Lack of Empathy in Abusers, Narcissists and Sociopaths with a Discussion on the Dangers

Note: related post: A Discussion on Cognitive Empathy in Abusive Relationships: How to Tell if the Person You Are Dealing With in a Close Personal Relationship Has Empathy

Lack of empathy is one of the tell-tale signs that you are dealing with someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder. However, active addicts and alcoholics can sometimes present a lack of empathy too, and many addicts and alcoholics also have personality disorders, so it can be hard to tell who and what you are dealing with. 

For the sake of this post, I will be talking mostly about lack of empathy in Narcissistic Personality Disorder, however, I talk about some signs to be aware of in terms of what you may be dealing with.

INTRODUCTION

Lack of empathy is sometimes our first clue that something isn't right with our date, partner, parent or child. 

If the lack of empathy is accompanied by controlling behavior, name-calling (verbal abuse), hair-trigger rage or abuse especially when they feel they are criticized (and especially when they are highly critical of others themselves), consider that they might have the prior personality disorders that I mentioned: Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic ... and so on. 

Lack of empathy in these kinds of people can mean dealing with abuse and the aftermath of trauma for you down the road (or your children, if your children are exposed to them). It can also mean traversing their rages in a way that impacts the way you relate to them: a life of not sharing much other than the very basics, building boundaries so that nothing other than polite discourse is acceptable, not reacting emotionally to any baiting or silent treatments, not engaging with them (letting them engage with you instead if they wish to do so), or leaving them or letting them leave you. Most people who are dealing with a person with a combination of lack of empathy, rage, controlling behavior, abuse and hypersensitivity to criticism usually seek therapy or go to domestic violence counselors who are trained in perpetrator behaviors and victim behaviors. 

But first:    

WHAT AM I DEALING WITH?

In terms of the possible reasons for a lack of empathy (or for a seeming lack of empathy), please be aware that there may be extenuating circumstances, or that there are a number of factors (a personality disorder and a drinking problem, for instance). 

a child who lacks empathy:
     Children under five years old cannot be expected to show empathy because of where they are in their developmental stage. 
     Even when they are past five years old, their empathy is in "growing stages". 
     However, after five years of age if they show no empathy at all, it is cause for concern especially if they also show signs of bullying, destroying other people's property, torturing animals, and having symptoms of conduct disorder. 

 

alcoholism:
     Lack of empathy in active alcoholism is well known if you have ever gone to any ALANON meeting. Previously committed marriage partners are having affairs left and right with just about anyone including people they don't know or don't remember picking up at the local bar, men who were responsible now forget to pay bills and put gas in the car, you used to be able to hang on to a car for at least ten years and now your partner gets in a car wreck every year. They don't seem to care at all about how any of this is effecting you. Or they tell you they care, but end up being unethical or putting themselves in danger again. 
     Perhaps they don't care enough about you or your common children to give up drinking. Booze has such a powerful grip on them that they barely notice what anyone needs, what your emotions are, why you are angry with them, etc. Besides that, they are so inebriated when you try to talk to them about your concerns that you might as well be talking to a brick wall. They don't seem to register that you are hurt. They are too disabled to have an adult conversation.
     To complicate matters, alcohol also effects the brain in terms of empathy.
     If the person stops drinking and is sober for a year, and hasn't had any significant brain damage, then if the empathy comes back, you know that the lack of empathy was caused by the alcoholism.

addiction:
     Again, a powerful addiction is going to cause a lack of empathy because the next fix is all that the person cares about in the moment. Stealing, lying and gaslighting are common ways that they show a lack of empathy.

trauma survivors, people going through traumatic events:
     Trauma survivors or people who are going through traumatic events can appear to have lack of empathy, but what they are experiencing is the fight-or-flight reflex known as amygdala hijacking. The heart is racing faster than normal and adrenalin is running through their system. People who are deep into an amygdala hijack are unable to absorb new information or to problem solve.  

     Some of them seem self absorbed, not able to respond appropriately. This is because they are trying to solve the issue that is causing them the trauma. 
     Likewise, people who have lived a life with too much trauma can live so much in their own heads that they don't always respond normally to situations. Some of them can seem exceptionally introverted. They can seem like they are only half present. They don't seem to be able to engage in conversation, or if they are engaging, they don't feel at all comfortable. Some of them feel that they have to respond, even though they haven't listened to what was said, or know what was said, so they can sometimes laugh when something tragic is conveyed or convey worry and sadness when something joyous is conveyed. 
     People who experience a lot of trauma typically have sleep disturbances. They are either not sleeping at all or they are sleeping only a few hours. This is what hypervigilance does. If they are able to sleep to some extent, many of them have nightmares and flashbacks which tend to wake them up and keep them awake. They can go about a day as though they are sleep-walking, upset over little things that are happening or little mistakes they make. They don't seem "quite with it". Feeling emotional from a lack of sleep, and making mistakes because of a lack of sleep, is normal.

     "Selective hearing" can happen in situations where they are over-exposed to abuse. When they are being abused, they shut off what the other person is saying or demanding at the height of the abusive situation in order to survive the abuse (called dissociation: it is actually involuntary, not something that they are in control of - it is the brain's way of protecting itself). This is also sometimes why domestic violence victims stay with their offenders, because they experience abuse in a dissociative way.
     If you demand a lot from a traumatized person, they can seem to lack empathy, but what they are really doing is shutting down (into an amygdala hijack). Some of them dissociate in a big way. To make things worse, a lot of abuse survivors get triggered by demands. That is because many abusers demand things from their targets that are hurtful to the target, and if the targets aren't responding to the demand in the way that the offender wants, they are often abused more to get them to comply.
     When the survivor is not anxious, in a hypervigilant state, having flashbacks and nightmares, and feeling calm again, empathy tends to go back to normal again, and can even be exceptional, and they can hear what is going on again.
     If you have abused a trauma survivor without knowing it (violence or incest in an alcoholic black out state, for instance), you may become triggering to them too. Trauma survivors sometimes get to a point where they walk away from everyone except the most empathetic, calm people. It may seem they are unempathetic when they do this as it seems personal, but they are doing this to survive, so that they can be functional for themselves and functional to those people who love and depend on them. 
     Chronic disappearing acts can sometimes also be a trauma survivor's way of coping. It is not necessarily due to a lack of empathy, but a way for the survivor to be in a calm environment where getting triggered is less likely. This tends to happen to survivors who are threatened "not to tell", or where no one wants to hear about the abuse they endured, or who feel they have to stuff emotions. The lost child in family systems is the most obvious manifestation. They turn off the abusive environment in their minds as much as they can by trying to distract themselves with interests and projects, but when they can't, or they are getting triggered, they disappear. Being alone in nature is one of the common ways of "disappearing" that I have seen. 
     Some trauma survivors are also narcissists and sociopaths, but they will have the traits of these cluster B personality disorders in addition to trauma responses The most common traits of narcissists are lack of empathy, insistence on dominating you, controlling you and having power over you, hypersensitivity and rage over perceived criticism, triangulation, gaslighting, entitlement, and invalidation/perspecticide of your experiences, thoughts and feelings (most of the traits I cover in the column on the right under "abusers tricks of the trade"). Narcissists tend to be abusive or neglectful.
     Sociopaths and malignant narcissists are similar to run-of-the-mill narcissists, but they are more deceptive, punishing, vindictive, sadistic and pro-actively abusive (i.e. they plan attacks).  

Asperger's:
     People who have Asperger's can seem to lack empathy, but they don't. Far from it. In some of them, they feel so much empathy that they feel overwhelmed by it. 
     Asperger's is a high functioning form of autism. 
     In autism-spectrum disorders it is not a question of not feeling, but rather a hypersensitivity to experience with an inability to communicate effectively or to communicate with gestures that other people can understand (this is generalized autism). However, people with Asperger's often have normal language skills and a hyper awareness of how everyone else is feeling, but they will have some limits in terms of how much they can non-verbally express.
     The reason why some people might feel that people diagnosed with Asperger's have a lack of empathy is because their facial expressions often do not match what they are saying or feeling inside, so they are often misunderstood. They can have limited or frozen facial expressions. Adults diagnosed with Asperger's tend to avoid eye contact too. So when they are called upon to be empathetic, they may appear to be unmoved or awkward, but what is really happening is that they are unable to entirely express what they feel. 
     The presence of a lack of empathy means that a person will not be able to tell how much damage they are doing to other human beings, or care either. This does not describe people with Asperger's.
     People with Asperger's tend to be highly moral, and do not like to see others being abused or hurt. 

dementia:
     People with dementia can lack empathy because they are unable to function at normal cognitive and emotional levels. 
     Most of these people should be excused for lack of empathy. They require help rather than being admonished for a lack of empathy. 
     If you need empathy, these are not the people who you should be seeking this from.

