I need to practice this. When avoiding communication with psychopaths I tend just to avoid eye contact, this would be stronger. Looking back with a face of unreadable emotionally detached disinterest would drive them crazy, depriving them of cracks for their hooks of emotional manipulation and depriving them of harvesting emotional information. Remember, language is used for manipulation, true communication, for psychopaths, is nonverbal.
From Ramble On, http://moeller.bz/story:
“When you interact with your sociopath (or with anyone else who displays these characteristics), you must practice emotional detachment. You should practice this with yourself in order to develop the genuine indifference which, to a sociopath, is like an impenetrable force field [the author later used the term, inside shield]. A caveat: you must really feel this – the inner realignment you must undergo is critical, and the technique cannot be accomplished via feigned disinterest. What you are doing is short-circuiting the foothold into your psyche that the sociopath seeks by way of the stress syndrome, the adrenaline rollercoaster, he is trying to induce in you, with its concomitant behavioral struggling. If it sounds like psychological warfare, it is. Please note that this is not to be confused with being uncaring. (PW, who has an acting background, may identify this technique as being similar to Method Acting.)”
It certainly is like acting, in that it is not pretending, it absolutely has to be real and felt. On a related issue if someone is trying to reverse blackmail a psychopathic blackmailer they have to actually mean the words (and rehearse until they believe them): “Go ahead, destroy my marriage. I’ll get out my old address book, I’ll get over it. But you’ll be in jail. Blackmailing is a felony and I have you on tape [whether you do or not]. Your choice, jack*ass.” Cold as ice and believable is the requirement. Of course this is not an acting exercise, individuals have to chose an approach that feels natural, that fits their personality. Other possibilities (out of millions): “Hey, I was messing around just to gain strength to get divorced anyway. I should thank you. . . . Thank you. Hey, you want a pen pal in jail?”, “You think that mole on your [______] won’t identify you? Bwah, ha, ha, ha.” Etc.
[On acting, I make no claim to be anything other than an acting hobbyist. However I am extremely rigorously trained. It was a deeply personal mission that saved me from the narcissistic modality and Quaker crippledness of so many of my relatives.]
The Path Whisperer 