Editor’s note: At the request of readers, the Lovefraud member “Skylar” has contributed the following article.
When dealing with malignant narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, borderlines, drama queens, stalkers and other emotional vampires, it’s commonly advised that no response is the best response to unwanted attention. This is often true and No Contact (the avoidance of all communication) should be used whenever possible.
There are some situations however, when No Contact is not feasible, as in when you share child custody with a psychopath. As another example, if you are being stalked by an ex, a restraining order can infuriate the unwanted suitor, and refusing to respond to him or her is seen as an insult. They might become convinced that they can MAKE you respond and in that way satiate their need for power over you.
Furthermore, many of us have tried to end a relationship with a psychopath several times, only to take them back, each time. They turned on the pity ploy and the charm, and because we didn’t understand that this is what a psychopath does, we fell for their promises to change. They know all of our emotional hooks. For them, it’s easy and fun to lure us back by appealing to our emotions. But a psychopath can’t change. In fact, when you leave a psychopath, he becomes determined to punish you even more severely for thinking you could be autonomous.
Even if we don’t take them back, the most dangerous time for a person is when they first break up with a psychopath. The psychopath feels rage at being discarded. Losing control or power over a person is not just a narcissistic injury for them; they feel profoundly empty when their partner leaves them even if they had intended to kill their partner. The reason is because they have lost control. Psychopaths need to feel in control at all times.
For all these situations, we have Gray Rock.
What it is:
So, how do we escape this parasitical leech without triggering his vindictive rage? Gray Rock is primarily a way of encouraging a psychopath, a stalker or other emotionally unbalanced person, to lose interest in you. It differs from No Contact in that you don’t overtly try to avoid contact with these emotional vampires. Instead, you allow contact but only give boring, monotonous responses so that the parasite must go elsewhere for his supply of drama. When contact with you is consistently unsatisfying for the psychopath, his mind is re-trained to expect boredom rather than drama. Psychopaths are addicted to drama and they can’t stand to be bored. With time, he will find a new person to provide drama and he will find himself drawn to you less and less often. Eventually, they just slither away to greener pastures. Gray Rock is a way of training the psychopath to view you as an unsatisfying pursuit you bore him and he can’t stand boredom.
What it’s for:
Making a psychopath go away of his own volition is one application of Gray Rock. One might say that Gray Rock is a way of breaking up with a psychopath by using the old, “It’s not you, it’s me.” excuse, except that you act it out instead of saying it and the psychopath comes to that conclusion on his own.
Another reason to use Gray Rock is to avoid becoming a target in the first place. If you find yourself in the company of one or more narcissistic personalities perhaps you work with them or they are members of your family it’s important to avoid triggering their ENVY. By using Gray Rock, you fade into the background. It’s possible they won’t even remember having met you. If you have already inadvertently attracted their attention and they have already begun to focus in on you, you can still use Gray Rock. Tell them you are boring. Describe a boring life. Talk about the most mundane household chores you accomplished that day in detail. Some people are naturally lacking in dramatic flair. Find those people and try to hang around them when the psychopath is nearby.
If you must continue a relationship with a psychopath, Gray Rock can serve you as well. Parents sharing joint custody with a psychopathic ex-spouse can use Gray Rock when the ex-spouse tries to trigger their emotions. I acknowledge that any threat to the well-being of our children is overwhelmingly anxiety provoking. Here is where Gray Rock can be applied selectively to draw attention away from what really matters to you. In general, show no emotion to the offending behaviors or words. The psychopath will try different tactics to see which ones get a reaction. With Selective Gray Rock, you choose to respond to the tactic which matters least to you. This will focus the psychopath’s attention on that issue. Remember, the psychopath has no values, so he doesn’t understand what is valuable to us unless we show him. Selective Gray Rock shows him a decoy. When protecting our children, we can take a lesson from nature: Bird parents who have fledglings are known to feign a broken wing when a predator is in the vicinity. They fake a vulnerability to detract the cat’s attention from their real vulnerability, their babies. In this example, Selective Gray Rock fades all emotions into the background except the ones you want the predator to see.