schizophrenia: schizophrenia is a lifelong mental illness that appears in men in their twenties, and in women in their late twenties to early thirties.
     Before the mid-1980s children and teens were often diagnosed with schizophrenia, but it was found in the 1980s that they were actually experiencing PTSD instead (almost all children diagnosed with schizophrenia pre-1980s who were in hospitals or mental health facilities had experienced extra-ordinary amounts of abuse, either severe, or they were constantly being re-traumatized). In children, and sometimes in teenagers, PTSD can mimic some of the same symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations. However, hallucinations in childhood PTSD come from a profound lack of sleep due to hypervigilance to danger (fear) and it is curable, whereas hallucinations in schizophrenia come from a generalized inability to decipher reality from fiction and is generally incurable.
     Today it is understood that they are two very different diagnoses, and that PTSD can be greatly mitigated through trauma therapy, calm stable non-abusive environments, and sometimes with anti-anxiety medications, and that schizophrenia is an incurable mental illness where the symptoms can only be mitigated by medication (often anti-psychotic medications, and sometimes with additional mood stabilizers, and anti-depressants - prescribed mainly by psychiatric doctors). 
     So, do schizophrenics typically display with a lack of empathy? No. These would most likely be attributed to psychopaths, or others in the Cluster B spectrum of personality disorders. 
     But can schizophrenics be violent? They sometimes can be, but they are much more likely to be victims of violence. 
     Symptoms of schizophrenia are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and disorganized speech (typically the kind of non-manipulative word salad, like talking in non sequiturs, that is typical of schizophrenics), abnormal motor behavior, lack of ability to function in ways that most of us function (many are unemployable and cannot reach career goals because of extra-ordinary symptoms like the inability to speak where the use of meaningless words makes it impossible to interact with people in a work situation: customers, audiences, staff, bosses, and co-workers). For more on the symptoms of schizophrenia, go HERE.  
      The stigma that schizophrenics are possessed with two personalities, who are devising ways to hurt other people in a mad vindictive style is a wrong one.      

narcissism:
     Narcissists are much more likely to have the trait of a lack of empathy. However, they often pretend to have empathy to draw people in, to seduce them, to gain power and control over them, to use them for scapegoating.
     Narcissists are like addicts in that if they don't get their narcissistic supply fix at the time they want it and in the way they want it, they go into a rage. Giving a narcissist "supply" very often means giving them flattery, power, control and domination over you, being agreeable to their demands and lectures, and agreeing to give them sensitive information about you or others (so that they can triangulate and attain leadership over everyone). 
     Narcissists who are high on the scale of narcissistic traits don't just rage when they don't receive narcissistic supply, but they also want to punish and/or destroy people who don't give them their fix. 
     One way to tell if they are narcissists is that you will notice that the lack of empathy comes on suddenly. Let us say that they have shown you a great deal of empathy for nine months. They seemingly care about every aspect of your experiences, your hurts, and your traumas. They call you often to make sure you are safe.
     But let us say that you inadvertently criticize them over something, or they take what you said as a criticism. Criticism is the opposite of the kind of narcissistic supply that entails flattery. Most people feel hurt when they feel criticized, but true narcissists get very angry and will rage at you instead. They feel entitled to narcissistic supply (and to being idealized by you and others), so in their minds, you screwed up when you criticized them.
     The end result is that they suddenly and abruptly have no empathy for you. They stop caring about you. And they no longer care if you are safe. 
     This is true even if you are in the middle of a tragedy. 
     Most of us know that real empathy does not turn off and on like a faucet. In fact the more that you complain about their lack of empathy, the more they show you that they could care less about the issue or about you. That is because they take complaints as criticisms, so they rage again over it (either passive-aggressively via stonewalling or overtly, through shouting, insulting or abusing). 
     Note: They dish out plenty of criticism to and about others, but they make it known that they are above criticism themselves (that's their fantasy, anyway, and they make it pretty clear that you are not to mess with their fantasy about that). 
     Narcissists fake empathy to seduce "followers". They have a cult-leader mentality in that they draw you in with love bombing and then take away your freedoms, work on either getting you financially  dependent or sabotage your career ambitions, then they isolate you, then they order you around, and figure out ways to totally dominate you, and abuse you. Eventually you feel like you are in prison with a dictator.
     Another note: They will always be demanding narcissistic supply in ever greater amounts to the point where, at some point they feel they deserve to be blindly worshipped and rewarded with what ever they want, no matter how unethical it is, even if what they want hurts you, with the demand that you "follow them" without questioning, no second-guessing, no emotions, no intelligent reflection. Most of us can't do that, so then it becomes an "off-with-your-head"-like moment where the narcissist goes off the rails with rage or abuse. 
     The more they reach this apex of feeling "ideal" (kingly or queenly), the more they will rage about their entitlements and get abusive. The abuse can escalate to financial abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, social abuse, scapegoating (mob bullying), blackmail, and physical abuse. A lot of them feel that their grandiose leadership fantasies must be reached at all cost, and who gets hurt in the process is not something they think about much. For them it's "the cost of doing business" (and this goes for their spouse and children too).

     If you see an abrupt loss of empathy (especially within the context of hypersensitivity to criticism, and a resultant shame-rage spiral - something I will be talking about in an upcoming post), that is a pretty sure sign of a personality disorder, particularly Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
     It's also a sign you can't change them "back" into being empathetic. That's also part of their personality disorder too.
     No pleading for empathy will change their trajectory of formerly idealizing you, now devaluing you, then discarding or destroying the relationship or you. Once you realize it is part of their personality disorder you can proceed from there (domestic violence counselors and domestic violence centers are best for getting advice on how to keep safe). 
     The high majority of us are not built to deal with a sudden lack of empathy in a close personal relationship. We are not built for a narcissist only acting empathically when you fulfill their demands and look at them as ideal either. The result from long term exposure to people without empathy (with or without abuse), are trauma symptoms. 
     The reason trauma symptoms appear even when there is no abuse is that lack of empathy, in the best-case scenario, causes them to neglect you. We aren't built for long-term neglect either. 
     However, knowing that they have lack of empathy, and that the empathy they show is almost always fake, will make it a lot more easy to make a decision about what to do about your involvement with this person and this relationship. 
     I will talk more about how a person's lack of empathy effects us and the symptoms you are likely to encounter in another post, but beware: if you back off from a narcissist because of their lack of empathy (which is the healthiest thing to do for both of you), you are likely to meet either resistance in the way of luring, stalking, hoovering, spying, or more attacks whether social ones, financial ones or emotional ones. Whether they are trying to lure you back into a relationship with them, or conversely, proceeding to escalate attacks, the agenda is to hurt you more. Luring for narcissists is always about softening you up, getting you into a honeymoon frame of mind, so that they can dominate you and get control over you again, getting you to do things that are not in your best interest (like another round of abuse or neglect). For that reason, it is always best to get help from a domestic violence center or domestic violence counselor. 

malignant narcissists and sociopaths:
     These people have a lot in common with narcissists with a couple of caveats ...
     The lack of empathy will also be abrupt and switch-like, but instead of just rage, they will be very vindictive and punishing. 

     The shame-rage spiral with malignant narcissists and sociopaths is a shame-vindictive spiral instead. They can become obsessed with attacking you, including how to attack you in a way that will garner the most pain and trauma for you, and have revenge fantasies about ways to hurt you more.  
     These folks don't feel empathy at all. Run-of-the-mill narcissists feel a little bit, depending where they are on the spectrum. Narcissists can cry when a sad movie is playing, for instance. But most malignant narcissists and sociopaths will be laughing at the people who are crying instead. They target them in their mind as "vulnerable people to exploit".
     However, beware: malignant narcissists and sociopaths are highly adept at acting and can fake cry. The movie, The Widower, shows pretty well how fake crying is done. I also talk about The Widower series in the post about mirroring.
     The reason I bring up the mirroring post is because mirroring you is often the main tool that malignant narcissists and sociopaths use to lure people in. They treat people they want something from like the love of their life, like soul mates, then they usually want to move very fast into commitment with you (though the commitment will always be about how they tricked you into a commitment with them while they only pretended to be committed to you). And when you break up, or your heart is broken by all of their evil deeds, they will be laughing at you again. 
     In other words, the lack of empathy is so profound that they have no regrets about hurting other people. Some of them don't even care whether other people know that they have no regrets about hurting others. Run-of-the-mill narcissists usually care about their reputations because that is how they get narcissistic supply, but some malignant narcissists and many sociopaths don't care about their reputations in polite society (they care about how other criminal minds look at them instead, and whether they are jealous of their criminal exploits). In other words, they just take it as another challenge on how to get away with evil behavior without being accountable or detectable. Playing the victim is one way they subvert accountability.  

