Remember, what is the central, or one of the central mantras, of the narcissistic relationship? You can't win. You can't, you can't ask for a script.

You can't even figure out how to say it because even they don't know the right answer. So everyone talks about, how am I supposed to stay in touch with the narcissist?

Low contact, no contact, yellow rock, gray rock. This video is all in one place, one-stop shop of an overview of probably some of the best ways you've got, if there is any best way, to stay in touch with a narcissistic person in your life.

So you've all heard the terms, right? Low contact, no contact, firewalling, yellow rock, gray rock, just staying in touch and not changing a thing.

Just, I guess that's, yeah, I don't know, regular rock? I don't know what to call that.

But all I do have to say is, damn, there is so much terminology out there around, how am I supposed to communicate and stay in touch with this narcissistic person in my life?

That I wanted in one place because I'm always getting these questions from multiple places. I'm like, let me just consolidate this and try and clarify and talk about some of the pros and cons and possibilities of each of these sorts of communication tools.

Many people think that there is one best way.

There really is not. And that there is a way to do this that will keep them from yelling at you.

There's not. And actually, I'd love to hear from you in the comments, which of these communication tools has worked for you?

Now, I think it's important to open with the idea that there is no one best way. It's easy to say no contact is best, and just leave it at that, but that's not realistic.

It's not always best or necessary or possible. So I think it's important that we walk through all of these different contact methods so you are in a better position to understand what it is you're in and how to choose what is best for you.

So again, you have some sort of template. Not all of these are accessible to everyone, and these may evolve over the course of a relationship.

So let's take this on as a continuum, right? So at the most extreme of these communication tools is no contact. It's the "I am dead to you while I live on this planet." Blocked, eradicated, I will slam the door in your face, not respond, done communication.

It's a big move. Now, preliminary research suggests it works, and it works well.

Folks who go no contact will report feeling better over time, better having no contact, never having to engage with the narcissistic person.

Over time, this lack of contact can result in real improvements in physical and mental health and can help a person move on. It makes sense, a toxic stressor is now removed from your life.

Now, no contact is extreme and an option that's definitely not open to everyone. If you are co-parenting minor children, it's not really possible.

If you have one family member you want to go no contact with, but they're still in touch with other family members you care about, for example, you're trying to go no contact with one of your siblings, but you're tight with other siblings and extended family, that's not really possible.

If you are still in a job and this is a colleague or a narcissistic boss, not really easy to pull off.

But in the cases, for example, of breakups where you don't have any ongoing ties, family members where there's no where for example, where no contact will not impact other family relationships or a job that you can quit and never have anything to do with the people who work there.

No contact works. Some people report feeling guilty about going no contact, and that guilt is often emblematic of the trauma bond, feeling responsible for the abuser's hurt and the idea that you are the perpetrator after being harmed by this person.

But after you get over that initial hump, it really does get better and you will heal simply from not having to deal with the narcissistic manipulative nonsense.

You just have to hold strong to get over that initial uncomfortable hump.

Sometimes no contact may get breached even after many years of no contact. Contact may resume because there's an illness or a death, and that's okay.

You can still keep minimal contact, get through the crisis, and then go back to no contact or whatever form of contact is healthiest for you.

Sometimes no contact may begin after children become adults, the job is finally quit, or the other family members that made it so complicated are gone or are no longer an issue.

So sometimes people evolve into no contact after years of not being able to do it. Listen, it can be hard to go from 0 to 60 when it comes to no contact.

So for example, you go from seeing someone every day and then one day go to no contact. But you know, contact may be someplace you get to over time.

But given the limitations of no contact, some folks are only left with something called low contact. Low contact is exactly what it sounds like: really only the most essential contact.

This can certainly happen and work in the workplace with narcissistic family members, especially ones you don't need to see that often, and even with a toxic ex, especially as the children come into later adolescence or into early adulthood, low contact is tight: only essential communication, nothing but the facts, no emotion, and only when necessary.

Low contact means that there's no casual communication, none of the, "Hey, you doing?

Hey, how are you doing?" kind of communication. It may come down to only communication about, I don't know, a question about an event like a graduation or an issue like a hospitalization or a funeral, and not engaging beyond that.

Now, gray rocking is something that can be sort of an add-on to low contact, like an option you add on.

Gray rocking, as many of you know, is exactly what it sounds like: emotionless, flat, uninteresting.

Yes, no, okay. It's you not taking the bait. But gray rocking is a very tricky strategy. Being flat and not taking the bait can get a narcissist really agitated, but if you can get past the initial agitation, then they may just get bored and leave you alone.

