I haven't gone through it myself. If you do it, I hope you'll share whether it was helpful!
I may be mistaken, but I believe New Ways was initially developed as a way for family courts to approach high conflict custody cases? So in some courts across the country, there will be ones who court-order high conflict parents to go through the New Ways program.
I do see
a page with parent resources that look like standard Eddy skills, like using EAR, writing BIFF responses. The links go to paid videos on Eddy's highconflictinstitute.com site. For example, the EAR video is $59.
I've attended a webinar with Eddy, and he is really good. One thing that I found super helpful was thinking about our partners in terms of the degree of conflict you might be working with. For example:
*generally cooperative, not dangerous
*uncooperative, not dangerous
*uncooperative, dangerous
He suggests some skills won't work with the *uncooperative, dangerous* person, whereas a skill like EAR (empathy, attention, respect) could work with the first two.
Eddy also helped me recognize that there are times when a BPD sufferer's brain is fully engaged in emotional reasoning (a paradox), and that isn't the time to try and introduce logic. Better to wait until that part of the brain has returned to baseline. It's also possible for some BPD people that they won't fully remember the dysregulation because of the way intense emotions affect cognitive processes and memory. Which made me focus more on protecting myself during those episodes and less on trying to make sense of them.
I did see one video, can't remember which one, where Eddy mediates two high-conflict parents (actors playing out a composite of actual issues) and it was masterful. If nothing else, it helped me realize how skillful a person has to be to mediate. I was ordered to attend coparent counseling with my ex and it was clear as day she had zero skills to handle our case.
I wouldn't take it personally when the videos refer to high-conflict couples. We may not be BPD, and at the same time, it's likely we get on the high-conflict merry-go-round because the skills are not intuitive.
How would you describe your ex?