     However, rare high functioning sociopaths might act out the most minimal amount of regret they can get away with if they have reached high positions of leadership and they are overwhelmingly reprimanded in the media. But, more likely they look for a fall-guy to blame for all of it instead. 
     Most of us can't tolerate being close to these kinds of people either.  

THE DANGERS AND POTENTIAL DANGERS TO YOU
WHEN IT CONCERNS SOMEONE ELSE'S LACK OF EMPATHY

Note: I will be discussing lack of empathy when it concerns full functioning adults in this section, not about individuals who have cognitive disabilities, mental disabilities like schizophrenia, trauma  disabilities, learning disabilities, or substance addictions. 

A consistent lack of empathy that is part of the personality of an individual usually points to a Cluster B Personality Disorder of which Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder are two of them.

As I've said before, narcissists and sociopaths (sociopaths have Antisocial Personality Disorder) can fake empathy to get what they want, to get you under their control, so it is sometimes hard to tell in the beginning. So there are other traits to watch out for when you discover a lack of empathy. Or you can get out of the relationship when you first spot it before you become attached to the individual. 

If you want a sure-fire way to never be in a relationship with a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath, back out of the relationship at the first signs of a lack of empathy. I write about that in more depth HERE. 

Lack of empathy matters in close personal relationships and it is an important sign to pay diligent attention to. When you see a lack of empathy it means the narcissist is blind to your feelings and pain in the best of circumstances. However, most often there is a lot more to it. But be aware that even this kind of blindness can hurt you.

Most people who exhibit lack of empathy for you (as a character trait - and part of that character trait is an unusual amount of criticism of others) are usually going to display abusive behavior at some point too. In very rare circumstances, people who are totally overwhelmed like going through multiple tragedies and conflicts (a death of a parent, losing a business, in the hospital for a surgery, a child in a devastating car accident - all at once for instance) can display a lack of empathy because they are dealing with too many issues. However, if you see a lot of verbal abuse, while they are in the middle of their tragedies, it is a bad sign. 

People who are verbally abusive or hyper critical of you usually want to cut down your self esteem. That's usually a sign of the beginning of abuse. It usually escalates to emotional and psychological abuse later on, and can even escalate into physical abuse, threats, harassment, false imprisonment, coercive control, sometimes stalking and stealing, and even life threatening occurrences. Always remember that once abuse appears, it escalates. 

As an individual you won't be able to stop the escalation. Only law enforcement, the keeping of records with law enforcement so that they know where to look if you come up missing or dead, voicing clear boundaries, getting lawyers and domestic violence counselors involved, and restraining orders can stop the trajectory, and even then, an abuser will try to find work-arounds and loopholes. I talk about their work-arounds later in this section.

The type of verbal abuse, how critical they are of you matters, especially in terms of safety and the context of what you are going through at the time. 

Let us say that you are going through a tragedy yourself. Maybe you have been raped, or in a car accident, or your spouse is undergoing a terrible illness, or your parent is dying (it can be anything). Do they pick on you over other little extraneous things, make a lot of demands during times like this, rage at you? Narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths manufacture relatively insignificant things to get upset at you about. They also put more demands on you than you can handle, and nit-pick you about issues because you are vulnerable. In your vulnerability, they want to see how much attention you will give to these small issues and sensitivities of theirs, how they can exploit you, take control of you and your actions, get your attention focused on them rather than the important things in your life, get things from you, and how much selfishness they can get away with. This is a really, really bad sign. You will know it because your anxiety levels will go up, and you will feel that any move you make will be the wrong move in their eyes. You will feel distracted and upset, and you will usually have trouble sleeping. Some people who are overwhelmed with a tragedy or tragedies, and are dealing with a narcissist on top of it all, do sometimes feel hopeless and experience lingering depression. 

People who pick on others who are vulnerable are bullies (and therefor most often narcissists or sociopaths), and that is where your attention should be, always, even when they are making excuses for themselves and their behavior, even when they are trying to convince you that you deserved their horrendous behavior, even when they are giving you word salad arguments about why you are not pleasing them or flawed, even when they insist that you don't know what you are doing, and trying to draw you into arguments where you have to defend yourself. This is especially true if they exhibit model behavior in public.

They will even try to convince you that everything that has happened between you is your fault.

If you focus on the fact that it is inappropriate and calloused to pick on someone who is going through a tragedy, or tragedies in this way, or who is vulnerable in some way, you have a better chance of emerging from the experience unscathed, including unscathed from trauma symptoms. 

One thing domestic violence counselors do is to ask questions like this: "Would you pick on someone who is going through the tragedy you are going through?" "Would you rage at someone about all of these little things, and try to bring up so many arguments with someone who is going through the kinds of tragedies you are going through?" - they try to keep the focus on your perpetrator's actions, in other words, because normal folks will often be self reflecting instead: "Am I really as insensitive as they say I am?", "Am I really as crazy as they say I am?", "Did I really fail at cleaning the kitchen?", "Do I really deserve to be betrayed like this? What do they think they are seeing that they would betray me in this way?", "Am I really acting as spacey as they say I am acting and not setting the table right?"  Perpetrators will usually be overwhelming you with a barrage of complaints about you, even made up ones, and keeping it up in rapid-fire succession, keeping you on the defensive so that it takes your focus off of their actions. It's a typical tactic all abusers use. 

The real question should always be: "Is it right to pick on someone who is vulnerable?" That should always take precedence over their barrage of complaints, their barrage of commands and demands, their barrage of attacks on your character. I know it is hard to do, which is why domestic violence counseling should be sought: to keep you focused on the right issues.

But let us say that they are not abusive, that lack of empathy is their only stand-out trait. In other words, they aren't hyper critical of you; they aren't telling you are crazy or deficient; they aren't trying to smash up your self esteem; they aren't particularly controlling or demanding. What can possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot of things. Lack of empathy minus abuse and coercive control usually adds up to neglect. 

You have an accident and you need help. People without empathy are not going to respond in an appropriate way, and get emergency help. 

You feel car-sick. People without empathy aren't going to care and keep on driving. If you insist that they stop so that you can vomit, they might stop. But they are going to be out of touch in terms of what you are going through.

You tell someone without empathy about what you are going through emotionally. They either ignore you, or shift the focus to them and something they want to talk about. While emotional neglect doesn't seem as dire as abuse during an accident, for instance, it can still take a heavy toll on the relationship. You can't talk about anything and get a reasonable response - to issues like losing your job, totaling the car, breaking your arm, having a heart attack, getting hit by a drunk driver, getting raped, being stalked, needing to keep the doors locked, that someone stole from you. They neglect your concerns.

Granted, neglect is far more dire when children experience it, and in those cases, it often includes food issues, clothing issues, medical attention, safety issues, and vulnerability to predatory people, but it still can feel awful for adults. And if you have children with a narcissist, you can expect child neglect from them. If you think you can take on all of your children's issues and keep the child neglect from happening, what if you die or are incapacitated in some way? This is the nightmare every person who marries a neglectful person should think about. 

While there is a subcategory type of narcissist who is neglectful without being abusive, they are a rare breed. Most narcissists are neglectful AND abusive AND controlling. It means that neglect (and therefor lack of empathy) is more often "a sign" rather than the whole picture.

It also means that at least one of your children, if not more, will be neglected, coerce-controlled and abused.  

Some of the common things that narcissists and sociopaths say and what they do that show a lack of empathy are:

"I'm sorry you feel that way."
"That didn't happen." "You weren't hurt!" and other perspecticide statements.  
Always and never statements:
"You always make a mountain out of a molehill."
"You always make a big deal out of nothing."
"You can never do what I ask of you."
- blame-shifting
- making you a continual laughing stock of their jokes
- taking over conversations, interrupting
- insisting that you see things the way they see things, insisting that you have the same perspectives
- making you responsible for everything that goes wrong in the relationship between you
- making you responsible for their abuse, cheating, lack of empathy, lack of love, lack of respect
- manufactured chaos (especially when you are experiencing tragedies)
- neglectful
- sadism
- abuse
- vindictiveness
- baiting you, taunting you (for arguments, for defenses, for more abuse from them) 

- normalizing abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and rage over fairly small or manufactured issues

We know there are many categories from not caring about your wounds, to medical problems, not caring about your emotional states, not caring about hurting you, to the states they leave you in when they do their discards, physical abuses, false imprisonments, coercively controlling, injuries ... 

And by the way, controlling behavior, raging when they don't get their way, and neglect with a lack of empathy has a high probability rate of being dangerous. It is certainly dangerous to your mental health and well-being, but it very often escalates into more egregious forms of abuse later on.

