When you grey rock a narcissist, what is your intention? Your intention is to safeguard your sanity because you know the narcissist you’re dealing with is adamant about acquiring supply from you. Positive or negative, it does not matter—they need fuel, they need emotions, and you’re done. You’re exhausted and do not want to play that game anymore. So what do you do? You stop giving them supply. You do not react emotionally. You respond in one-word answers, talk about shallow things like the weather, and do not engage much. That is grey rocking. You become boring so that they leave you alone. That is the intention. You’re not trying to harm them. But when a narcissist stonewalls you, what is their agenda? The agenda is to break you, to punish you. Maybe you hurt their narcissistic ego, said something they did not like, or are not doing something they want you to do. They have to have it their way—it’s their way or the highway. To accomplish that, they have to touch the softest spot: abandon you, withhold affection, withdraw, retreat, make you feel lonely, and suffocate you. How can all of that be accomplished easily? By not talking to you. And it’s not just silent treatment; it’s stonewalling, treating you like a wall, like you don’t exist, not acknowledging your presence at all. That truly gives you a deep brain injury. Studies have shown that the same area that gets injured when you develop PTSD is the area that gets impacted when you receive silent treatment or get stonewalled by one of your loved ones.
Behavior Number Three: Hoovering & You Going Back to the Narcissist
When a narcissist hoovers you, they try to get you back because they feel like they have lost control. They play dirty mind games to confuse you, manipulate and gaslight you so that you forget everything and just go back to them, allowing them to abuse you one more time. Hoovering is done not with an intention to fix the relationship, make things better, take responsibility for one’s actions, or apologize. They don’t feel any remorse while hoovering. But when you go back, when you want them back, when you seek them, what is your intention? Your intention is not to control them, hurt them, leave them, or abandon them. Your intention is to restore the homeostasis because you are trauma bonded. The moment they send that message across, you feel like there is some hope. You forget everything bad they have done to you and remember only the positive things. We call it cognitive and emotional dissonance. You experience euphoric recall, which destroys your logic and doesn’t let you see them for who they are. That’s when you repeat the cycle. But the point I’m trying to make here is you don’t do it strategically like they do. They hoover you with a strategy, but you unconsciously and quite helplessly repeat the cycle. That’s why you keep going back.
Behavior Number Four: Real Abuse of the Narcissist vs. Your Reaction to the Abuse
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