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
Just saw a great movie tonight: Doubt with Meryl Streep. She plays the part of a nun and principal of a boys’ school, coming to suspect the priest of abusing or trying to abuse the boys. Nothing is ever proven, not to her in a factual manner nor to the unsuspecting viewer.
She starts to suspect when she sees him grab the hand of one of the boys on the playground and the boy pulls himself loose and runs off. She then asks one of her teachers to keep an eye on the priest. The teacher-nun detects one of the altar boys’ breath smelling of acohol. The principal is sure that the priest must have given him the mass wine to have his way with him. The priest claims the boy drank the mass wine by himself, and dismisses the boy from being an altar boy. The teacher is happy to have it so easiy explained. The priest then gives a parish sermon regarding gossip and in the aftermath of mass does his best to convince the teacher he’s a good man, talking about how the good book is about ‘love’, etc… He comes across as amiable, concerned about the wel being of some of the boys, especialy the one he dismissed from being an altar boy, etc… While he sets himself up as being the loving, gentle, caring priest in words to the mind of the teacher, he at the same time aims at putting the principal down for being cold, conservative, harsh and cruel.
Meryl Streep remains convinced of her suspicions and invites the mother of the boy over to relay her suspicions and warn her. The mother too only sees the mask, reeaved that at least the priest is the sole adult man who seems to care for her son. She is African American, and so is her son of course, and she suspects her son is gay (he’s in his last grade of elementary, cose to going to HS). Her husband, his father beats the boy and would kill her son if he’d learn what the priest may have been doing. Likewise she sent him to the private elementary school, to avoid him being maltreated by boys in HS for his probaby gay nature. To her, the abuse would be the lesser evil, in order to make sure his father or other bullies don’t kill him, he gets to go to HS and maybe even university. Eventualy the mother asks the nun to leave her son out of it.
Having seen the boy’s mother at the principal’s office he ater confronts the nun in her office: he shouts, he threatens to have her expelled from being head mistress, is obsessed with the “why does she suspect” and “who told her”, goading her into debate of her not having facts nor evidence, eventually talking about sympathy (begging for it), hoping to point out that she and him are alike.
But she sticks to her guns and conviction of “what” he is, declaring coldly she has no sympathy for him whatsoever because she knows he’s “invulnerable to remorse”, and orders him to give his resignation and ask for a transfer. She shows disgust over him having blamed and faulted the boy publically for drinking whine, while he must have administered it, for preying on a boy who has a troubled home, who is in an underdog position altogether.
Though he never admits to anything, he relents to her order to ask for a transfer, believing her claim she called the previous parish and spoke to a nun (not to the priest, which he calls wrong, not according to protocol, stepping out of line, etc.). He says goodbye to the parish during his last mass with a big smile, with his “gentle, loving” mask, blaming a wind (spiritually) to propel people forward to new places, etc… When he sasy goodbye to everyone in the parish personally, you see one boy (the one that ran away) start to smile t himself with relief; the mother of the underdog boy thinking, not smiling, but she seems to realize the principal managed to keep her son safe; the underdog boy seems at a loss.
Meryl Streep confides to the teacher she involved into it that she lied about calling the previous parish, but that him relenting to leave the parish on account of that lie is the evidence. She knows she never had any proof or evidence, but she knows she was right. Unfortunately, “the wind” – or better yet, the bishop – promoted him to an even bigger boy school.
As I said, to a viewer who hasn’t got a clue what a spath really is the movie shows no evidence at all to the principal’s suspicion. To the connaisseur and the principal it’s his own behaviour, his tactics that betray him.
If you haven’t seen this one yet: I truly recommend the movie.
hmmm…
it’s interesting how differently people interpret what I wrote about gray rock. I thought I had been so clear, yet I can see that each person brings their own perspective to what it means to be boring or be a gray pebble.
When I was asked to define gray rock, I thought that perhaps I should ask Milo or 20years to join me in the definition because they are our resident experts. But then it was sooooo long that I didn’t want to make it longer. Now I think that I should have asked for their help.
If you are around Milo and 20 years, your gray rock tactics might be helpful in this conversation.
Meanwhile, I’ll try to clarify a bit.
Gray rock doesn’t mean to show no emotion necessarily. In a situation where emotion is normal, a defiantly stoic face is infuriating to a spath. At a funeral, if you aren’t sad and crying, you will stand out! People with expressionless faces actually ATTRACT attention.
If you think back to the last boring person you met, it wasn’t someone with NO expression, that person was CREEPY. The boring person might be quite chatty, in fact. But they still bore us to tears because they have nothing interesting to say.
Gray rock is about BLENDING in to the sea of humanity and not attracting attention. Don’t be to cute, but don’t be too ugly either. Not too loud and not too quiet. Be just like everyone else and the spath won’t get envious because you are getting attention. Maybe I should have named it “Striped Zebra” 😆
Yes, the spaths will torture us because they like to “win”, but they don’t usually have any idea of what winning means until we define it for them. They don’t value anything, they just want to take what WE value. We usually react emotionally to getting or losing what we value. They watch us carefully for the expression on our faces. My spath used to go to the casinos just to watch people lose big money.
Gray Rock works, not because it makes the spath feel bad for being ignored, but because it makes the spath get bored and go away. In fact, incessant chatting about things that the spath isn’t interested in, is a great way to make the spath go away. Keep it light and superficial.
They want to win because they want YOU to lose and they want to see you suffer. If you let them think they won, they will go away and that is the whole point, isn’t it? Why would we want to win against a spath? WHAT would we win? They are already in hell. They have nothing to lose.
