Baiting is an incredibly destabilizing form of abuse that narcissists regularly subject their victims to. It occurs when they use your vulnerabilities and insecurities against you to try to manipulate you into a negative confrontation. It is important to develop healthy responses to baiting because if you don’t, it gives the narcissist a significant amount of power and control over you.
The best response that you can have for narcissistic baiting is indifference. This can be achieved by using defensive techniques like the gray rock method or the no contact rule, but for them to work you must practice being mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
This article is going to guide you through the process of responding to narcissistic baiting with indifference. In a short video (see below) we’ve summarized our article Why Do Narcissists Bait You because it is important to understand the reason that narcissists use baiting if you are to develop healthy responses to it!
A Short Video About the Reason That Narcissists Bait You
How to Respond to Narcissistic Baiting With Indifference
Indifference is a lack of interest, concern, or sympathy. For those who’ve experienced narcissistic abuse, indifference is all about cutting off your emotions from the narcissist. You don’t care what they say about you, how they feel about you, what they are doing in their life, how they are doing in life, you are just indifferent to their existence.
When it comes to narcissistic baiting, indifference means that you do not care about the insults they are throwing at you, the buttons they are pushing, their cruelty, lack of empathy, and so on.
It is important to note that indifference doesn’t free you from all of the negative emotions that come from narcissistic abuse. You are going to have good days and bad days. You shouldn’t feel like you can’t have thoughts, feelings, or emotions about the abuse you experienced.
Indifference is about refusing to give the narcissist the validation, admiration, and reassurance that they are searching for when they are abusing you. Once you are in an emotionally safe and narcissistic free place, you should express your thoughts, feelings, and emotions however you see fit. The best way to practice being indifferent in the face of narcissistic abuse is the gray rock method.
Suggest Reading: Why Do Narcissists Deliberately Hurt You?
The Gray Rock Method
When you protect your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs by refusing to participate in significant interactions with the narcissist, it is called the gray rock method. By refusing to engage in the communication or connection in the relationship, you are preventing the narcissist from manipulating you into being a source of validation, admiration, and reassurance, also known as narcissistic supply.
Interestingly enough, narcissists use baiting when they are trying to manipulate you into engaging in a negative confrontation that allows them to victimize themselves, portray you in a negative light, or make you emotionally unstable.
There’s a lot more information about this in our article Why Do Narcissists Bait You but it gives them a lot of narcissistic supply and is the reason that the gray rock method is such a brilliant response to narcissistic baiting.
4 Examples of Using the Gray Rock Method to Respond to Narcissistic Baiting
Romantic Narcissistic Relationship- If you sat down to eat dinner with the narcissist in your life and they began to ridicule you about your portion sizes and the way that you were eating because they know how insecure you are about your weight, this is narcissistic baiting. To use the gray rock method you could respond by saying, “Hey, did you see the flowers that the neighbors planted? They are beautiful!”.
Narcissistic Friendship- If you got a text message from the narcissist in your life notifying you that they were going to ask someone out on a date that they knew you had feelings for, this would be narcissistic baiting. You could use the gray rock method by not responding or simply replying “Have a great time!”.
Narcissistic Family Structure- If your family had a dinner together and purposely didn’t invite you but then called you to tell you that they were having a good time together, this would be narcissistic baiting. You could use the gray rock method by saying, “That sounds fun! Hey listen, I have to go and get some work done so I will talk to you later.”
Narcissistic Workplace- If you were in a staff meeting at work and one of your colleagues started to insult your job performance the second your boss walked in to try to get a reaction out of you, that would be narcissistic baiting. You could gray rock them by responding, “What goals should we be setting for this quarter? I see (the person baiting you) is always pushing us to do better and I love it!”.
What Should You Have Learned About the Gray Rock Method?
The gray rock method is all about refusing to give the narcissist the reaction that they want. By doing this, you are remaining indifferent to the insults that they throw at you, the buttons they push, their cruelty and lack of empathy, etc. It is a fantastic technique that will help you develop healthy responses to narcissistic baiting.
The Yellow Rock Method
It is not always a wise decision to use the gray rock method as a response to narcissistic baiting. The reason for this is that it can make you come off as cold, uncooperative, distant, arrogant, and mean. Usually, you shouldn’t care about how you look because you are protecting yourself from narcissistic abuse and nobody, besides you, gets to dictate how that looks.
But when you are in a situation where a narcissist’s ability to portray you in a negative light could have significant consequences on your life (e.g. work environment, custody battle) you are going to want to use the yellow rock method.
The yellow rock method has the same principles as the gray rock method: protect your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs by refusing to participate in significant interactions with the narcissist. But it won’t allow the narcissist to portray you in a negative light.
