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Welcome to Episode 353 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com, where you can send me your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. You can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com, where you can find out about the books that I've written, the courses I offer, my coaching practice, and my speaking engagements. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter at the website or at a link that is provided in the show notes. Finally, if you'd like to support my work, you can do so for as little as $5 a month. There is a link to get more information in the show notes. Thank you in advance for your consideration. Now, without further ado, here is episode 353, How gray Rocking Helps You Be a Non-Anxious Presence. The idea for this episode came from my colleague, Dave Mullen, who sent me an article from the Washington Post about a technique called gray Rocking to help you deal with difficult people. I'll put a link in the show notes, although it may be behind a paywall. So I'll also link to another explanatory article.

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The term gray rocking was coined around 2012 by someone named Skyler on online discussion boards. This was in response to the idea that some people seem to feed on drama and attention. They create conflict and look for emotional reactions from others. Those reactions are called narcissistic supply. Basically, attention and emotion that keeps them energized. Toxic people thrive on this energy. When you answer them with anger or anxiety, you're giving them what they want. Gray-rocking means acting boring on purpose. Don't react, don't give details, don't show strong emotion, be neutral and short. If you stop giving them reactions, they'll eventually lose interest and move on. It's another way to protect yourself without fighting. It's a strategy to be uninteresting on purpose so that the drama will go find someone else. So what is gray-rocking? When someone is trying to get a rise out of you, you respond without any emotion. Use a boring, neutral tone of voice, keep your eye contact brief, and even act disinterested. Think of yourself like a gray rock who can't respond with any emotion. A sidebar here. Whenever I read this term gray rocking, I think of the children's book, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, where Sylvester actually becomes a gray rock.

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Sorry if you don't know the story, you can look it up, but I couldn't resist sharing the reference. If you know the story, you get what I mean. The article that I reference in the show notes from the Practical Psychology website offers some good examples of what this looks like. Say a drama-loving family member asks about your love life in front of everyone. A gray rock response would be, Oh, there's not much to tell. How's your garden this year? Or a work colleague starts a conversation about a sensitive company issue. You replied, I haven't really thought about it. How's your new project going? Notice that these two examples not only provide a nothing response, they also change the subject. In reality, you don't even need to do that to gray Rock. You can simply say, Interesting point, or, Thanks for your input. One time, I was accompanying a district superintendent who supervisors pastors in a particular area who had to go into a church on a Sunday morning after they had to remove a pastor for not complying with administrative requirements. The pastor had already been removed and the DS was there to explain what had happened.

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When we walked into the church, for some reason, one of the members looked at me and started unloading about how awful our annual conference was, how we didn't have any integrity, and how un-Christian we were. And they were intense and loud, and they were clearly triangling me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a gray rock response that I keep in my back pocket for moments just like that. I looked at them with somewhat of a blank stare, and then I said, Thank you for sharing. They had some choice words for me as they walked out of the church building, but that was the end of that. In family systems terms, gray Rocking is a form of self-regulation that avoids a conflict of wills. Last week, I covered flogging, which is a more active form of engaging without providing adaptive or reactive feedback. Gray rocking is similar but offers less engagement. You're not distancing, but you're definitely not engaging either. I say the difference is when you know someone is toxic or narcissistic, gray rocking is a safer response than fogging. It's more closely aligned with my adage, Don't argue, don't agree, which leads to some guidelines about when to use gray rocking.

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It's definitely an option when you're dealing with toxic or narcissistic individuals. These people thrive on getting a reaction out of you. Gray Rocking cuts off the narcissistic supply so that they don't have any fuel for that fire. You can also use it when walking away isn't an option. This is true of family members and colleagues. Emotional cutoff may seem like an option, but it will make things worse. And gray Rocking can be used in passing interactions, whether in social settings or with people you don't work with regularly, where the stakes aren't that high and it just doesn't make sense to get involved. Be a gray rock and then move on. Gray Rocking combines self-regulation with that don't argue, don't agree mentality to help you be a non-anxious presence. It's important to note that gray Rocking may only be a temporary fix. It doesn't deal with the underlying underlying emotional process, although it does keep you out of the content. Depending on the situation, there may be times when you'll need to self-differentiate. Gray Rocking avoids self-definition and involves a minimum of emotional connection. There will be times when avoiding self-differentiation will make the situation worse.

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In those cases, you will need to be able to take a non-anxious stand. The closer you are to someone, the more likely this be the case, someone such as a family member, a friend, or a colleague. Finally, the practical psychology offers four steps to gray-rocking. First, prepare yourself mentally. I talk a lot about thinking and advance about how anxious encounters are likely to go. If you have regular interaction with someone who likes to provoke, then you have an idea of how things will go, and this can help you be less surprised in the moment. Second, don't react. This is classic self-regulation. Interrupt your automatic response and take a deep breath. Gray Rocking takes this even further by making sure you not only avoid an emotional response, but you also avoid any facial expressions, and you keep your voice neutral or even monotone. Third, keep the conversation dull. If you do need to converse, then quickly change the subject to something mundane, like the or what you had for breakfast or lunch. Remember, it's process, not content. Finally, use what they call the need to know principle. Offer the minimum amount of information that the other needs to know.

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This is important when you're dealing with a family member or colleague. As I noted, I see this as a more temporary fix. If you have to deal with someone like this on a regular basis, you'll probably want to get professional help. I would say that over the years, I've learned intuitively how to grayrock. It won't work in every or even most situations. However, there is value in knowing how to be nonreactive, even to the point of boring, to help you deal with anxious situations. It's one more tool in your non-anxious presence toolkit. That's it for episode 353. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks in advance for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.Thank you for listening. If you found this episode helpful, there are two things you can do to help others find this podcast. First, tap the subscribe button on your podcast app, and second, leave a review. I appreciate your help. Finally, you can find more resources as well as subscribe to my blog at thenonanxiousleader. Com. Now, go be yourself.