Why it works:
A psychopath is easily bored. He or she needs constant stimulation to ward off boredom. It isn’t the type of boredom that normal people experience; it’s more like the French word, ennui, which refers to an oppressive boredom or listlessness. Drama is a psychopath’s remedy for boredom. For drama, they need an audience and some players. Once the drama begins, they feel complete and alive again. They are empowered when pulling the strings that elicit our emotions. Any kind of emotions will do, as long as it is a response to their actions.
A psychopath is an addict. He is addicted to power. His power is acquired by gaining access to our emotions. He is keenly aware of this and needs to constantly test to make sure we are still under his control. He needs to know that we are still eager to do his bidding, make him happy and avoid his wrath. He needs to create drama so he can experience the power of manipulating our emotions. As with any addiction, it is exhilarating to the psychopath when he gets his supply of emotional responses. The more times he experiences a reward for his dramatic behavior, the more addicted he becomes. Conversely, when the reward stops coming, he becomes agitated. He experiences oppressive boredom and he will counter it by creating more drama. If we stay the course and show no emotions, the psychopath will eventually decide that his toy is broken. It doesn’t squirt emotions when he squeezes it anymore! Most likely, he will slither away to find a new toy.
The Gray Rock technique does come with a caveat: psychopaths are dangerous people, if you are in a relationship with one that has already decided to kill you, it will be difficult to change his mind. He may already be poisoning you or sabotaging your vehicle. Take all necessary precautions. In this case, Gray Rock can only hope to buy time until you can make your escape.
How it works:
Psychopaths are attracted to shiny, pretty things that move fast and to bright lights. These things, signal excitement and relieve the psychopath’s ever-present ennui. Your emotional responses are his food of choice, but they aren’t the only things he wants.
He envies everything pretty, shiny and sparkly that you have and he wants whatever you value. You must hide anything that he will notice and envy. If you happen to be very good looking, you need to change that during this time. Use makeup to add bags under your eyes. If you aren’t married to the psychopath, any money or assets he covets should disappear “in a bad investment decision” (consult with your attorney on this). Your shiny sports car has to go, get a beater. If you have a sparkling reputation, anticipate that he will or has already begun to slander you; therefore, don’t allow yourself to be put into any compromising position or pushed into erratic behavior. The reason he wants to take these things from you, is not necessarily because he wants them for himself, it’s because he wants to see the emotions on your face when you lose them. He wants the power trip associated with being the one who took them from you. By preemptively removing these things from his vision and not reacting with emotion at the losses, you continue to train him with the idea that you are the most boring person on earth, someone he would never want to be.
Origin of Gray Rock:
In 2009, I left my psychopathic partner after 25 years, but I didn’t understand what was wrong with him. I sat in a sushi bar, lost in confusion, when a tall, athletic man introduced himself. To my own surprise, I instinctively poured out my story to him. This complete stranger listened to my story and then he explained to me that I was dealing with a malignant narcissist. He advised me, “Be boring.” He told me that his girlfriend would come home each night, begin drinking and become abusive. They were both professionals who traveled in the same professional circles. He knew that she would stalk him if he broke up with her and he didn’t want to risk the slander and drama which could leak out and damage his professional reputation.
His solution was to be so boring that she would simply leave him. He declined to go out on evenings and weekends. He showed no emotional reaction about anything, no interest in anything and responded with no drama. When she asked if he wanted to go out for dinner, his reply was, “I don’t know.” After a few months of no drama, she simply moved out.
Why is it called Gray Rock?
I chose the words Gray Rock because I needed an object for us to channel when we are in an emotionally charged situation. You don’t just practice Gray Rock, you BECOME a Gray Rock. There are gray rocks and pebbles everywhere you go, but you never notice them. None of them attract your attention. You don’t remember any specific rock you saw today because they blend with the scenery. That is the type of boring that you want to channel when you are dealing with a psychopath. Your boring persona will camouflage you and the psychopath won’t even notice you were there. The stranger in the sushi bar showed great insight when he advised me to “be boring.” He struck at the heart of the psychopath’s motivation: to avoid boredom.