Controlling behavior, dominating behavior, lack of empathy with verbal or emotional abuse is definitely dangerous. In some perpetrators, the escalation from verbal and emotional abuse to physical abuse can happen fast. In some real instances, the physical abuse did not escalate from coercive touching, to violence, to murder. The perpetrator went from verbal and emotional abuse right into murder (there are certain verbal phrases that point to more danger than others, which I'll be discussing in another post, but they all carry risk, especially if they are used a lot). If you are not in a planning stage of escape, you may want to get a hold of a domestic violence center to discuss the issue. 

When physical abuse has started, it tends to escalate very fast into abuse that causes injury and/or death. Pushing, shoving, raging inches away from your face, raging while touching any part of you, pushing you so that you fall down, tripping you, throwing things at you, pulling at you in controlling ways, smashing their fists at walls when you are standing nearby, or punching something close to your hands or another body part in a rage, is certainly dangerous. It is the "get out now" stage (the Netflix series, Maid, expertly shows why). 

If the lack of empathy and physical abuse  are accompanied by micro-managing controlling behavior, a lot of raging and verbal abuse, where they are on edge and irritated by you a lot, where they are hyper critical of you, where they make up false narratives about you, where they have either touched your face or neck in an aggressive way or scratched your face or neck, punched you in the face or head, strangled you or put their hand on your face or across your throat or mouth, it is the "get out immediately" stage for sure. You will also probably need professional protection at this stage. Any marks on your body should also be photographed (going to a domestic violence center is usually recommended). 

You have a right to end a relationship that is abusive and dangerous, no matter who objects to it. You have a right to end an abusive dangerous relationship even if this is your partner, a sibling, a friend, a parent or child. Some people you know will not accept this, and that is part of the territory of domestic violence. It tends to split people apart. Some people will be outraged that you were abused, some people will not believe it, some people will think there is something wrong with you if you can't get along with a person they get along with (especially people not aware of the Jekyll and Hyde behaviors of abusers).

If people in your life are not taking the dangers seriously (or showing lack empathy, are lecturing you about how you need to forgive your abuser, or are acting un-empathetic and neglectful of your concerns or safety), and especially if they insist that you apologize to your abuser, you probably want to back away from them too. People who are high on beliefs and low on empathy, low on listening, low on an open mind, low on investigative practices and research, will not change. You can see this even in politics (very few people choose to look at both party's perspectives, and keep their minds open about those perspectives - because of beliefs and a propensity to vilify people whose beliefs do not align with their own). While belief-oriented perspectives are common, when it comes to abuse, and being protected from abuse, it is even more deadly than a purely one-on-one perpetrator-victim relationship. 

There is nothing an abuser likes more than for people you both know to side with them. It will embolden him to become even more abusive because he feels that he will be backed, that he can get away with it, and may even feel that a group will applaud him. Victims do not do very well in the court of family or friendship alliances because victims complain about what they went through with an "outwardly charming person" while perpetrators play the victim. Perpetrators typically aren't honest about what has happened (lying and vilifying is part of abusers' agenda: they want the social support even if they have to lie to get it). Victims become traumatized and depressed by the lies and loss of relationships and tend to isolate, which to common alliances can appear like guilt. While perpetrators tend to go through with big ambitions, big social plans, show a lot of confidence, which to some people looks like someone who is "together". However, a lot of people will get what is going on, even if not all of them will. They know that when you are traumatized, you aren't going to be up for huge ambitious plans and projects, or a whirlwind social life, and will be licking your wounds instead. They will know that "getting over it quickly" for perpetrators is not normal behavior for someone who says they are a victim. In such instances, you know who are your real friends are. 

And most of all, you know enough not to get entangled with anyone who shows a lack of empathy again. There's too much of a chance that lack of empathy hides an abusive nature.

WHY DO NARCISSISTS LACK EMPATHY?
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?

Lack of empathy is the one trait that trumps all of the other traits of narcissism. As I have said in the previous section, it is a relationship killer for a lot of us, and something that seems to seize the narcissist from everything from positive progress in relationships to enlightened perspectives about others they are in relationships with. Without empathy, most of them aren't good at judging character beyond who will make good prey, and even then they can get it wrong. 

There is a lot of debate about how a lack of empathy happens. 

For primary psychopaths, they are born with a lack of empathy. But this post isn't about them.

Most psychologists agree that with sociopaths and narcissists, it is more of a learned behavior stemming from generational abuse (and generational narcissism), where some parent put themselves first and were hell-bent on making their children walk on eggshells and be servants to their dysregulated rages (both overt and passive aggressive rages), as well as inconsistent affection, unrealistic expectations and splitting, the psychological meaning of it.

But having said that, personality can have some bearing as to whether they will naturally bend towards narcissism too. Some children have to work much harder at showing empathy than others. If these children aren't constantly taught to consider the feelings and emotional states of their siblings and others in the family, they tend not to develop empathy. 

It is up to parents to nip narcissism in the bud when the child is still a child, but when the parent is a narcissist or sociopath themselves, it isn't as likely that they will nip the narcissism of a child in the bud. In fact, narcissistic parents tend to teach at least one child by example on how to be a narcissist, how to get your own way through bullying and hurting other people (the siblings in the scapegoat role will be the recipients of the parent's AND their sibling's bullying). The head narcissist will also teach by example on how to treat people to get them to capitulate to your desires and demands, how to abuse and commit crimes or almost-crimes and get away with it, how to have affairs and blame your infidelity and your lack of commitment to marriage on your partner using erroneous blaming, how to be immoral and excuse your immoral behavior. The most likely child to suck up all of this knowledge is the enforcer-type of golden child, the favorite child who enforces abusive forms of discipline on his other siblings. 

However, scapegoats can take up narcissism too, just to keep from being bullied the way they were in childhood, though they are the least likely of all the children in the household. They couldn't be a bully in childhood because they are the ones who are bullied, that the bullying is practiced on, and most of them are too plagued with PTSD symptoms to scheme a life of bullying others anyway. However, on rare occasions, sometimes trauma and PTSD symptoms do not manifest, or they are dissociating so much that their personalities are splintered into different characters, with one part of them plagued with PTSD symptoms, and another part mirroring and taking on the narcissistic traits of their disordered parent.

Sam Vaknin, the psychologist and self proclaimed narcissist would seem to have the scapegoat multi-personality, dissociative style of narcissism. The abuse he endured was horrific and too constant not to have a tremendous impact on his psyche. He talks about his personality being split, and his memory as well, which would point to a dissociative personality style, however mild and not entirely unconscious, and of his PTSD symptoms too. Being a scapegoat is one reason, I believe, why he is able to self reflect, and to have achieved the heights of awareness and professional prominence (a profession where it forces him to look at his own narcissism, and its impacts, all of the time, something most narcissists wouldn't be caught dead doing). The overwhelming number of narcissists do not self reflect, and they avoid any opportunity to do so, preferring to blame, especially if they grew up being taught that they can do no wrong and that they are valued for their bullying, and more importantly, enforce what the parent wants no matter who and how it hurts others. Like the parent, the immoral behavior is treated as if he's a Teflon kid, that his immorality is always excusable, always good because of extenuating circumstances. A scapegoat kind of narcissist is going to be hobbled by his bullying because he'll see too much of his parent in it, thus the self loathing and self reflection. He is both self-flagellating and self-aggrandizing, which points to not having every single trait of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (though he might argue with me on this if he was ever to read my blog - he seems committed to the fact that he's a full blown narcissist). 

All babies and children are narcissistic. As they grow older, the narcissistic traits tend to retreat and they think about how they effect others more and more. Good parental modeling helps too. It is part of the maturation process. This is especially true if both parents are empathetic (i.e. not narcissists). When children are younger than six years of age, they put their own needs first and count on a parent to put the child's needs first too. It's all very normal. 

When you have narcissistic parents, they will want you to consider their needs before your own  (stunting the child; it has a lot to do with why narcissists are emotionally stunted at six years old), plus the parent will want mirrors to assure them that they are valid (and that all of their most horrific traits are valid and excusable too). Inside narcissists often feel alone and like a freak, and having a "mirror child" makes them feel less like a freak and less alone. While putting out another narcissist in the world feels great for them, it is terrible for most of the rest of us. 

This is why and how abuse and narcissism is multi-generational too.

My own opinion (which is not entirely my own, but something a number of psychologists have been discussing openly) is that narcissists and sociopaths are so haunted by jealousies, envy, competition goals and triangulation objectives, plus so overwhelmed with gaining power, control, and domination in relationships (which requires rage to get their own way, and when that doesn't work, playing the victim to get their own way), that there is no room in their minds for empathy. And for malignant narcissists when they don't get their way, their minds are also on spite, how bring ruin to other people, and how to enact a revenge. 

In fact, all of these thought processes are the opposite of empathy. You cannot have empathy and be overwhelmed with the ambition to dominate someone else, or be consumed with vengeful plans. This may also account for why narcissist's brains are atrophied in the amygdala (the part of the brain that generates empathy). 

