(edited)
If you must engage with narcissists, these replies may or may not help.
Sometimes the gray rock method can't work, especially in a divorce where children are involved, so someone dreamt up the "yellow rock method". This alternative runs along the same lines, except it replaces the DEEP method instead of the gray rock method.
As with anything you want to say to narcissists, it is always good to take these ideas to a domestic violence counselor before proceeding because narcissism can sometimes come with psychopathy and put you in danger of more of their rage, or violence, and escalation of abuse in general.
Narcissists don't like to feel that their power and control of you is being undermined or slipping away, and they can rage and punish you over that.
Psychopaths don't like to think that they don't hoodwink you and can abuse you over that.
So be careful.
In some circumstances these may work to get the narcissist to respond in ways they are not used to. It also takes control away from them, and gives you more of it. As they try to control what the conversation is about, what you are allowed to talk to them about and deciding when you should be silenced by them, you decide how much engagement you want with them instead by keeping the conversation on topic, making sure it's not just going to be a shaming session about your character (which most narcissists often revert to when they are not getting their way, when they feel minimized, when they feel insecure about how much you can be manipulated by them, when they feel insecure that you're seeing past their carefully crafted image and reputation).
This method by-passes all of that.
I found these on Facebook by someone who calls himself "Psychology Scholar". Like all alternative methods, even the "yellow rock method", it was most likely thought up by an average person who had to deal with a narcissist and couldn't do a full DEEP method.
So let's get into it.
Following is what you can say to bring the conversation to a healthier level. It's not what they are used to, but it might help to disarm their propensity to start drama, arguments, getting their own way, projecting their own personality traits on to you, and keep you from falling into the trap of reacting, thereby feeding them "negative narcissistic supply":
* "That's your opinion. Not a fact."
This keeps them from assessing based on opinions. It keeps them from assassinating your character (at least in your presence), and getting into a place where they are attacking what ever qualities they think you possess.
Usually when narcissists attack you, they are unsure about their ability to dominate you and their hierarchical standing is at stake. It takes away their ability to control you, dominate you and hurt you. By making it "their opinion" only, it disarms their ability to put you on the defensive, of getting narcissistic supply via seeing you hurt, and makes them look like "the weak one" because they are operating from opinions and not facts.
Most narcissists act on opinions anyway, based on their own emotions, so you are making it obvious that you know what they are doing.
* "I'm not explaining myself again."
This is a type of DEEP method, but you are telling them that your "explaining yourself" has a time-boundary, and that you've stopped, and that you aren't giving them any more of it.
They may keep going into all kinds of paranoid fantasies about you, or try to convince you that you need to explain some more because they can't go on "limited facts" (breaking your boundary, which is also a test to see if they can break boundaries with you in general).
But assuming it doesn't head off into that direction, with the more reasonable narcissists this method can stop them from twisting your words, getting into circular arguments to confuse or confound you, getting you defending yourself, explaining yourself, engaging with them in their argument tactics, and taking what they are saying personally. You just end your part of the argument by saying you are not going to explain yourself again and again, that you've given them enough explanations, and if they don't want to consider what you've said, then that it's up to them, but that you are done with going into it further.
The less information you give narcissists, the better. They exploit information at some point to hurt you or sabotage you.
They may keep their end of an argument going, but if you don't respond, they'll be disappointed, wear themselves out and quit.
If they bait you to keep you engaged, if you keep saying "I've explained myself and therefore have nothing more to say" then it can deflate them in terms of getting more drama and emotional reactions out of the situation.
* "That's not about me."
This helps stop narcissistic projection. Narcissists assume you are like them and that your character is based on their own traits. This stops them from doing that if you say it enough and differentiate yourself from them.
If you list your traits and don't bend to their often negative assessments of you, you can't be persuaded to take on their judgements, and you can make a stand that you aren't going to deal with their judgements either.
It's important to note that narcissists love to persuade others of dire flaws, but if you disagree with them, and keep stating some of your "real traits", many of them tend to slink off. When I did this myself in a work situation, the narcissist looked like they were "beaten" at their game of nailing me to their proverbial "self esteem cross".
This person was stealing, but that's another story. At any rate, I reasoned to myself that the reason this person was trying to mess with my self esteem was to get my eyes off of their own "egregious flaw", and to be in a position of ruminating about "my character flaws", and constantly in a position of defending myself.
