No, it's not a superhero; it's my Aunt Bernadette, "Pebbles" to her family. Here in the Trenches, we talk a lot about high emotions, and high conflict people. What high conflict people usually have in their lives are people who reinforce their high conflict behavior. Bill Eddy calls those folks "Negative Advocates." (Contrary to popular belief, I am not on Bill's payroll or otherwise compensated by him. I just love the non-judgmental way he views some of my most longstanding clients) Here in the Trenches, we are well acquainted with the Negative Advocate. It's the person who second guesses our advice to our client. It's the person who tells them that they're perfectly justified taking an unreasonable position, the friend who only sees their side of the dispute. This is how Bill Eddy describes them:
First of all, let me explain the term “negative advocate,” because I believe it can apply to anyone, and probably all of us have occasionally been negative advocates. The term I use is comparable to an enabler with an alcoholic or an addict, where an enabler is someone who goes around fighting for the disease rather than the cure. And so, people are familiar with that term, or “co-dependant.”
And negative advocate is a term that I use for that type of behavior in the legal process or conflict process, where someone gets emotionally hooked and charged up and fights for a high conflict person in bad ways, fights for all of their distortions of thinking, their intense emotions, their bad behavior. And when I say they’re emotionally hooked, it’s because emotions are contagious and the high intensity emotions of high conflict people are quite contagious.
When people act as negative advocates, it makes resolving the dispute or solving the problem that much more difficult. You have to counteract your client's intense emotion and unrealistic expectations, and that job is made all the more difficult because they have been reinforced by others who supposedly don't have a dog in that fight.
So what about my Aunt Pebbles? Aunt Pebbles is what we like to call a positive advocate. Effective positive advocates are rare in most of our personal lives. Here in the Trenches, it's what we aspire to be for our clients. A positive advocate is a person who can hear what you're saying, let you know they understand what you mean, and then carefully and effectively point out 1) facts you may have forgotten; 2) different ways of looking at the facts that you may not have considered; and if you're lucky enough to have my Aunt Pebbles, they also talk to everyone and anyone about everything, and they ask a LOT of questions. They also read things other than what you read, so they have a different pool of information from which to draw. What that means for those lucky enough to have a positive advocate in their lives, is some good reality testing and novel solutions to nagging/annoying/overwhelming problems. Not to mention, they also provide great shoulders on which to cry. This is not the same as a Negative Nancy, who shoots down all of your good ideas and finds fault in everything you do. A positive advocate is just that - positive - and their suggestions are not criticisms. We sometimes tease Aunt Pebs, but we've gotten a lot of good ideas from her, saved ourselves a lot of grief, and learned the right questions to ask. (Plus, she never, ever, says "I told you so.") Positive advocates are not always popular with us when we're in crisis (not you of course, Aunt Pebs - other people), because what we need to hear (reason, sanity and novel solutions) is not what we want to hear (that we're right), and for that reason, most folks don't seek them out when they really should, and turn instead to the negative advocate. I'm lucky enough to have a positive advocate who uses humor and good cheer, but sometimes even I don't want to take to heart what she says. I've learned over the years that sometimes her advice is like castor oil - it tastes bad but it's good for you (by the way, Aunt Pebs is also a fan of castor or fish oil, only pharmaceutical grade, however). I'll bet everyone has a positive advocate in their lives, even if they're not as terrific as my Aunt Pebs. If you're in the Trenches, take a moment and think about the positive advocates in your life. They're there. Seek them out, ask them questions, test your perceptions, hear what they have to say. Your attorney will thank them for it, and so will you.
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