HOW IS LACK OF EMPATHY AND GASLIGHTING LINKED
IN NARCISSISTIC AND SOCIOPATHIC ABUSE?

In this section, I decided not to discuss, but to show the type of thinking that narcissists and sociopaths have when it comes to lack of empathy and gaslighting.

They are somewhat alike, as you'll see, and rather simplistic. With narcissists it is "I don't care" and "I want" with some guilt and trepidation. With sociopaths (or more likely malignant narcissists who have sociopathic traits) it is "I don't care" and "I want" with no guilt, no trepidation, and pronounced grandiose delusions.

Both types base their intelligence on predatory thinking: how much they can get away with, how much they can lie and act without being detected, how wonderful it is to zero on what they want through manipulating other people. It has nothing to do with how the rest of us talk about intelligence.  

At the very end, I take the empath's point of view, which is quite different, obviously. 

An empath can understand and get inside the head of a narcissist or sociopath, but it is highly doubtful that a narcissist or sociopath could begin to understand how an empath ticks. Their understanding of empaths is superseded by their disdain for empathy (which are felt by both narcissists and sociopaths). 

So here we go, in three parts: 

If narcissists could be honest, this is what they would say:

     I don't feel love or empathy for anyone, nor do I want to, but I know that most people do feel love and empathy, and that they are in the majority, and that the society in which both of our kind lives in is disgusted by lack of empathy. They would be very disgusted by me if they knew who I truly was. I have seen the news enough to know that people who don't feel empathy and who do horrible things to other people from a lack of empathy either get a public shaming or put in jail.
      I have to fake empathy and it is a lot of work for me. Imagine having to act for months or years on end! And people find out that I'm faking it after awhile anyway and break up with me over it, and I get sick of acting the part enough to slip up. My mask falls down and they see the real me and it horrifies them. I feel like a freak.
     I really don't like empathy. All of the empathetic Christmases, birthdays, and other holidays make me sick. I just don't want to care about anyone any more. On the other hand, I feel like a Scrooge and am noted for being one, so I have some shame about it, but only with friends with big family get-togethers and in a societal sense.  
     I am really hyper critical of other people, all people. I judge people harshly and it's the way I feel most at ease in the world. I don't really like other people unless there is money involved, material things that I want from them, services I want from them, prestige involved or they can make me look good to others I might want narcissistic supply from in the future.
     I know I criticize others a whole lot, and that I'm nice to their faces in a two-faced kind of way, but I don't like to be criticized myself, not even for the slightest thing, and I know that I will be when they find I am not empathetic, and this is why I take on the anxiety-ridden tactic of acting. 
     If I could just get what I want out of people without acting, I'd be a lot more at peace in society. But society will never accept me as I am, so I am caught in a Catch-22. People only appreciate my highly critical personality if they have the same perspectives on an individual that I do. If I need to sway people to be prejudiced of people I don't like, then I have to embellish or make up stories about those people. I also use criticism to scare people, that I will smear their reputations if they ever think about crossing me.
     But personally, I can't take criticism at all. It scares me. I'm a big baby about it. I figure that if they are criticizing me, they are doing it the way I do it, so I have to be scarier than they are and threaten them a whole lot to get the upper hand.
     I know it is hypocritical that I can't take criticism, but it's just the way I am, and I don't want to change, nor do I see a way for change. I know it's why a lot of people don't accept me and why my relationships are just with people who I can fool easily.
     Since the kind of relationships that the rest of you have are not relationships I can succeed at, or even want to do, and are so forced on my part, the reason I am in relationships are totally different from why you are in relationships. I have to have domination, power and control over you, and you have to do what I say after a honeymoon period, and it has to be in a totalitarian way. I get half way there with most of you, but then get abandoned when I demand more. 
     I try not to care because I always have other sources of narcissistic supply on the side. If you are my partner or lover, I have other lovers on the side. To justify having these lovers if I get caught, I have to gaslight everyone again, that you are a crazy scary monster and that my new lover is saving me from you.
     The only way I know how to get more out of you is to gaslight you.
     The only way I know how to control what you do and what you say is to gaslight you.
     The only way I feel I can prove that you are flawed and need to listen to me most is to gaslight you.
     The only way I know how to get you to never criticize me is to gaslight you by saying "You know what you did! You hurt me egregiously! I wipe you from my life forever!"
     When I tell you I love you, I am gaslighting you. It's not real, of course. But I know that's what you want so I'm constantly trying to manipulate you, trick you and make you confused about whether I love you or not. If anything, this is what keeps you at my beck and call. 
     When you start acting up and resisting my control and lectures, I gaslight you and tell you that you are crazy for resisting, that your perceptions are all wrong, that you didn't really understand my motives. I try to hide the fact that power, control and domination is my motive. Some of you will buy the gaslighted version and some of you will see right through me and know that my motives are to tell you what to do at all times. 
     The only way I can deal with the pain of you leaving me when you can't take any more gaslighting and other tactics I use to gain more domination over you is to gaslight you and the other people around us by claiming that you are the craziest of crazies, right from the very start, even before you hear me say to you that "You are crazy". It may take months before I start grooming you to look at yourself as crazy and in need of a leader.
     The only way I can get to a point where I don't have to pretend to care about you any more is to gaslight you into believing you don't deserve to be cared about.
     The only way I can justify all of the abandonment I receive from you and others, and all of the cruel discards I do to you and others, is to play the victim and tell other people I was abandoned instead (and that takes even more acting and gaslighting because I have to tell other people that "my children, husband # I, sister # II, my best friend of 30 years left me because they are all crazy and can't see that I am wonderful to them and that I loved them deeply" - when of course, I didn't love them at all ... I just hope most people don't hear their stories, and keep listening to mine instead, which is another reason I have to convince people as much as possible without sounding like a broken record that all of the people I abandon are crazy). It makes me feel both ashamed that I stoop to these explanations, but also elated that I can get away with it so many times and do this to so many of my victims. 
     I don't know how to get out of the lies I tell other people, so I just gaslight and lie some more. Just about everything in my life needs a cover up explanation and lie added to it, and I'm good at lying - just look at how many people base their opinions on beliefs.
     Most people aren't that important to me anyway, especially people I have lied about more than usual and victimized. The lies work better when your victims are out of your life than if they are in your life again. You can create the illusion that this or that victim is so crazy and unpredictable when they are not in your life. If they are still in your life it is harder to convince people that you need to be listened to and protected from your crazy victims.
          It's amazing to me that so many people fall for my lies. They would be disgusted with me if they knew I was lying this much, but I am disgusted with them for being so stupid and gullible. It's another thing that makes me hyper critical. But in the same breath I am also glad they are gullible because my days of getting any more narcissistic supply would be over if they truly knew or suspected, and I can't have that happen! 
     Though sometimes I'm sad that I don't have their particular brand of supply anymore. My daughter seemed to worship me until I screwed it up and betrayed her in a huge way and told her to apologize to a bunch of abusers. Hopefully she thinks it is all her fault, but I doubt it. She's now too intelligent to fall for any more lies. It's too bad she can't focus on the things between us that aren't my lies. It is to her own downfall that she does. 
     One of the people I insisted she apologize to was my new husband. I know now he was too abusive to her, but I also knew that he'd say to me, "You are not to contact her again until she apologizes on her hand and knees to me!" So it is her fault that she won't apologize and his fault for insisting on an apology from her that my daughter and I no longer have a relationship. I do believe that everything in my life is someone else's fault. I have never considered anything else.
     One of the things I have to deal with by having a lack of empathy is that because I don't care about other people, they stop caring about me. I have a sixth sense when it happens too. It causes me to be depressed and I no longer am around them enough to blame them for making me depressed.
     Yes, I like to blame others because it makes me feel better, less depressed.
     I know I feel down when people no longer want or seek my approval. I may sometimes understand why they could care less about whether I approve of them or not, but I don't understand why they treat me like I treat them. Aren't they supposed to be the empathetic ones while I'm the unempathetic? Where are they then? Don't they glorify in their empathy enough to feel sorry for me? Maybe no one feels empathetic. Maybe we all act. Maybe I don't have to envy them after all. 
     I know I can never change because telling lies keeps me from being empathetic. And as I've said before, I don't want to be empathetic. I know enough to know that if I really dealt with the truth and stopped blaming others for not submitting to my will, I would feel so bad that I'd want to die. I have to believe in my own lies at this point because that's how I have survived being uncaring in a society that insists that I care. I simply don't have it in me to care. I have to spend most of my time on cover-ups and would never have time to care anyway.

     I am totally invested, at this point, in swaying other people to believe my lies are the truth, and in meeting people who can fit into the idealized role I want: being my puppet.  

