can grey rock make it worse?

[sevenyears]

My uOCPD XH thrives on arguments and conflict. Going grey rock on him drives him batty. Sometimes he tries to up the ante until he succeeds in provoking me. Does anyone else experience this? How do you break the cycle?

[notrightinthehead]

Yes! And every time he suceeds in getting an emotional response from you - the behaviour is re-inforced. He behaves in whatever way is neccessary to get what he wants - a fight! Which he will win and which will bring him emotional supply. Just like children. If they learn that when they have a temper tantrum in a shop and will end up getting the sweets they wanted, they will continue to have temper tantrums. Stick to MC and grey rock. After a while it will become easier for you. And you deny him the reward for his bad behaviour. And be lenient with yourself if you give in and have it out now and again.

[Honey_B]

My uOCPD XH thrives on arguments and conflict. Going grey rock on him drives him batty. Sometimes he tries to up the ante until he succeeds in provoking me. Does anyone else experience this? How do you break the cycle?

Oh yes! So much. Now the real crazy show will start. He will escalate the provocations as long as he gets the reward of a fight.
Be patient, at some point, if you don't give in and give him the fight, he will find somewhere else to get the drama fix. But only when he realized that he can't provoke you.

[athene1399]

Yes. It gets worse until it gets better. Once he realizes no matter what, you will not respond with supply, he will give up or decrease trying to provoke you. It takes time for him to realize you won't play the game. You just have to stick to it. It can be difficult and takes practice.

[clara]

Yes, it can make it worse, and usually does, but in a way that's a good thing because it can reinforce your decision as being the right one.  It's difficult to deal with but probably preferable to them trying to "make nice" and promise to change after going grey rock, because that can cause you to second-guess yourself.  When they show who they really are, it leaves no doubts.  Stick with it.

[NumbLotus]

I think they call this an "extinction burst."

[Lauren17]

Yes. It gets worse for a while.
I've also seen uBPDh switch tactics when escalating didn't work. As an example, he'll manipulate a situation to get a response out of DD. That breaks my MC, which gets him twice the supply.
You may need to adjust your tactics as he adjusts his. Hang in there, MC does work but it takes time.

[Jsinjin]

See I've noticed when I try to simply ignore or not give my uPCPDw the conflict she will always escalate to the point that the materials or home or family are damaged.    If she can't figure out who out the pots and pans away in the wrong answer and no one responds or will give her the satisfaction of being angry the pots and pans begin to get thrown and basked into things or thrown away or even the whole drawer will get pulled out and trashed.   When you finally ask about it there is an angry statement that "well I asked and no one seemed to care about the pots and pans so I guessed we don't need them".    It's like that with many things; we have learned we can't dare ignore her and we never know what the level of exolosion will be but she is always willing to take it to a much bigger extreme than we can handle.

[Poison Ivy]

jsinjin, it sounds to me as though it is unsafe for you and your children to live with your wife.  Her behavior seems to fall clearly into the realm of domestic violence.

[SparkStillLit]

I know what you mean about escalating. Updh won't throw and destroy stuff ever again, but he's always willing to take it to a level I'm extremely uncomfortable with.

[Phoenix Rising]

I noticed this as well and I am still wondering how to break it. I'm not sure if it's something we can do ourselves but rather that the PD person tires themselves out and or gets a new source to toy with. I had a child with a NPDex who escalated and was consistent with that for years. It only stopped when he found someone else

[Jsinjin]

Yes, I'm not sure.   My wife's behavior translates to one of our daughters.   I recall some work we did with love and logic with the daughter.   That's a principle for parenting where consequences occur for actions.   What I learned during it is that a determined child can take things to an uncontrolled level that isn't covered by the stories in the love and logic books and videos.   An example is a mom needing help with the lawn and the 16 year old son won't help so she asks him for it and when when gets home from school his video game system has been sold on Craigslist and someone was hired to mow the lawn.   I learned that a child could begin to shift that behavior to a strong and deliberate negative with dangerous consequences such as selling family jewelry, selling her school computer and continuing to escalate with threats of self harm until you had to give in.   I realize now that this is the PD behavior but to me it's an example of how the medium chill can backfire if you don't have a way to be safely removed from the situation.

[Poison Ivy]

Do you have a way to safely remove from the situation, jsinjin? I know you've been working on that.