While they don't like the fact that you are your own separate person without their same dire flaws, and can't be influenced in ways that narcissists like to influence others, it can keep them grounded, that you are indeed a separate person from them, especially if you remind them of that fact.
In addition, it can give you some peace.
It's also a type of boundary (narcissists don't like boundaries, but it's healthiest for their victims if boundaries are set from the very beginning).
"You're allowed to be upset." - when they are in a rage.
This separates their emotion from yours, and is another method to keep narcissistic projections at bay.
They will be upset if they fail to make you upset or to convince you that they are "the real victim". As in the prior saying, it puts a boundary between your emotions and their emotions. It also shuts down their proclivity to distract you from the fact that their emotions show (not just yours).
"Let's stick to one topic."
This can help to stop narcissistic "chaos bombing". Narcissists love chaos and bringing in extraneous matters into their arguments as "me attack, you defend" ploys. It also stops them from psychoanalyzing you, stops them from focusing on your tone of voice or facial expressions, stops them from bringing up your childhood, stops them from trying to embarrass you or bringing up things that they think might help them to shame you and break your self esteem, stops them from escalating an argument. You can walk away and say, "You didn't hear me the first time. I said I only wanted to stick to the subject and I'm not interested in the rest of what you are bringing into this."
Narcissists like to control conversations and what is talked about, and this puts more control into your hands instead. They may do a tit-for-tat and try to dampen down even more of what is discussed, but it is better than listening to "everything but the kitchen sink" types of arguing styles.
Narcissists don't know how to fight fair, so in a way it shames them about their propensity to bring in subjects that might normally work for them, but aren't working as far as you are concerned.
Warning: this can mean they go to others to smear your name because they can't stand that kind of a boundary. They aren't able to get negative narcissistic supply from you, or more chaos and drama, or more power, more control with a boundary that "sticks to the subject." And they detest boundaries anyway.
But again, for the more reasonable narcissists (narcissists without all of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder), it can point them in a direction that is more succinct, more about solving an issue (if they want to solve it).
"I'm not interested in arguing. I'm interested in solutions."
You flip the game they try to play completely in terms of "winning their own way".
It does neither party any good if they get their way all of the time anyway.
They very rarely have a script for solutions except for what will satisfy them, and it might get them thinking about solutions rather than more arguing. Maybe. At the very least, it shuts the arguments they want to have down. It shuts down contempt, It shuts down them using their handy "self esteem" crucifixion tools. It stops you from tolerating the negativity and "playing the victim" that they bring to arguments.
It can also drain their influence over you if you can make this method succinct and focus on positive solutions.
"I'm okay with you not understanding me."
Narcissists won't understand you anyway, and they are not focused on that because power, control and domination are all that they want out of relationships (usually).
Because they are way more invested in negative judgements about how others act and do things, and in what they think and feel, this lets them know that neither they or you are interested in understanding you.
They thrive on being admired and obeyed too, and this statement makes it clear that you've given up on admiring and obeying because they don't understand you. You've given up on explaining anything to them any more too.
Explaining is what exhausts most people when it comes to narcissists (narcissists are not invested in listening anyway), so instead of getting tired, worn down and reactive, it's a way of telling them that you don't give a sh*t as to how they twist the truth, project, blame shift, tell lies and don't listen.
Instead of admiring them, you're telling them that you're out of the game they are trying to play at misunderstanding you in order to enact some hostile take-over in terms of creating more perspecticide and negative narcissistic supply around it.
Someone who isn't in relationships to understand the perspectives of others not interested you, in other words.
An alternative to this might be "I understand that you don't want to know me or understand me."
It has been said in many memes, forums and articles that narcissists intentionally misunderstand you in order to manipulate you and to get more information about you to manipulate you. You fall into the habit of explaining yourself where the narcissist gets even more information about you.
To my way of thinking, I think this is definitely true in situations where they feel they are losing control of others, and has a lot to do with why they erroneously blame with perspecticide, but I really don't think it is true all of the time.
Here is an example where they intentionally misunderstand you:
They are feeling they are losing control over you. You are somewhat financially dependent on them. They want to rock your world by discarding you and withdrawing all financial support. This is done to get you back under their control. They can't figure out what to accuse you of, and to say that they aren't controlling you enough (which would be the truth) is something they can't allow themselves to say. So they accuse you of an egregious look on your face (that never happened) they didn't like instead, or that you are thinking critical thoughts about them (perspecticide with erroneous blaming).