All of this is assuming that narcissists are aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it ... many aren't. A lot of them act on impulse and panic, although not necessarily all of the time, such as when they attack others. They do plan some attacks just like the sociopath.

If sociopaths (or more likely malignant narcissists who have sociopathic traits) could be honest, this is what they would say (note: they will sound a lot like what narcissists say, but where they differ will be in green):

     I don't feel love or empathy for anyone, nor do I want to, but I know that most people do feel love and empathy, and that they are in the majority, and that the society in which both of our kind lives in is disgusted by lack of empathy. They might be very disgusted by me, but they barely exist in my mind unless I'm getting what I want from them. Money means the most to me, followed by sex and domination in equal parts. I know I have to treat people I am getting what I want better than I treat most others, and if they don't give me what I want, they know to some extent I will terrorize them. I personally don't care what society wants from me in terms of empathy. It's the most boring conversation out there. If they think I'm empathetic, it's just an added bonus because I know I can get away with more than I'm getting away with. I'm like "the Teflon kid". I can turn minds in my favor. I can act any way I like. Karma is for sissies to believe in. Imagine the stupid minds who believe in Karma! Yuck!
      I have to fake empathy sometimes and it is a lot of work for me. I don't mind it because I go home and rip them to shreds anyway. I hate most empaths anyway. The only people I respect are authoritarian leaders and the rich. I could care less what some empath is doing with his time. If my mask falls down and they see the real me it will be less horrifying for me than it will be for them. I just laugh my ass off at their discovery. Poor sucker!
     Like I said, I really don't like empathy and it's not something I want to become. All of the empathetic Christmases, birthdays, and other holidays make me sick. I like the fact that I'm a Scrooge and am noted for being one. If I'm invited to a big family get-together I'll go, and I'll be especially happy if they give me something, but otherwise, it's a big bother. 
     I am really hyper critical of other people, all people. I judge people harshly because that is what they deserve, and it's the way I feel at ease in the world. Like I said, I don't really like other people unless there is money involved, material things that I want from them, services I want from them, prestige involved or they can make me look good to others. I won't wince if they want to put me in a powerful position either. It's every sociopaths dream to be president or king of something and rule with an iron fist, to make disloyal recalcitrant followers suffer. I'd even execute some of them in some situations. Who wouldn't want to execute someone who is your enemy or who is keeping you from the top? To get to high positions, we can get away with so much more, our dream. It's the apex of success.
     I know I criticize others a whole lot. Most people deserve it. I'm smarter than most people by a long shot. I know more than the experts do on any number of topics. I don't need to be two-faced because I treat people in a way that they deserve. I don't like to be criticized, nor do I feel like I deserve it, because they should realize who I am, someone not to mess with. 
     If I could just get what I want out of people, I'd be a lot more happy. People would envy me. I want their envy. But society will never accept me quite as I am. Is this something to worry about? Only if I'm stupid. And I'm anything but that. People appreciate my highly critical personality if they have the same perspectives on an individual that I do. I use that to my advantage. If I need to sway people to be prejudiced of people I don't like, then I have to embellish or make up stories about those people which I like to do and am good at. People will believe just about anything. I function in a world of beliefs pretty well. If someone doesn't believe what I say, I also use criticism and scare tactics. I will smear their reputations so bad and with such awesome force if they ever think about crossing me.
     Personally, I'm not built to take criticism at all. But criticism doesn't scare me. It just makes me furious! "I'll get you!" I'm a big, unrepentant bully about it. It makes me feel great that I can intimidate people as much as I do. Man, I love that rush of power! I figure that if they are criticizing me, they are stupid for doing it. I am a lot scarier than they are and I will succeed at threatening them a whole lot to get the upper hand and do what I want. They should quit because no one is as good as I am at this.
     I don't care if it is hypocritical that I don't take criticism, but dish it out. So what! It's the way I am, and you're just going to have to deal with it. Understand? 
     Since the kind of relationships that the rest of you have are not relationships I care to have and frankly couldn't stand, I am in relationships for totally different reasons than you are in relationships. I have to have domination, power and control over you, totally, and you have to do what I say, and it has to be exactly the way I want it. I'll point a knife at your throat or find a way to imprison you to get what I want if I have to. I may not get half way there with most of you like the narcissist above, because either I don't care if you abandon me because you're of no use, or if you are of some use, I use threats and blackmail. I have ways of dealing with you to get you to capitulate. 
     I try not to care because I always have someone else on the side, even a whole entourage. If you are my partner or lover, I have other lovers or potential lovers on the side, always. And if I happen to be in a dry spell, I can get anyone I want. Just kiss, flatter and touch them gently while telling them how beautiful they are (and they have to be beautiful unless you are one of the poor sad types of sociopaths). Seduce them all, I say. People love me! Sure I have to gaslight everyone, but that is how it is done if you want to get ahead.
     The only way I know how to get more out of you is to gaslight you and threaten you.
     The only way I know how to control what you do and what you say is to gaslight you and threaten you.
     The only way I know how to rip you off is to gaslight you that you don't deserve to be paid.
     The only way I know how to steal from you is to gaslight you and tell you that you brought it on yourself by being stupid. 
     The only way I feel I can prove that you are flawed and need to listen to me most is to gaslight you and threaten you. And besides, I'm an awesome teacher and leader.

     The only way I know how to get you to never criticize me is to gaslight you by saying "You know what you did! You hurt me! You are never going to get away with that again!"
     When I tell you I love you, I am gaslighting you. It's not real, of course. But I know that's what you want to hear so I'm constantly trying to manipulate you, trick you and make you confused about whether I love you or not. If anything, this is what keeps me interested. It's a great challenge! I know I'll win it! 
     When you start acting up and resisting my control and lectures, I gaslight you and tell you that you are crazy for resisting, that your perceptions are all wrong, that you didn't really understand my motives. I try to hide the fact that power, control and domination is my motive sometimes just to get what I want. You're going to bend to my will and you'll love it or else! 
     The only way I can deal with you leaving me when you can't take any more gaslighting, cruelty and other tactics I use to gain more domination over you is to gaslight you and threaten you some more. I use other people around us for that agenda too. I claim that you are the craziest of crazies if I have something to gain from it. It'll only take days before you look at yourself as crazy and in need of a leader like me.
     The only way I can get to a point where I don't have to pretend to care about you or listen to what you have to say is when you have nothing to offer me any more or when I get sick of you. I get sick of a lot of people because they are not that interesting. They are never going to be able to compete with me in terms of being interesting. I try to talk you into the fact that you don't deserve to be cared about or listened to anymore. That's my privilege and my right.
     The only reason I can perceive as to why you might abandon me is that you're stupid. You don't know greatness when you see it. You should want to follow me instead if you want to learn anything, and I suspect a lot of people are very envious of me for having the gumption to go after what I want and not get side-tracked by what you want. Totally.
     And if I want to, I have a right to play the victim any time I want and I make full use of it. I don't have trouble telling other people who have dared to abandon me that they are crazy. 
     I have no trouble lying to other people. If I want to, I gaslight and lie some more. Just about everything in my life needs cover up lies, and I'm good at lying, so I do it! - just look at how many people base their opinions on beliefs. It's a good strategy on my part! 
     Most people aren't that important to me. I have no remorse for people I have lied about and victimized. Most of the time I lie about everyone anyway. You can create the illusion that this or that victim is so crazy and unpredictable and it is awesome. I pat myself on the back at such times, especially when everyone is falling right into believing me, just like a city falls to a conqueror. If it wasn't for beliefs, I might have a harder time. But most people are stupid and I love that. 
      I'm not amazed that so many people fall for my lies. Sure, they might be disgusted with me if they knew I was lying this much, but I don't care, and I'm both disgusted and grateful for them for being so gullible. It's just another thing that makes me hyper critical of others because if gullibility isn't stupidity, I don't know what is. I am glad they are gullible because otherwise I'd make them pay a heavy price that would hurt them for not believing me! 
     Though sometimes I'm furious that some of them aren't in my life and bending to my will anymore. My daughter worshipped me until she thought I betrayed her in a huge way and when I told her to apologize to everyone who abused her. I have no problem with telling people to apologize to abusers or criminals if I have something to gain from it. Hopefully she thinks it is all her fault by now if she knows what is good for her. She's paying for not believing in my lies. It's too bad for her that she can't focus on the good things between us. It is her loss and her downfall! She will be in a state of punishment for a long time!
     One of the people I insisted she apologize to was my new wife. So my new wife was abusive to her. "Too bad! Suck it up! Get over these disgusting sensitive feelings, you ungrateful brat!" I knew that my wife might say to me, "You are not to contact her again until she apologizes on her hand and knees to me!" My wife comes first because she's the one with the money! My daughter has nothing to offer me! If anything, she's a pariah on my resources. She needs to get over herself. So it is her fault that she won't apologize! I don't care whose fault it is though. It is certainly not my fault!
     One of the things I get by having a lack of empathy is that because I don't care about other people, I get to focus only on what I want exclusively. A lot of people can't do that: they get bogged down with caring. "Oh, you have a sore arm! Let me help you!" What a bunch of B.S.! 
     I have a sixth sense just like the narcissist above when people stop caring about me. However, it doesn't make me feel sad or depressed though. It makes me feel enraged instead. And I can punish people in a way they will never forget!
     Yes, I love to blame others. It's a great feeling! 
     People need to seek my approval. I have never understood why anyone could care less about whether I approve of them or not. I'm awesome, highly intelligent, I know how to get what I want, and you should realize that.
     But no one should ever think to treat me like I treat them. I'm going to win every time because they don't have it in them to take me on. They are big cowards. They are empathetic weaklings. Too bad for them! If they are so empathetic, why do they sometimes try to run away from me? I'm the great challenge to their empathy, and if they don't feel empathetic towards me and sorry for me, maybe they aren't so empathetic after all. C'mon! Tell me how much my childhood sucked! Blowhards! Maybe no one feels empathetic. Maybe we all act and I'm just a lot better at it. 
     I know I can never change because I like telling lies. And as I've said before, I don't want to be empathetic or even pretend at it unless I absolutely have to. And I'm a good judge of when I have to pretend. However I get a lot more out of life by terrorizing people and it's my preferred way. I will never have it in me to care. I would never have time to care anyway.