The goal of gray rocking is to leave them to become disinterested, but the initial ramp-up in rage and antagonism because you aren't taking the bait can be too unsettling for people who find themselves getting sucked back into the cycles.

Gray rocking can also be challenging when you're co-parenting and your children witness it.

The gray rocking parent can be the one that looks odd to the children, and it becomes a lot easier for the narcissistic parent to paint you out as the problem to the kids and everyone else because you're so flat.

Gray rocking can work a little bit at work because you may just sort of flatly deliver the facts, but if the person, for example, that you are trying to gray rock with has power, it could hurt you if it's a job where things like promotions are possible, because it's definitely going to put you in a politically bad place.

and potentially hurt your career because you're not going to get the promotion. Gray rocking is meant to be a disengagement strategy that can work for example, at the Thanksgiving table, but only to an extent.

Over time, the family and the flying monkeys may look at you as the problem for being so cold and so remote.

I've honestly heard just as much bad come out of gray rocking as good. So that takes us to yellow rocking. This is a term that was coined by someone I know well, Tina Swithin.

Thank you, Tina. Yellow rocking is often brought into co-parenting and elevates gray rock to a little more than yes and no and colors it up a bit to include basic manners like thanks and please and perhaps infuses it with a little bit more emotion and warmth as that is going to be more comforting and better modeling for children.

But yellow rocking is also a strategy that can work with families and workplaces because it incorporates manners in a somewhat less robotic approach, but you are still disengaged.

So you can expect the ramp-ups and the dysregulation and the anger because you do not take the bait and your good manners and thank you will not be enough to keep them from yelling you for not taking the bait.

It looks publicly better to yellow rock because you are using words and behaviors and phrases like please and thank you, but once again, it is a disengagement and it's going to result in the same problems as gray rocking.

Again, this is probably most workable as a co-parenting approach. So what's this firewalling? I've talked about this and we have an entire video on firewalling.

It's applying a tech term to a narcissism protection technique. It's a way of sort of protecting your so-called psychological passwords and vulnerabilities, basically to teach yourself to not share those vulnerabilities, but also setting up firewalled protection against their manipulation, dysregulation, and cruelty, either because you're using boundaries or doing low contact or gray rock or yellow rock.

You don't share feelings or you don't share your vulnerabilities or your good news or your bad news, all of which may be used against you, but also having a good defense against what comes in from them, which again, you can block off through using boundaries, radical acceptance, realistic expectations, and disengagement.

Whereas gray and yellow rock are pretty much about how you present yourself and don't take the bait. And then there's the communication tool of just business as usual.

No gray rock, no yellow rock, no low contact or no contact. You just do what you keep doing. Now, my guess is that is not working out for you because communicating as usual often means that you fall into the pit of defending yourself and taking the bait and trying to explain yourself when they gaslight you and you keep having the same arguments.

But for folks who are not ready to make a change, who may still not want to see this for what it is, then I suppose this becomes an option, though, like I said, it's not likely to go well and it's just going to maintain the rather toxic status quo.

If you can't go no contact, I would say that the best hybrid is firewalling with yellow rocking thrown in.

It means that you engage in a manner that is trim and tight and polite. You don't engage.

You keep the narcissistic person at arm's length. You engage in radical acceptance, and while after that you may still feel grief or frustration and they may rage at you for not taking the bait.

It's a way to break out of the usual cycles of communication and keep the interactions as tight as possible.

It's a way to avoid falling into the common pitfalls of defending and explaining and personalizing. Like I said, it's not a full protection.

People with these personalities will still come at you, but you will feel better afterwards if you do not engage. You really do. It's like not eating the junk food when it's right in front of you and having the salad instead.

In the moment, it doesn't feel good, but ooh, you feel better afterwards.

None of this is easy, and these techniques are not designed to make it easy or fix things, but rather to give you the tools that kind of protect you and more importantly, may ultimately lead you to see the situation more realistically.

All these communication techniques show you there's really no there there.

Once you see how unhinged the narcissistic person becomes when you just go low contact or yellow rock disengaged, it's a reminder that you taking the bait and appeasing them and appeasing them was the only thing that was making the relationship work and actually made them look good while taking a toll on you.

So again, people often kind of ping-pong through these various techniques, but ultimately, it really is a reminder that you can't win in these relationships.

There's not a lot of there there, because as soon as you authentically attempt to engage, it's just not going to work.