What they are trying to do in this situation is to coerce you to give them positive narcissistic supply by thinking well of them, and to get back into line where they are controlling you.
Here is an example where they are not intentionally misunderstanding you:
You have returned from a business trip where you got delayed because of bad weather. You spent the weekend in the city where you initially arrived over a weekend. You are accused of staying away too long (on purpose), that it had nothing to do with flight scheduling and bad weather. In fact, they accuse you of having an affair while you were gone. They won't look at the evidence that the airport was snowed in. They decide to punish you by "going missing" themselves. They take up having an affair because they genuinely think you had an affair while you were away from them. Narcissists are often paranoid and they think others are trying to escape them (which can sometimes be true), or hurt them (which tends not to be true), and that they need to punish others in a tit-for-tat way by doing the things they believe the other person is doing to them. This shows more paranoia, more distrust, more projection than actually trying to misunderstand you.
It is often hard for the rest of us to tell the difference to whether the narcissist in our own lives is intentionally trying to misunderstand us or whether they are just paranoid, or into their own paranoia fantasies, projecting, mistrustful, or blindly self serving, or are incapable of understanding us (most narcissists are truly terrible listeners and also cannot get out of a "black and white" mind trap). They tend not to "hear" others very well because of the mistrust of others most narcissists have.
At any rate "explaining" in either situation is likely to be exhausting, humiliating, to go nowhere, and often not worth the energy, thus giving up and saying "I'm okay with you misunderstanding me."
WITH SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY OWN EXPERIENCES WITH METHODS
Personally I have come to the conclusion that relationships with narcissists, and even the small progress one gets from these kinds of methods, do not really satisfy any deeper issues with narcissists. If the narcissists are abusive it especially doesn't help because no matter what you do, if they are in abusive phase, they won't want to give it up and the abuse will escalate.
If they aren't abusive (yet), at best, it keeps the verbal attacks at bay, and that's it, nothing more.
And sometimes the method doesn't even "help" with that, depending on the narcissist.
What I have found is that the more quiet you are, the more you keep to yourself, the more you put your attention elsewhere, the more bothered they are because they can't control a person doing disappearing acts and not paying attention to them. The more engaged with them you are, the more they take it as an invitation to control and dominate you more and more.
There is no happy place to sit among the spectrum between engagement and disengagement. I have found that it is always unsettling, always upsetting, with too many "fly-by-your-pants" unstable situations, where nothing works and there is always a negative consequence no matter which way you go.
Eventually you learn to resent the narcissist, or perhaps all narcissists, especially on an emotional level. For those of us who primarily look at the world on an intellectual level, we may not resent them so much as resign ourselves instead to: "There is nothing that works. I don't want to be close to a person where nothing I do works and where there is that much contempt coming from them. I understand they came from a difficult childhood, but I am not prepared to take up that challenge, and maybe only professional therapists can truly tackle the challenges. I just don't know how to deal with someone who wants to control everything, including most other people."
When a person's main agenda in their relationships is to get power, control and domination, that agenda is not the right reason to be in close personal relationships to begin with. So how can these relationships truly work? Narcissists are mostly trying to manipulate you into a sycophantic position and every time they do that successfully, you are growing more and more unhappy, a lesser version of yourself, giving up pieces of yourself, eventually giving up your convictions and personality, disgusted that you've become a sycophant to a cruel, deceptive, unethical tyrant, and sad that you are a robot, and if not a robot, "a rejected piece of trash" they throw out. And there aren't many choices other than those. None of it adds up to happiness, health, peace, feeling loved and in love, feeling trust and trusted - and what's the point of that?
You are either going to fight for yourself and for your autonomy from them, or you are going to go all in on being treated as their a## kisser, and in the meantime gaslighted and insulted while you do so. You are going to be told what you are allowed to discuss, where you are allowed to go, how you're allowed to dress, whom to see and not see, and how you phrase things, and being taught how to please them constantly, dealing with triangulation, insults, sabotage, devaluations, discards and even their sadism in some cases.
To me, that's all a nightmare I do not want to live through again (or again, and again, and again as that choice clearly is about that).
