Stuff from Richard Grannon

[Rebel13]

I've been watching some videos from Richard Grannon lately and subscribed to his emails. He's promoting a class, and I don't have an opinion one way or the other about that, but I found the material in the emails quite helpful and different from some of the standard stuff out there on PDs/relationships/recovery.

It might be that this material happens to match where I'm at, but maybe other folks will find the information useful too. More below.

Substack
The narcissistic family unit and its impact

[Rebel13]

First email:
"Most people in your position have already done a lot of analysis. You know which parent did what. You can trace the pattern back. You could probably write the essay yourself.

And the pattern still runs.

Here's the shift I want to introduce today. Instead of endlessly analysing your parents, we look at the mechanism still producing consequences in your life right now — today, this week, in a specific relationship or situation.

Call it psychology-as-engineering. Not "why did this happen," but "where exactly is this rule executing, and what triggers it."

Here's a small exercise you can try right now, no course required.

Think of the last time you said yes when you wanted to say no. Don't analyse why. Just locate it:

— What was the exact moment the "no" disappeared?

— What physical sensation showed up right before you agreed?

— What story did you tell yourself in that half-second? ("They'll be upset." "I'll seem selfish." "It's easier to just do it.")

That's it. You're not solving it yet. You're just finding the exact location where the rule fires — which is different from understanding its origin, and far more useful.

Most approaches to this stop at "your parents did this to you, and now you understand why." That's the end of the road for most books and most therapy models on this specific issue.

It's actually the starting point."

[Rebel13]

Second email:
"Two things came up again and again, and both are worth answering directly.

The first: "I found the moment, but it happened too fast to do anything about it."

The second: "I found it afterwards, not during."

Both of those are the correct result for a first attempt. Here's why, and here's what comes next.

When one of those old family rules fires, it doesn't arrive as a thought. It arrives as a sequence, and it runs fast:

1. Trigger. A request, a tone of voice, a particular facial expression.

2. Body. Something tightens, drops, or goes hot — usually before you've registered any thought at all.

3. Story. A half-second narration: "they'll be upset," "it's easier to just do it," "don't make this a thing."

4. Output. "Yeah, no problem." Followed, often hours later, by resentment you can't quite place.

Most people try to intervene at step four — the output. They try to force a "no" out of their mouth using willpower, and it either doesn't come out or it comes out as an apology with a no buried somewhere inside it.

That's the wrong place to intervene. Step four is the end of the chain, and by then the chain has already run.

You interrupt at step two — the body, before the story writes itself.

Here's the practical version you can use this week. It isn't a confrontation technique, and it doesn't require you to say no to anyone.

Buy back the three seconds.

When you feel the physical signal — the tightening, the drop, the urgency to resolve the situation immediately — you don't answer. You use one neutral holding phrase:

— "Let me think about that and come back to you."

— "I'm not sure yet."

— "I'll check and let you know."

You're just taking the decision out of the automatic sequence and putting it somewhere you can actually access it.

And notice what that does to the rule. The rule requires an immediate answer to function. Delay is the one thing it has no instruction for.

Two objections worth answering now, because they came up in your replies.

"Isn't this just avoidance?" No — avoidance means never answering. This is answering from a different place, a few minutes or a day later, once the body has settled and you can tell the difference between what you want and what the rule wants.

"Won't this cause conflict?" Far less than you expect. "Let me come back to you" is an ordinary, socially normal sentence. If someone reacts badly to a request for three seconds of thinking time, that reaction is itself extremely useful information about the relationship.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

A phone call comes in on a Friday evening. The request is familiar — a favour, framed as urgent, with a slight edge in the voice if you hesitate.

Old sequence: chest tightens, half-second story ("if I don't, there'll be an atmosphere for a week"), then — "yeah, fine, I'll do it."

New sequence: chest tightens. Notice it. Then: "I'll check and let you know tomorrow." Nothing dramatic happens. No argument. But for the first time, the decision gets made on Saturday morning by you, rather than on Friday night by the rule.

Interrupting the chain is what creates that gap. But a gap on its own isn't enough — it has to get filled with something, or the old sequence just closes it back up."

[Rebel13]

Third email:
"Two reports came in far more often than any others.

The first: "I said I'd come back to them, and nothing happened. No drama at all. I was braced for a reaction that never came."

The second, and this is the one today is for: "I got the gap. Then the next morning I said yes anyway."

It's the predictable next step, and it tells you precisely what's missing.

A gap is empty by definition. If nothing goes into it, the old sequence simply resumes a few hours later — slightly delayed, and now with extra time for the guilt to build its case. You didn't do it wrong. You ran out of instructions.

So here's the rest of them.