In nature, there are many plants and creatures that show us how to survive in a world of predators. Among others, birds feign injury to protect their babies and mice play dead until the cat loses interest. Both of these tactics can be useful and they can be channeled when applicable. Yet, it’s difficult to calculate each and every move that a psychopath will make and to determine the best course of action each time. Instead of trying to out-think him, channel the gray rock. This simple, humble object in nature has all the wisdom it needs to avoid being noticed, it’s boring.
Copyright © 2012 Skylar
Star
The problem is ONLY the spath defines what their “Win” is. You may think that if you give them all your possessions, surely that is a win and they will leave you alone. But what if they decide a “WIN” is when you submit to whatever they dictate and the only way they WIN is if you commit suicide (the ultimate dictation). See? You can’t give them enough. THEY decide the win.
For my spath, if I had the POTENTIAL to deny him, then he lost. In order for him to “Win”, he had to strip me of my potential to chose.
As Oxy points out, Grey rock or NC is a tool. As I said, NC ONLY worked for me b/c he could not find me.
I am not so foolish to think he would not eventually finish what he could not when I lived near him. I can hope that he is too busy with a new target, one that gives him a greater win (sorry, i did use the new woman that way, i did not warn her but she knew he was married -red flag- and she wanted to be a “better” woman to him than I was so I let her b/c someone with that mindset would not have listened to me. I have warned other women who were merely trapped by his charm.) I remain vigilent but I am no longer paranoid.
Oxy
THe way I used to get my mom to stop beating me was to scream and cry in agony. Then she got what she wanted and I got a shorter beating. SImilar to your egg doner. On my last beating, I let ma beat me but refused to cry. The blood was leaking through my tee shirt, sticking my shirt to my back. She took a break b/c it wore her out, and when she raised her hand to begin again, my hand shot up, caught her wrist and I was so angry and said NO. THAT’s enough. You will NEVER do this again. If you try, I will report you to the police. What you do is against the law (stupid me, that’s when spaths murder!). I think it freaked her out b/c she thought I was submitting and passive, and she realized instead I was enraged. She screamed at me to get out of her house. I did, within the hour, and never returned. Ma was a narcissist. I was supposed to comply to orders b/c I was her extended object. My dad was the spath, pedophile, sweet to everyone while fucking his little girls who screamed and begged while he MINDLESSLY raped them.
That’s the dif. Spaths do whatever they want MINDLESSLY. Narcissists JUSTIFY their evil b/c they have enough of a conscious that they know they are harming others.
Good point, Katy. If you compare a sociopath to a child playing with a spider, one child might get bored when the spider rolls up into a ball. Another might want to pull out a leg until it limped, then get bored. And a third might not be satisfied until all the legs were pulled out and the spider was crushed under his shoe. *winces at the thought of inflicting pain on an innocent animal, even though I’m phobic of spiders*
But also I thought that grey rock was also about boring them so they just go find someone else to play with. If you don’t show them any emotion, they don’t have any drama to feed on. They need to find it elsewhere. It seems that grey rock can work in these two different ways.
Star
You do know it is narcissists who feed on drama, not spaths right?
Spaths have a narcissistic component, in that others are objects to be used. But Spaths don’t care if they are worshipped or not, given attention or not. They don’t FEEL that kind of desire b/c that is a desire for attachment and spaths may be curious about attachment b/c they see that others gain their “win” via attachment, but spaths do not desire attachment.
I disagree with you Katy, my so Patrick and my sperm donor are definitely Sociopaths, with high N traits, but they want, they demand as it were to be worshipped. It isn’t “attachment” they want with the worship it is OWNERSHIP, i.e. CONTROL.
I still don’t know what my egg donor is as far as a medical diagnosis. She has components of wanting control, and manipulation, enabling, family role game playing, can become enraged and violent if thwarted…but she doesn’t quite fit the BPD or the NPD or the PPD, or the histrionic, or any other “hole” or “shaped peg” to go in it.