To me, any kind of close personal relationship where one person is that dominating is not workable. Any relationship where one person is never open to compromise on any level, or listening, or where the person has to get their way all of the time is not workable. Any close personal relationship that hurts as much as it does with narcissists is too painful to continue.
I don't want to be around narcissists any more.
This doesn't mean you have to come to the conclusion I came to. You can figure out what is best for you. I don't fault people for trying, and trying, and trying, to the point of obsession and total exhaustion, because I have tried too, mostly through pointless explaining, and a pointless full time lifestyle of "pleasing a narcissist" giving up just about everything that made me autonomous.
With pleasing behaviors, I found worse outcomes, not better ones.
Same with explaining: in explaining, I found worse outcomes, not better ones.
With pleasing behaviors I found that they took it as an excuse to control me even more and add in insults if I wasn't doing things to "their perfection" - quite painful. A lot of survivors have "drowning dreams" when they get to this stage, and I had plenty of those.
In explaining, I was trying to bypass their tendencies to put their spin on what they thought was going on. When all I received was more perspecticide no matter how much I tried to get them to listen, it again became pointless. I came to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing to talk about any more.
With sociopaths, you get to a point of not wanting to engage in lightening speed, because not only do they want to control you, most want to hurt you too (and usually "take" something away from you or use you in some manner).
With narcissists it goes a bit slower, but ends up in a similar place.
I found the lack of empathy in both narcissists and sociopaths too hard to deal with too.
I was aware in Kindergarten that when exposed to a lot of other children I was suddenly thrust into their own pain narratives and perspectives. Automatically, seeing a scraped up knee of another child meant that my own knee would burn and ache. And for a long time.
Even when I tried to "will it away".
And even when that child was no longer in my presence.
As I got little older, I tried to stop feeling transferred pain. I tried to "toughen up" as I was told to do by elders, even entreated by other kids to partake in bullying myself, but I was never successful at minimizing the pain others went through, and therefor ineffective at toughening up or bullying with any conviction. I was called a "weirdo" for this HSP trait, more than anything else in my childhood. It made me feel like an outsider, a loner with a lone condition.
It wasn't helped by others I thought I could confide in about it:
"I'm so glad I'm not you! I couldn't stand that!"
"You have to stop that to defend yourself and get somewhere in life! You can't go on like this!"
"Ha, ha! You have to be a weakling then!"
"You're going to be bullied with that going on!"
As I got older, I wondered how they could have that attitude. They don't want to have the feelings I have because they couldn't hurt people as well as they wanted? What? That seemed to be truly awful, and because I was looked at as being "weak", I stopped talking about it. Only as an adult I found that some other people went through what I did in this regard, and also felt like a freak.
In some ways it led me to writing this blog decades later.
Likewise, in Kindergarten I had burning sensations in my scalp for days when I saw one child try to rip out the hair of another child.
So being around people at a young age who didn't feel any empathy at all, let alone any "transferred pain" from the pain of others, and who exploited my vulnerability as a child, seemed like a terrible trap, the kind of trap where I didn't know what to do to get out of, though I tried a lot of different methods, ones I made up, and ones others discovered I used long before they became published methods, and even tried more methods that are not currently touted today.
I have not found any method that truly works wonders with narcissists (or sociopaths, as the latter peppered my childhood more than the former). I haven't experienced anything where you can feel "good", "healthy", and "be at peace" with the outcome. It's always stress, and then more stress, and then too much stress where your whole body has symptoms and the "flight" response kicks in.
In fact, for me, as long as the other person puts "control" first before empathy, the more the "flight response" kicks in.
The only thing that seemed to work for me was in adulthood.
I got to know other HSPs and empaths. I gave up on narcissists. I'll let you know, certainly, if I do find something that someone else claims to "truly work wonders" beyond just some sort of "hollowing out" of one's own emotions (self imposed silencing) and dumbing down communications with narcissists to the point of hardly communicating anything at all with them.
In the meantime, the things I mention in this post I've tried for the most part, and haven't liked, and if anything, I preferred the more drastic DEEP method. None of these I'd want to live full time in, only in emergency situations. If it's your cup of tea, "more power to you", as the saying goes.
What I will ask is if you try this method, or some of what is suggested here, how did it make you feel, and how effective was it?