And if you can't authentically be yourself in a relationship, then really, what is it?

Today, I'm going to be taking on an interesting topic, which are the four words I don't want you to say.

when you're in a narcissistic relationship, in fact, any relationship. Before we get to that, though, I'm always going to say if you like this video, give us that thumbs up.

And if you want to subscribe to this channel, just please hit that subscribe button. It's a great community of people on this YouTube channel.

Hit that bell for notifications. But let's talk about these words. What are these words I don't want you to say? This video is sort of meant to be a bit of a life hack video designed to help your mental health globally.

And it's particularly useful, I'm hoping, for people in relationships with narcissistic folks.

I want you to eliminate a phrase that all of us are guilty of saying, but which is not good for us. Ready?

I want you to stop saying, "You make me feel blank." As in, "Oh God, whenever you say that, you make me feel guilty." Or when you say when that happens and when you say that, "You make me feel stupid," or "You make me feel angry." Stop giving away your power.

Nobody has the power to make you feel you feel, maybe in response to them, but you feel.

That phraseology, "make me feel," has a real risk of turning you into having more of a victim mindset rather than being a person who is in full self-possession of your feelings.

And that's really important. I'll talk more about that in a moment.

So let's play this out as a little bit of a scenario. You're having an argument with a narcissist in your life.

As usual, they're either gaslighting you or manipulating you or guilting you. Your usual response might have been like, "Oh gosh, I hate when you say that.

When you say that, you're making me feel guilty." No, you're not going to say that anymore.

Interestingly, the far healthier response would be, "I hear you. I guess this whole situation is hard. I feel guilty right now," or it may be that you say, "Yeah, I hear you.

I feel a little angry right now." You might be thinking, "What's the difference?" The difference is this: remember, your feelings are yours.

In the case when you say "I am feeling," you're not giving them the power of having constructed your feelings. And there's a few reasons this distinction is really important.

First, when you say "I am feeling," "I am feeling guilty," "I'm feeling angry," you're owning your feeling. Don't get me wrong, even if you say "I am feeling" whatever the heck you're feeling, they're still going to gaslight you, they're going to invalidate you, they're going to minimize your feelings.

Now, at a minimum, at least you're owning it, and that's a much healthier place in all of your relationships.

Secondly, when you say "I am feeling," it gets you out of the victim identity or the victim mindset. If you say things like, "You make me feel angry," "You make me feel sad," "You make me feel guilty," whatever it is, you just took on the position of someone whom things happen to.

And words matter. The way we talk to ourselves shapes how we feel, and if someone else can make us feel something, we're honestly almost like victimized by that, and it gives them too much power.

And that drives into point three: saying that "You make me feel" gives away your power.

Now, when you say that, the narcissist recognizes that they are holding on to a trigger and the power to induce a feeling out of you, and they're going to use it.

If you acknowledge that something they said, like, "Oh, what you just said made me feel guilty.

Now they have a means by which to make you feel guilty. And how lovely for that, because then that becomes a great little manipulation to get them to behave the way you want or feel the way they want you to feel.

Do you really want them to have that kind of power?

And trust me, I'm going to be honest, I struggle with this all the time. I have to catch myself when I'm about to say, and close my eyes for a quick second and say, nope, I feel, or even when I talk about other people like I'm working with clients or talking on these videos, I have to catch myself and say something like, situations like this can be associated with a wide range of feelings, including guilt or shame.

And the fact is, I don't always get it right. In fact, I probably make this mistake once a day when it comes to human relationships and communication.

Starting with 'I' when you are trying to make a point, especially about feelings, is always safe because it steers you towards empowerment and ownership of your beliefs and behaviors.

Because if you fall back on the, 'he makes me feel guilty,' 'my mother makes me feel guilty,' all the power is in that other person.

And in some ways, that means there cannot be an alternate feeling. It's as though they're setting out to cause your guilt.

So if you say, 'I feel guilty,' then you can take a minute and realize that there could also be alternate things such as, 'actually, I feel angry,' or 'I feel manipulated,' or 'I feel ridiculous even having this conversation.

Your Guide for Communicating with Narcissists

Your #1 source of guidance about healing from narcissistic relationships.

DISCLAIMER: THIS INFORMATION IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A SUBSTITUTE FOR CLINICAL CARE. PLEASE CONSULT A HEALTH CARE PROVIDER FOR GUIDANCE SPECIFIC TO YOUR CASE. 


Your Guide for Communicating with Narcissists

스크립트