I know one thing, she keeps her mask FIRMLY on in the community and even in the family she kept it on for a long time. Only the last few years did she let it slip with son C.
Wow, this is an interesting conversation. Completely hear, and agree, with both Katy and Oxy re: with certain people grey rock only escalates them, and it is ONE OF the tools in a toolbox, but not the only one.
I soooooo hear you about the mother thing. It’s actually brought me right up to the brink of my memory losses trying to think through similar types of situations. I can only see so far in those types of situations, and then the memory always stops. But I DO know that my attempts to grey rock, or withstand, to not cry, etc… only ever brought on the sadistic smile. Can’t see all the way through the memories, but remember enough to know that my mother required her serving of my suffering before she would stop.
Don’t really care what the diagnosis is: psychopath, sociopath, narcissist, malignant narcissist. What’s important is to recognize the dynamic, and when you are in it, and what to do about it.
Thanks Katy and Oxy, for talking about this. Talking through your own painful experiences is instructive and healing to those of us who can relate.
From growing up with narcissistic parents, I have observed that they do tend to have very dramatic lives. But I think it’s more of a function of them lacking empathy for other people, and how this creates harm to those around them, which in turn comes back on them. I wouldn’t say they feed on other people’s emotions. For instance, it threatened my mother when I would get angry. It made her anxious. This is why I learned to bottle up anger. She didn’t feed off my anger. She just wanted me to emotionally take care of her and be her mother, which would entail a maternal air and no anger shown at all. She was invested in me showing no emotion except compassion for her. This is exactly what I did because it is how I was groomed.
On the other hand, the spath seemed very comfortable with shows of anger. I wouldn’t say he fed off of it. I just think other people’s anger and hurt registered to him the same as events such as them brushing their teeth or putting on their coats. It is all one “flavor” to them. There is no depth of feeling there. They would, however, learn to associate a person getting angry with that person possibly breaking up with them. And when that happens, they have lost. So they may learn how to manage other people’s emotions in order to keep control of those people. That is why grey rock would be so effective. If you don’t show them any emotion, they cannot control you. They just don’t know what to do. It throws them off their mojo. That is my understanding of it anyway.
Oxy
Sorry, I got to pondering thoughts and got a little offtrack. Your response above? I think you are actually agreeing with me. Patrick and sperm doner want narcissistic supply, ie to be worshipped as superior gods, but as you state, for control/domination/”winning”. That I believe shows the dif between strict N’s, and spaths who of course have the narcissistic as a component of their personality. Their primary motivation is what delineates how they manifest their narcissism.
I probably miswrote my thoughts, not completing the explanation of my opinion, again proving to my daughter and not disagreeing with her that I need an editor!
Some sociopaths seem to “read” the emotions of others pretty well and manipulate them flawlessly, but others are quite CRUDE in their manipulations of others and their emotions. The CEO-type is one kind of psychopath, and Charlie Manson is another type, both manipulate others but most “normal” people would not be sucked in by the crude manipulations of Manson, if that makes sense. For the type of people that Manson manipulated, he was as good as the CEO-type was (Think Bernie Madoff).
Some psychopaths seem to use more violence or threats of violence to keep their prey in line (think “Hell’s Angels” or the Mafia) Others beat their wives in secret, and hide behind their position as a judge or what not, but still viloent, just covert violence not overt or obvious.
In figuring out “which kind” of psychopath a person is, or even that they are one, takes time sometimes, and other times it is obvious to anyone. Watching how the act, words versus actions, watching for “tells” all take being aware and watching. Plus, many people like my egg donor are only toxic to SELECTED people….whereas my P sperm donor is toxic to EVERY ONE.
The key though is TOXIC…and that means stay the heck away from them. NC
Katy we actually posted over each other….you hadn’t yet posted when I had written but not posted part of the above post. I went and got something to eat, I forgot there is an auction my friend wants to go to so she and I will go and the chicken will do for tomorrow night! LOL Let D fend for himself. There’s plenty of left overs in the refrigerator he can nuke for himself. He’s packing for a trip to Texas to a living history event.