Dealing With Toxic Family This Holiday? Try Grey Rocking

Intimate Knowledge

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

3.3 • 697 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! While the holiday season is all about love and joy it can also bring family tension and unwanted conversations. Experts suggest there is a communication tool that we can all learn to use, to help navigate and avoid emotional outbursts. “Gray rocking” begins by imagining you’re a dull gray rock… keeping a blank expression and a calm neutral tone. Aunt Debbie will be so bored talking to you, she’ll quickly move on to her next victim. However, there is one person you should NEVER try this method on, ever.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:06.2	Hey there, folks.
0:07.9	Happy Thanksgiving.
0:08.7	It is Thursday, November 27th.
0:11.2	And how are you holding up at the house with some of those relatives?
0:15.7	How many glasses of wine are flowing right now?
0:20.0	Is Uncle Ted on his third beer?
0:23.5	Is Aunt Lucy on her second margarita?
0:26.7	And our explosive conversation starting to happen.
0:31.0	Well, we have a foolproof method for surviving that foolishness.
0:36.8	And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and
0:38.4	T.J. Robs, you said this is something I do, but I didn't know there was a name for it. Yes. As soon as I
0:46.3	started reading about a sort of communication tool that can help protect you in moments of potentially toxic and explosive conversations,
0:57.3	you can do something that a lot of experts have named gray rocking.
1:01.8	And when I read the description of what gray rocking is, I thought, T.J. does this every day.
1:07.6	Okay. Now, what you just described, did you piece together just based on the name what they
1:14.2	were talking about?
1:14.8	No, I heard, when I read the description of what gray rocking is, I actually started laughing.
1:21.5	So basically, I like the idea behind it.
1:25.5	So it's a tool, they say, that involves being less engaged during an emotionally toxic interaction.
1:34.4	Okay.
	...

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