These rules update when reality contradicts them — repeatedly, in small, survivable doses.

The rule says: if you don't comply, something bad happens. Nothing inside your head can disprove that. Only an actual event can — one where you don't comply, and the catastrophe doesn't arrive.

That event is what goes in the gap. There are four stages to making one land, and most people only ever attempt the first.

Stage one: design a proof small enough to survive.

1. Small enough that you'd bet money on yourself doing it. Any doubt means it's still too big.

2. It breaches one specific rule. Not "be more assertive" — something that directly contradicts one named instruction.

3. It doesn't need the other person's cooperation. If it only counts when they respond well, you've handed the result back to them.

4. You can repeat it this week. One instance is an anecdote. Repetition is what changes conditioning.

In practice that looks unimpressive: declining one small request without explaining why. Leaving a message unanswered for two hours on purpose. Saying "that doesn't work for me" about a restaurant, a time, a film.

Compare it to what people usually attempt after a moment of clarity — the long confrontation, the no-contact message, the announcement that things will be different from now on. Those spike your anxiety to the ceiling, invite maximum pushback, and give you exactly one attempt. When they collapse you add shame on top, and the rule comes back with evidence on its side.

Stage two: survive the backlash window.

This is the stage nobody warns you about, and it's where almost all the proofs get destroyed.

You decline the small thing. Nothing happens. Then, somewhere between twenty minutes and two hours later, the guilt arrives — and with it a very specific, very urgent impulse to reverse the decision you just made.

Understand what that is. The rule's last move isn't prevention. It's reversal. It failed to stop you, so now it tries to get you to undo it, and it will supply excellent reasoning: it wasn't worth the friction, they've got a lot on, I was being rigid about nothing.

Two instructions for that window:

No renegotiating for 24 hours. You don't have to feel fine about the decision. You just don't touch it for a day. The discomfort peaks and then drops on its own, and watching it drop is itself part of the evidence.

No compensation behaviours. This is the subtle one. You keep the no — and then you over-give somewhere else to balance the ledger. An unnecessary favour, an over-warm message, taking on something nobody asked you to. That cancels the proof. The rule gets paid anyway, just through a side door.

Stage three: record prediction against outcome.

This is the step that decides whether any of it counts, and it takes about ninety seconds.

Before you act, write down what you expect to happen. Not vaguely — specifically. "She'll go cold for three days." "He'll bring it up in front of other people." "There'll be an atmosphere all weekend."

Afterwards, write what actually happened.

You need this in writing because memory is not neutral here. Left to itself, the rule quietly edits the record — it downgrades what you did ("that was nothing"), upgrades what they did ("they were clearly annoyed"), and by Thursday you've concluded it went badly when it didn't. Written prediction versus written outcome makes that edit impossible.

And there's a second thing that shows up in those notes. Frequently, the catastrophe you predicted was the rule talking, not a forecast — and seeing that in your own handwriting, repeatedly, does more than any amount of reassurance from me.

Stage four: stack before you escalate.

The instinct after a proof works is to immediately go bigger. Don't. Run the same size three times before increasing it.

One contradiction is dismissible as a fluke. Three of the same kind stops being an exception and starts becoming a pattern the system has to account for. Escalating too early almost always produces a failure big enough to wipe out the small wins behind it.

One more thing to expect, because it disorients people. When this starts working, it often feels flat. Quiet. Slightly wrong, even — the way stability and calm can feel strangely unfamiliar after years of intensity.

That flatness is the absence of a familiar spike.

Two objections worth answering, since both came up in your replies.

"Isn't this too small to matter?" The size of the action is irrelevant. What matters is that the rule predicted a consequence and the consequence didn't arrive, and that you have a record of it. That's the only currency this operates in.

"What if they react badly?" Then you've learned something accurate about the relationship rather than something imagined — and note that criterion three exists precisely for this. The proof completed when you did the thing. Their reaction is data, not the verdict.

Now the part I can't do for you.

I can give you the design criteria, the backlash protocol, the recording method and the stacking order. I can't generate the evidence on your behalf. Nobody can. The proof only works because you were the one who produced it — that's the entire mechanism."

[Pinkos]

Thanks for posting, Rebel!!! This is helpful and resonant.

The overdoing it by being too assertive (hence getting aggressive pushback) and being pummeled by the 'rule'...that is on point. I have felt over the last few years that the whole "be assertive" thing has done me more harm than good. I find that I'm most effective being "assertive" when I don't directly confront the situation and under function.

Less efforting in other words. Intentionally being mediocre when I feel intensity in the dynamic. It feels like passive aggression but I see it as indirect assertion. If I am apparently assertive I find people's response to be negative and agitated.