Psychological Camouflage

What can you do when some context, such as your job, necessitates ongoing or repeated interactions with a drama queen or a psychologically unbalanced person? Interestingly enough, the best advice I could find reminds me of how I used to get my kids to go (back) to sleep at night when they were sleep-fighting toddlers: Be boring to that person. Perhaps the most succinct introduction to the "Gray Rock Method" is the following short example of its use, by a man who needed to break up with a psychopathic girlfriend:

Image via Pixabay.

His solution was to be so boring that she would simply leave him. He declined to go out on evenings and weekends. He showed no emotional reaction about anything, no interest in anything and responded with no drama. When she asked if he wanted to go out for dinner, his reply was, "I don't know." After a few months of no drama, she simply moved out.

Although this advice matched what I'd stumbled into doing a couple of times, I found it helpful to read the rationale behind the strategy, which is more proactive than it might sound at first. For example, you can use it to avoid becoming a target in the first place when you have ample warning or indication that you are dealing with a particularly difficult type of person.

The name of the strategy is a good one, serving as a reminder of what to do, but it will always be "Captain Boredom" for me.

-- CAV