Tactic 4: The Blank Stare
They employ a blank stare to make you a ghost and act as if you have already ceased to exist in the physical world.
There is a point in the defeat of a narcissist where they just shut down. They just switch off. So when the anger isn’t working, and the hoovering doesn’t work, they use the void stare. This is beyond the silent treatment. This is depersonalization.
They will stare right through you as if you were made of glass. They will treat you like a ghost, a presence who has already been eliminated from their world. This is a coping mechanism to shield their ego from the painful fact of your triumph.
In other words, they will recognize it if they acknowledge your humanity. Then they will have to admit their own hurtful act and their defeat. Well, what do they do? They want to kill you mentally. They resort to indifference.
They will pass by you in the same house or sit across from you at the table and treat you as if the seat is empty. This is the technique that triggers the most primal fears of abandonment and non-importance. They want you to plead for a response—to scream for them to see you.
However, the empty stare is the message that goes like this: “You are no longer there because I don’t think you are.” You are unbearable to them because you are the only reminder they have about the loss they are holding on to in terms of the power they once held.
It’s the final wall of black-rock silence where they withdraw into their own mental bunker, where you never existed.
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