How to Deal with a Narcissist (You’re Doing It Wrong)
The narcissist in your life makes it their goal to get a rise out of you. Your attention is the only thing that makes their life worth living. It doesn’t matter if it’s negative attention or positive attention, they feed off of the fact that you are investing your time and energy into them.
When you learn the tactics that narcissists use to keep you under their control (and the reason they need you under their control), you realize that you need to figure out how to stop being manipulated and used for their own fulfillment.
But it’s difficult to change what you do because you have a goal, too:
To elicit their love and affection
To work cooperatively with them
To help them understand you
To get them to agree with you
To have peace
To help them see their flaws so they can be better
To prove them wrong
And you have a method:
Trying to inspire them
Teaching them
Correcting them
Reasoning with them
Explaining things to them
Snuggling up to them
Appealing to them
Setting an example
Begging
Ignoring
Yelling
Crying
Arguing
But none of those methods accomplish your goals, do they? After all your efforts to be heard and seen and known, they still just want to do things their own way.
And they will continue to use whatever tactics are necessary to accomplish that. You aren’t going to change them by doing the things you’re doing. You might not be able to change them at all. But you can stop being the one on the losing end. How?
The only way to win is to stop playing.
That means that you don’t try to READ (Reason, Excuse, Argue, or Defend your thoughts, feelings, actions, or opinions) and, instead, you engage in what is called “Gray Rock.”
Gray Rock
It’s a method of interacting with a narcissist (or any emotionally unhealthy person) that doesn’t allow them the pleasure of being able to get a rise out of you. It means that you act like a gray rock: you just sit there unmoved, unshaken, uncracked, unresponsive, unemotional.
In other words, you do what is probably the opposite of everything that you do now to try to communicate with them. With gray rock, you don’t explain things to them, you don’t try to get them to understand, you don’t argue with them or plead with them or try to appease them. You don’t cry or sulk or yell or give the silent treatment. You don’t try to appeal to them. You don’t do any of that. You just act like a gray rock.
Here’s what it can look like:
The “I’m not even going to respond to that” face
Short responses: “no,” “OK,” “I’ll get back to you,” “This conversation is over,” “Thanks for sharing that information,” “huh”
No response at all
Standing in your truth: “I respect what you want, but I’m not going to go along with it”
The wonderful thing about the Gray Rock method is that it allows you to use self-control (which you have a lot of) to produce an external response that is different from your typical response to them.
Having a Gray Rock response emotionally de-escalates the situation (at least for you because you are not feeding the emotional intensity you are feeling). Not acting on your feelings buys you just enough time to re-activate the thinking part of your brain (instead of letting the feeling part take over) so that you can respond intentionally instead of reactively.
It also gives you time to become consciously aware of your internal emotional response and use that as information to further your growth and healing. And you do know that you need to grow and heal, right? Because let’s face it - just because you have self-control and can act like a gray rock doesn’t mean that you feel like a gray rock on the inside. Rather, on the inside you feel
Appalled
Angry
In shock
Rejected
Disappointed
Humiliated
Betrayed
Abandoned
Defiant
Annoyed
Triggered
When a narcissist says or does something that leaves you feeling a certain way, you’ve been triggered. A trigger is anything that creates a negative emotional or physiological response: you tense up, you get angry, you feel like shouting or screaming, you feel desperate, you feel like you’d do anything to be heard. (You sometimes even feel like you’d do things that can’t be spoken of - am I right?) And being triggered is a signal that you have some healing to do.
Gray Rock is a first step to changing the dynamics of your relationship, giving you an opportunity to seek change for yourself and the relationship. It provides you with the time and emotional distance you need to realize that you have feelings about what’s happening, to identify and name those feelings, to figure out what’s at the root of them, and to discover how to use that information to heal.
As a first step, Gray Rock sends the message to the narcissist that you will no longer be affected by their attempts to throw you off balance, upset you, or get you to do what they want. And it will likely be infuriating to them, so be prepared for that (and for the need for more Gray Rock).
Is Gray Rock Biblical?
You might be wondering whether it’s biblical to use the Gray Rock method. After all, we’re told to treat others the way we’d want to be treated - and most of us wouldn’t want someone to treat us coldly without emotion!
At the same time, it’s also fair to say that most of us aren’t treated by others the way we’re being treated by the narcissist. And it’s OK to make that distinction!
Jesus made a distinction between toxic people and non-toxic people
Of course he didn’t use the word “toxic” to describe anyone. Nor did he use the word “narcissist” or “emotionally unhealthy.” But he did use other words:
Hypocrites
Brood of vipers
Blind guides
Fools
Liars
He also used the Gray Rock method with those whom he referred to by those names:
In Matthew 15: 14 he advises his disciples: “Leave them; they are blind guides.”
In Matthew 10: 14 Jesus tells his disciples: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
In John 11: 54, because people were plotting against him, he “no longer moved about publicly among the people of Judea. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness.”
In Matthew 18: 17 Jesus says that if you have made repeated efforts to make someone aware of their sin and “they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
In Luke 4: 30 when the people wanted to throw him off a cliff, “he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”
Scripture is much more alive than legalists would recognize. So many passages of Scripture are used as a weapon or a tool to keep us in line (which deteriorates unity), while ignoring the freedom that we have to use discernment and be like Jesus in ALL the ways that he reveals who he is. And Jesus has so much more depth to him than how he is typically portrayed. [If you’d like to know more about Jesus’ character, read “What Would Jesus REALLY Do?”]
So to answer the question, yes, Gray Rock can be biblical. But, like most things, it can be used incorrectly and unbiblically, too. For example, Gray Rock is not to be used to manipulate someone to change or to do something your way. It is not the silent treatment and it is not pouting or sulking. It is also not intended to be used to emotionally deprive someone as a punishment to them. It truly is meant to be a way to remove yourself from the chaos and conflict of a relationship with a narcissist.
And when you start taking steps such as Gray Rock toward emotional health, you begin to experience the truth that . . .
hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it is found in our situation . . .
Sometimes you just need someone to ask. Have a question about relationships?
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