     I am totally invested in swaying other people to believe my lies are the truth, and in meeting many other people who can fit into the idealized role I want: being my puppet. 

  

This is what an empath would say: (they tend to be honest, so no need for the prelude I used with the two previous types):

     I have a propensity to feel a lot of empathy for just about everyone I meet. My empathy is sometimes a burden in that I can actually feel pain in my own body where someone else feels pain. This is hard when I'm in a crowd of people who have ailments, depression, and physical issues. I have had this as long as I can remember, starting some time in very early childhood I suspect. 

     When people cry, I often cry right along with them.
     But I have to be careful not to drain myself and to be selective of who I take care of. I don't want to be taken advantage of, which happens a little too often for my liking. I have been fooled, like most empaths. 

     But I do my utmost to get back up and make healing my first priority, even if I have to heal myself first so that I can get back to caring about others, so be it.
     I am not easily threatened by users and blackmailers because I have an inner strength. I know I am a good person, but I do make mistakes sometimes. I listen to people who have something to say about my mistakes and I reflect so deeply on how they feel about me, that sometimes I get sucked into their perspectives to the point where I am not questioning their motives. Sometimes I have terrible self esteem when I'm not questioning their motives enough. I shame easily. I shame so easily that I can shame myself! I take criticism into my heart.

     But eventually I take a look at what their agenda might be too, after I have searched far and wide inside myself about what I need to improve and change. I make the changes and try to be a better person. As far as where they are coming from, I look for hypocrisy. If they accuse me of something, I look to see if they are like what they are accusing me of being. Like, for instance, if they accuse me of being selfish, are they quite a bit more selfish than I am? A lot of empaths don't do that; they're only self reflecting. They get so caught up in that to the point where they are practically self flagellating. That's not a good way to be, especially for an empath, or any type of healer. They don't tend to look at the possibility of projection of the other person until they've been seriously burned, but they should if they want to save themselves and their empathy, and be of help. Otherwise low self esteem will keep them and their highest potentials down. 
     Empathy is good and we should all aspire to have more of it. It enables us to understand other human beings in so many dimensional ways. It is a type of enlightenment. If I was a liar, or a predatory- type person, they'd never trust me, nor should they trust me, to reveal their innermost selves. They'd understandably be on the defensive and walking on eggshells. That's no way to live or put people through! I don't want that! And I don't have that, at least in my closest relationships.

     The other reason why empathy is good for us is because each of us has a chance to grow and explore. Imagine not having it or not giving it. We'd never know what people would become; they'd act like boring robots or suppressed slaves with a fear mentality instead - that's not good for evolution, for human potential, or for peace between all of us. Don't most of us want peace to explore our own potential and the potential of others? Why dampen potential by standing or stomping on the souls of others?
     Another reason why empathy is good for us is that it creates safety and security. Who would want to be trauma-bonded in an insecure attachment where people blow up at you over all kinds of things, especially when you are trying your best, and committed to always being a better version of yourself? And being a better version of yourself does not mean enslavement (most of us know that, hopefully). People want more safety and security and real agape love, not less of it. Most of us are going to be attracted to light, not to darkness. So providing a place of light for other people, you tend to attract other people of light, or other people who want the light of compassion. It puts everyone in a place where they have to be thoughtful and sensitive to how other people feel.     
     I look at all of the wars we humans engage in. Narcissism and sociopathy are war-like mentalities. They want to destroy. You make something beautiful for all humans, put it in a public square, and other humans become inspired. It gets the mind going in a higher direction than destruction. Education, research, profound truth and thought, enlightenment, and peace begin to take over society to a point where it advances human evolution at a faster rate than normal. It takes decades to build that. And then one war takes it all down in hours, and all of the people are using the survival parts of their brains again: the flight response, the fight response, fear and anxiety responses, resistance to slavery. So enlightenment, in a way, gets put on hold for a long time until everyone recovers, if they can recover. So human potential is at stake unless we adopt a more empathetic team response to issues in our society. Otherwise we are stunting human potential.         
     I don't want any part of my close relationships to be uncomfortable for me or for them. I want both of us to feel at ease to say anything, and for trust and truth to be so understood that we can both be open with no worries and no anxiety that we will be harshly judged by one another. I know enough now that people who are not open, and who expect you to be the one who does all of the revealing, and all of the empathy, are not safe people to reveal much of anything to. They are about as safe as their closed mouths are, and your "reveal" should be no more or no less than their "reveal." I've had bad luck with these kinds of people who pry and use what they know about you against you or against other people, to try to get power and control over others, or who paint the picture that you are not a real empath, and even make up lies about you. They have hurt me so much that I was disabled by pain for awhile, but the lesson I learned was to be selective in who I share my innermost self with.

     Granted predatory people are damaged and their trust was damaged so much in childhood that they have a disabled approach to relationships. I do have empathy for them in that way. And I'd be more than willing to soothe them about that and put dressings on their wounds, but I do not think sharing my feelings, thoughts and experiences with them is necessary or even helpful to either of us. I understand that most of them actually like being predatory and that informs my decisions too.   
     The reason why our society needs more empaths is because: imagine with this many people on the planet, if we were all predators! We would not last. No one would really care for the young because being predatory means only caring about your next prey and what you can get. And the young, being in a neglectful state, will be fighting each other too over the scraps left by their elders. Too many children would be modeling the behavior of their elders too, adding more predators than before. No one would really care for the old either for the same reason they don't care for children. 

     When there is nothing left but predators, predators attack each other. The wars, the school shootings, the school bullying, the abduction of children to be used as slaves, the parentless children who have lost their parents to wars, the destruction of society, the despotic leaders would escalate rapidly, and our entire species would be at stake of becoming extinct. The volley of ever-bigger bombs would decide everything. It can still go that way, especially if empaths are considered to be prey and they are attacked repeatedly. 

     I think we have to decide very soon whether to strive for being a peaceful species or a predatory one. And it has to be thought out carefully, investigating all of the ramifications. We even have to think about that in terms of environment. The environment is not going to withstand exploitation forever, obviously.
     This is what human predators don't think about. They go for one fresh piece of victim at a time, one overwhelming want to the next, and their eyes are not on a bigger picture. To me, they are using the reptilian part of the brain. "I want", "I have to have", "This one looks good to attack" is alligator behavior and mentality.
     I know they think we are incredibly stupid for not being ever-vigilant about being attacked and targeted as prey by them, but if you're going to focus on that as being "the ultimate stupid", you're not looking at whether you can sustain the environment you are picking your prey from. Prey animals choose "flight", which in the end means estrangement. Read abuse forums or the comments sections on abuse topics on You Tube: the "flight response" is the overwhelming trend and advice, even when it comes to a parent (because many of today's parents are predatory towards their own offspring - the pool for prey must be getting very thin to choose the future and your own flesh and blood to munch on). 
     And to keep human predators out, the humans who want peace and protection from them also choose law to intervene. Granted there are loopholes in laws where predators still get through, and these predators point them out with glee when they get away with another abuse, but they are closing up. What ever prey you want, may be illegal to "have" at any given thoughtless moment. And I doubt predatory humans look at changing laws much anyway, so the loopholes may go away without them knowing, the very ones they keep using again and again out of single-minded habit. It might be their downfall in the end. 