The yellow rock method requires you to engage with the narcissist in a professional manner instead of immediately dismissing them.
Remember, you still don’t want to give them any validation, admiration, and reassurance, you just want to prevent them from portraying you in a negative light by remaining cool, calm, collected and professional.
4 Examples of Using the Yellow Rock Method to Respond to Narcissistic Baiting
Romantic Narcissistic Relationship- If your boyfriend/girlfriend were to try to bait you into an argument by devaluing and degrading your family, you can use the yellow rock method by saying, “I’m sorry that you feel that way, would you like to discuss why you have that opinion?”.
Narcissistic Friendship- If your friend were to try to bait you into a negative confrontation by belittling you about your appearance in front of other people, you could protect yourself with the yellow rock method by saying, “Your attempt to elicit a negative response from me is noted.”
Narcissistic Family Structure- If your family member was telling the rest of your family that you were talking poorly about them behind their backs after you told them that you felt like the family was narcissistic, this would be narcissistic baiting. You could protect yourself with the yellow rock method by saying, “Your attempt to manipulate my intention is noted.”
Narcissistic Workplace- If your colleague was subtly devaluing, degrading, and invalidating your work for the company to try to make you defensive and appear like you can’t handle “constructive criticism”, this would be narcissistic baiting. You could use the yellow rock method by saying, “Thank you for letting me know your thoughts, I will consider them.”
What Should You Have Learned About the Yellow Rock Method?
The yellow rock method uses the same principles as the gray rock method. You are refusing to give the narcissist the response that they want and you are remaining indifferent to the insults that they throw at you, the buttons they push, their cruelty and lack of empathy, etc.
It is a great alternative to the gray rock method when you are experiencing narcissistic baiting in an environment where there are serious consequences if the narcissist is able to portray you in a negative light.
How to Be Mindful of Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Emotions Before You Respond to Narcissistic Baiting
The gray rock method and yellow rock method are amazing techniques that you can use to develop healthy responses to narcissistic baiting while remaining indifferent, but they are not easy to use.
It is hard to stay cool, calm, and collected when someone is using your vulnerabilities and insecurities against you. It is for this reason that being mindful of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs is so important when responding to narcissistic baiting.
Ask Yourself, Is the Narcissist’s Behavior Making Me Feel Confused and Overwhelmed?
In the heat of the moment, it is common for narcissistic baiting to be overwhelming. They are going to be trying their hardest to devalue, invalidate, humiliate, degrade, and dehumanize you until you engage in a negative confrontation with them.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, don’t feel pressured to use the gray or yellow rock method. The techniques will not help you if you are not cool, calm, and collected. A really good technique that you can use to manage your emotions when you feel confused and overwhelmed is to write down a list of all the emotions you can think of (e.g. happy, sad, angry, scared, etc.)
If you can remove yourself from the situation when you are feeling confused and overwhelmed (e.g. go for a run, walk, out with friends, etc.) you can take that time to read or think about that list and try to identify the emotions that you are feeling. Once you know how you are feeling, you’ll be able to dismantle the confusion and feeling of being overwhelmed.
Ask Yourself, Am I Grounded Enough to Have a Productive Response?
Once you’ve established the way that you are feeling, it is time to determine if you are grounded enough to have a productive response. The narcissist is going to be looking for the smallest thing that they can use to abuse you. They want you to have a negative response to narcissistic baiting.
It is good that you have been able to identify the way that you are feeling, but expressing yourself in a way that protects your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs is very difficult. Approaching this situation in the wrong way could give the narcissist all of the information that they need to compromise your emotional stability.
If you are confident that you can use the gray rock method or the yellow rock method, then you should do so! If not, you shouldn’t. There is no shame in not being able to respond to the narcissist in a productive way when they are baiting you. It is going to take a lot of practice to be able to do it so just take it one step at a time.
What Should You Take Away From This Article?
The best response that you could have to narcissistic baiting is indifference. This means that you will not care about the insults they are throwing at you, the buttons they are pushing, their cruelty, lack of empathy, etc.
It is important for you to understand that while the techniques we covered in this article can work really well, narcissist’s aren’t going to change.
They are going to continue to devalue, humiliate, invalidate, degrade, and dehumanize you every single chance that they get! If you can, we highly recommend that you completely remove yourself from the narcissistic environment by going no contact.
Suggested Readings: Does Going No Contact Work on a Narcissist?
About the Author
Hey, I’m Elijah.
I experienced narcissistic abuse for three years.
I create these articles to help you understand and validate your experiences.
Thank you for reading, and remember, healing is possible even when it feels impossible.
References
Yellow Rock: Communicating with a Narcissist in a Child Custody Situation