Darwinsmom,
I saw that movie. EXCELLENT portrayal of a spath. The fact that the spathinator was such a hard ass and the spath was “such a nice guy!” really underscored what we are up against when we fight the spaths.
I saw that movie also…more than once.
Hi Louise,
how are you today?
Hi Sky ~ just was reading on here. I think gray rock is one of those things that if you haven’t tried it, you may think it would never work because it is really so “simple”, for a better word. But, when you think about what the reasoning behind it ie. make yourself so boring that you are just no longer fun for the spath to play with. When the game is no longer fun, why play. I don’t really see it as having anything to do with emotions, or lack of emotions.
When I say play, I do not mean to minimize what the spath may have in mind. I don’t just mean a drama fix, although it may start out that way. I think gray rock can stop a full blown spath attack BEFORE it gets to that point. When the pity ploy is used, your reply could be something like, Oh, that is a shame, I know neighbor Charlie is having that same sort of problem. I saw him and his wife Mary on the way to town today when I went to pick up more worm medication for the dog because you should have seen the wad of worms that poor little boy coughed up – Oh wait did I clean those up yet – anyways before I got to the vet I ran into Mrs. So&So that used to live up the hill by where the road turns to gravel, Oh you should see the holes you have to drive through before you get to that part – do you remember where I am talking about.
Ok, now really, who wouldn’t be bored by now. And I am serious.
I mentioned that spath daughter has actually asked me if I am feeling alright, am I sick etc. She is so confused because even when she “pushes my buttons” I am not angry, rude, nor do I ignore. I guess I word salad her until she looses concentration. She also has tried asking me very loaded questions about what I think of her or drops hints about “rehab”, parenting skills, sobriety. She tells me lies that she knows I realize are lies. I say hmmmm, that’s nice dear.
I answer her calls, never give negative comments or criticize her in any way. When she asks me a question I don’t want to answer, or to do something, I lie.
All I can tell you is that IT WORKS. I know if I was rude, argued with her or acted completely unattached, her number one goal in life would be to hound me non-stop and the attacks would start. Yes, she wants drama first, then she wants to win – win – win. I think gray rock keeps me from being the prize because who wants an old gray rock when you can look for someone shiny and new.
I’m sure like anything else, it may not work on or for everyone and the gray rock type responses would be ones that would fit the situation. But, I do think it is about stepping back out of the drama, refusing to react in a negative or positive way, rather neutral, if you will. Maybe I would say it is like one of you is playing chess and the other is playing checkers. The game wouldn’t go very far.
Milo,
you leave me speechless. I have the theory of gray rock but your implementation is a thing of beauty.
The worms and the gravel… how do you do it?
The really amazing thing is that a spath’s hatred does usually center around their mother, so without you even trying you are her main target. Yet you deflect it like a martial arts master.
Thanks for helping to clarify. It seems like this theory is hard to grasp without concrete examples.
At the end of your boring monologue, when you said, “do you remember where I’m talking about?” I think that part is absolutely masterful. Asking a question right when her mind is at the breaking point of boredom, prevents her from going into a daydream and zoning you out. That means she HAS to focus on the boring conversation, so you get to bore her even further into the point of agony. At each moment when it seems she could tune your voice out, asking a pointless question would force her to come back to attention and feel the pain of boredom.
That’s utter genius.
You should give classes.
Milo;
WOW…..how timely your post is for me.
I’m sitting here pondering….i’ve got some thinking to do and decisions to make.
Jr heard from Spathy today….again…right on schedule.
Even though Jr said he was sooooo sooooo busy the next few weeks……when spath asked if he could come up and see him…..Jr said, no way, I’m just toooo busy.
So……he called today and left Jr a message telling him he’ll be up next weekend and wants to get together , If Jr has time.
Jr called me and said…..Mom….what do I do.
I said…..NC!
The problem here is…..Detective wanted Jr to return spaths call last week. It opened the door for spath. Now spath thinks all is well and back ‘on tract’.
It’s not….Jr wants nothing to do with him…still.
But…..he gave the impression he was okay with spath.
Spath is telling others how he got to speak to his jr after 6 years……(it’s not been that long, but who’s counting).
And all is well.
Don’t want him around!!!!!
I told Jr not to return this call…..he’ll keep calling but don’t answer……
Save all messages.
This will lead spath into coming to our home…..looking for Jr.
Don’t want that either……
But the cops can deal with that.
So……what to do????
I think frankly if the cops want to nab him just for being in the state and Jr can lure him into the state that there is something BIG that they want him for and have evidence to put him away for…either a big drug thing or maybe a murder.
I understand your reluctance and Jr’s….as for deciding NOT to have anything to do with it…he won’t get it about NC but will keep on trying, so I think Jr. should LEAVE HIM A MESSAGE saying “I’ve decided I never want to speak to you again< do not call me or I will file another restraining order."
The comment (I think it is a big time tell) about his "premonition" about you being brutally raped….he has set some one up to do just that. I think you need him off the street, but I would talk to the cops and make them give me more information before I participated though…tough call sweetie! Wish I had the answer that I knew was 100% right, but Only YOU can make the call and hope it is the right one. God bless. (((hugs)))
Speaking of gray, I am painting my kitchen wall’s gray, you would think gray would be a depressing color for kitchen wall’s, lilac or blue would of been nice or something whimsical, but I like the color gray. I guess this tell’s some about my personality or lack of one.
EB…..if JR. doesnt want to be around that loser then tell him he doesnt need to. Let the detective do the dirty work and keep Jr. out of the mix…imho