[Jsinjin]

I'm good.   Was just replying to the thread on where grey medium chill can exacerbate interactions with a PD.

[NumbLotus]

Yes, I'm not sure.   My wife's behavior translates to one of our daughters.   I recall some work we did with love and logic with the daughter.   That's a principle for parenting where consequences occur for actions.   What I learned during it is that a determined child can take things to an uncontrolled level that isn't covered by the stories in the love and logic books and videos.   An example is a mom needing help with the lawn and the 16 year old son won't help so she asks him for it and when when gets home from school his video game system has been sold on Craigslist and someone was hired to mow the lawn.   I learned that a child could begin to shift that behavior to a strong and deliberate negative with dangerous consequences such as selling family jewelry, selling her school computer and continuing to escalate with threats of self harm until you had to give in.   I realize now that this is the PD behavior but to me it's an example of how the medium chill can backfire if you don't have a way to be safely removed from the situation.

Really interesting observation.

[sevenyears]

hhhmmmm..... it sounds like I'm not alone with this. When I MC, uocpd xh just turns to another issue to try to provoke me. When he tries to provoke me, I respond thanks for your opinion or I have a different view. That shuts him down on that subject, but then he turns to something else. It was worst when we still lived together - he became quite scary. I was only able to leave at all because of an intervention by social services for our foster daughter. Now, I'm trying to grey rock as much as possible considering we have young children. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and worry that my children will become his lightening rod.

We're in mediation right now to try to work out some legal and coordination issues on custody. There is a mediation team. One of the mediators called out uocpd xh on his gaslighting of me.

jsinjin - please stay safe and keep your children safe.

[TriedTooHard]

this video recently came out on YouTube and sums up very well why grey rock has not worked for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-f2qNb45Ss

[losingmyself]

Oh my gosh. Referring to my recent post about him saying he had to "discipline me" about not talking during tv time. He did it, he found the thing I couldn't grey rock about. He won. I blew up, and that makes me the crazy one. Damnit!!
Back to MC and grey rock. I thought I was doing so well.

[blunk]

I have been following this thread for a while, as this was something that I experienced when I first tried MC and GR with my BPDxh. When I first tried to implement MC and GR I was accused of ignoring him, not caring, hating him, being cold when he was "just trying to have a nice conversation". It seemed like a no-win situation. As I read through the responses in this thread, the topic that keeps coming to mind is Intermittent Reinforcement.

I hope this isn't taken the wrong way, but the first time I heard about intermittent reinforcement was when I got involved with dog training. The theory basically says that when training you offer lots of treats at the beginning, when the dog is just learning. They come to associate obeying the command/offering the behavior with receiving the treat. As time goes on you offer the treat less frequently. The dog still continues to obey the command and/or offer the behavior knowing that one of these times they will get the treat. As long as that hope continues, so does the behavior. And in the case of the dog, we want to occasionally offer the treat because we want that behavior to continue. As an example I had a dog that I trained to "shake" give their paw. He decided that every time he wanted a treat he would come up and flop his paw in my lap. At first I thought, how cute and smart of him to offer the behavior. But after thinking about it I realized, this was his way of trying to score a treat.

I later read about Intermittent Reinforcement in some of the books about BPD. In the case of GR it seems that the "treat" for the PD is getting us to respond (enter into a circular discussion, JADE, get angry, etc.). When we don't respond, they offer the behavior again, still hoping for the treat. The longer we can hold out and not offer the response (treat) the better our chances are that they will stop walking up and randomly flopping their paw in our lap, also known as trying to draw us into whatever the current scenario entails.

There are a lot of other mentions of Intermittent reinforcement associated with psychology including many of the reasons we find it difficult to leave PDs.

https://darlenelancer.com/category/intermittent-reinforcement/

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recovering-narcissist/2019/03/narcissists-use-trauma-bonding-and-intermittent-reinforcement-to-get-you-addicted-to-them-why-abuse-survivors-stay/

Again, I hope nobody was offended by the dog analogy, but it goes to show that intermittent reinforcement is a powerful tool...just depends on who is wielding it.

[Free2Bme]

 

Great points Blunk.

B.F. Skinner, an early behaviorist outlined his theory on classical conditioning and operant conditioning. 

Here go ...    https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html

Some PDs  also have comorbid addiction issues.   IMO, my updxh was addicted to the payoff he receives from the heavy operant conditioning he uses against others.   Sadly, it is his drug of choice.