself.

- Manage relationships with HCPs at work and in your private life.

- Safely avoid or end dangerous and stressful interactions with HCPs.

Filled with expert advice and real-life anecdotes, 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life is an essential guide to helping you escape negative relationships, build healthy connections, and safeguard your reputation and personal life in the process. And if you have a high-conflict personality, this book will help you help yourself.

©2018 Bill Eddy (P)2025 Recorded Books

Super helpful

This audiobook is helping me identify high conflict people in my life, how to work/deal with them, when to back off and get space and how if necessary. Also, that I need to reflect on my own behavior and work on myself as well

Very Helpful for people with Mental Health disorders

Very thoughtful and thorough. Was very helpful for me dealing with someone I know with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Everyone should read/listen

This book offers real pragmatic life advice that is incredibly valuable. Author distills advice that will save you from stress, money, and despair over people that don’t act rationally. Read it and share it.

Must Read!

Awesome book! A must read. Explains so much about all the difficult people in life.

Must read

So many insights. My eyes are now wide open to HCPs!! Thank you for writing this book and helping so many navigate challenges!!

excellent Information. i wished it was longer.

just wishes it was longer. more about effects of HCP and how they hurt people. the 5 hour brevity maybe a welcome length for most people. content is condensed.

Very informative

This book is so interesting and informative, I’m really glad I got it. I didn’t know how much I needed to know about this subject

Heard Huberman refer to this

I went out to get this book after I heard Andrew Huberman mention it during an interview. I found listening to a recently traumatic because I have been dealing with several HCPs in my life. At least now that I have been through this book, I am unlikely to repeat the mistakes that i have made in the past wouldn’t dealing with these types of people. Very appreciative of the author’s work here.

Painfully shortsighted…

As a scholar of conflict resolution, and a professional mediator, Eddie breaks rule number one of conflict. Analysis: separate the people from the problem. Eddie has lumped anybody who is mildly agitated or engages with conflict as a group of people who create problems, rather than understanding that this is how a group of people react to certain social problems. This book acknowledges and addresses the rise in people’s dissatisfaction, and even refers to statistics of how our society, especially the younger society is showing more and more signs of high conflict, personality, HCP. However, the author completely neglect to examine this rise, putting the full accountability on the person being bored with a personality disorder rather than examining social or socioeconomic constructs that may be informing people‘s response to conflict. Hard pass on this book. I recommend John Paul Lederach’s “ Little book of conflict transformation.” Far superior and still the industry standard for conflict analysis and management.