     As for my daughter apologizing to abusers and predators - no way! I understand the concept of flying monkeys and co-bullies, and that in order to devastate a victim, you need to pile on a victim with as many loyalist bullies as you can. In order to get that many bullies behind you, you have to lie about your victim too. I want no part of being that way, or of having a home with that in it, so my daughter, in contrast, gets to have a peaceful home where we work out our differences by talking to each other.
     I also understand that estrangement in families happens as a result of either alcoholism or narcissism. 

     A lot of alcoholics turn mean somewhere in their disease. Someone in the family is bound not to be able to deal with a mean alcoholic without becoming disabled in the same way people become disabled by war. It's too destructive to the victim. So to keep the family together, someone in the family invariably expects the victim to apologize to the abuser since the abuser is too inebriated to make an apology stick: it's not a secret that many alcoholics become quite cruel and immoral and can be too addicted to change their behavior for the better (i.e. respectful). So if things are bad and dangerous enough, which they can be, the flight response takes over in the victim. 
     Narcissists and sociopaths are cruel by personality instead. So the same thing happens in those families as in alcoholic families. 

     To keep estrangement from happening in my own family and with my daughter, I have to have at least enough sense and empathy not to drink and get addicted, which I do, and enough empathy not to be a narcissist or a sociopath. So far, so good. Part of providing safety and security for her is not setting your family up for estrangement in the first place, starting with these two basic important ways.
     As for gaslighting, I have never told my daughter that she was crazy, not once. My understanding of gaslighting is that it is used to make your child feel like they can't trust their own perceptions. In terms of a child doing the best that he or she can do, this won't work. You are pretending that they are disabled for what now? So that you can excuse yourself for not caring, for not wanting your child, for abusing them? Or is it to get your child totally dependent on you so that they will stay a child forever? All of this seems evil to someone who is an empath. Even if you had a child who was truly insane, why would you want to focus on that part of him, on what is wrong with him? It would seem you'd want to focus on what is right about him so that he could be as functional as possible. Most teachers know to do this, and parents are teachers. But my understanding is that gaslighting is about an agenda to crush a child's self esteem, to render him incapable, to render him unlovable and abandonable, and as a way to blame shift (you can't stand to admit you are cruel so you call your child crazy instead). It's also a way to stunt your child's intelligence and enlightenment as well as your own, because you can't know a child you are gaslighting. The agenda is in the way of the truth.
     Unlike the narcissistic parent who feels threatened by a child's wisdom, successes and maturity, I like that my daughter is more mature than I was at her age. I like that she's more successful than I was. I like the fact that she is enlightened in areas I am not enlightened. If kids aren't teaching you a whole lot just by being who they are, you are not aware of much of anything as far as I'm concerned. A kid that is more mature than you were also shows evolution. It's better this way, believe me. And the way it gets there is through as much empathy as you can give, as much intelligence as you can muster given where you are in your "adult developmental stage", and as much consistency as you can. 
     I am invested in learning, being empathetic, and in evolution that brings our species into an age of true peace, and true enlightenment.  

SOME WORDS TO EMPATHS

 A lot of empaths feel they must help narcissists (and sometimes sociopaths too) when they meet them or when they are called to help. A lot of empaths expound a tremendous amount of empathy and care into these people. Most empaths also think (and believe) they are softening the narcissist up, that the narcissist is beginning to trust, to love and care about you, and beginning to see another way to be in relationships other than manipulating people for an agenda. 

And this is where many empaths get it terribly wrong and become traumatized. 

Narcissism does not change. It is a life-long personality disorder. There are exceptions, of course, but they are very rare. 

As I hinted in the beginning of this section, unlike most of us, narcissists are in relationships for agendas (and they even assume via projection that other people are too), and because they are trying to meet an objective in their relationships, whether meeting the objective of gaining more power and control over you, or something else, it is one of the main reasons they don't change. Their minds are too caught up in you meeting goals for them to even think about changing who they are. Sometimes they make promises to change how they are treating you, but they usually break those promises. Being so agenda-oriented is their number one blindness right there. 

But it goes so much further than that usually. They try to manipulate a role for you (that serves a variety of purposes for them). Some of these roles can be downright dangerous for you. Or they can cause you to have symptoms. 

They aren't all that interested in what you have to say (it's called perspecticide). Making sure the agenda is met by you is so huge in them that they decide what ever you have to say is not important or is rebelling too much against the agenda, so they are always trying to correct you via "behavior lectures", interrupt you, focused on come-backs. Which is to say that narcissists just assume the role of teacher, a "behavior teacher", and do not give you a choice in the matter. That adds a whole lot to the blindness too. 

Narcissists aren't interested in self reflection or emotional growth. They tell other people that they have to change and bend, but they don't practice what they preach. This means that if you change and grow, you will still be relating to the unchanged narcissist. What this means is that even when you have changed, you will still have to deal with the same issues that they have with you over and over again. So, in fact, the relationship is not allowing you to change. If anything, narcissists dig their heals in against "changes in you" (even though they have told you that they want you to change - it's the trap of the double bind, something narcissists do a lot). They impulsively think they want you to change to have more demands met, to micro-manage your actions more, to get more disclosure and gossip from you, to get ever more domination over you. Again, that's the same playbook you have been given all along. 

If you are new to studying narcissism to get some answers, what they usually demand is to have power, control and domination over you. That's a given. They also want you to be overwhelmingly loyal to them, to be a full time puppet, and to agree to being isolated by them and with them. Notice they are not like this themselves at all. It's like they create a job for you but have no first-hand knowledge or experience in knowing how the job works or how people will react to the job. And they are incredibly taken off guard when the job they assign isn't working. 

Most empaths make the realization sooner or later that they are being used in this way and then exhaustion sets in. 

But I'm not finished: then there is the gaslighting they feel they must do in order to convince you that you must take on the job. And then they tell lies about your character and eventually believe in their own lies. And through it all they show lack of empathy - lack of empathy is going to make them more blind than all of these other things, and these other things create an enormous amount of blindness just by themselves. It's sad. They have no idea what empathy really feels like, so they can never understand an empath, though they use empaths to pick on. They often use them for exploitation and bullying too. 

Which means that they are totally delusional about who you are (all that they know is that you never reached their expectations). It's not a relationship; it is just about their demands, period. 

At most, some of us might have agendas for our children, simple agendas like our children learning empathy, learning morals, learning life lessons, being safe, going to school and finally by adulthood being the best they can be without guidance. We rarely have agendas for our spouses except for treating (and being treated) with dignity and respect, being trustworthy, being loving enough that we don't hurt one another, being fair. The agendas narcissists have is so very different from that, plus they can't even give the basics I have listed here like being trustworthy, speaking with dignity and respect, agreeing not to hurt others ... 

So I ask narcissists how can you really know how other people must behave and change if you don't even know them for themselves because of all of the blindness, and have no experience in changing yourself? 

So if a narcissist breaks up with you, realize they are breaking up with their own unrealized dream or fantasy, and don't take it personally.  

As for how they treat you during an escalation of abuse or a discard, it can make the most placid empathetic person hurt and angry. Some empaths just walk away and never speak to them again. In most empaths, that brings up guilt feelings: If I'm a true empath shouldn't I be considering their feelings and agendas again? Some empaths fight with them a little and become disgusted with themselves for fighting back (because fighting back reminds them of how the narcissist does things, and they don't want any part of being like the narcissist). Some empaths try to be more agreeable, which also brings on self-disgust because they are becoming more agreeable to someone who is evil, cruel and immoral. Some empaths try to re-engage with the narcissist to defend themselves against a barrage of altered facts, erroneous issues, perspecticide statements and smear campaigns, but find themselves feeling worse (more angry and sad) because the narcissist isn't trying to understand you, they are just trying to draw you into a no-win argument where they will try to convince you that you must be agreeable to the assignment.

And in the end, after going "this way and that" with these reactions (trying the fawning, the fighting back, the defending, even the gray rock method, and the going "no contact"), many of you have symptoms: not being able to sleep, eating issues, headaches, ruminations, nightmares about the narcissist, crying a lot, and so on. And you realize the narcissist doesn't care about that either if you communicate that you are not feeling well - all they care about is whether and how you get back to their agenda. 

And you might even be disgusted by your own empathy because in using your great reserve of empathy, you got burned. You wonder whether being empathetic is a sucker's folly ... 

But here's the thing. Having empathy is synonymous with intelligence (another link). Empaths are known for being open-minded, for having a "sixth sense", and for their listening. They have to be in order to understand where other people are coming from so that they can help them in the most effective way. The only problem is that you, as the empath, can project your caring nature and intelligence on to other people, including an unchanging narcissist, just like narcissists project evil and a critical nature on to other people. 

But here is where you differ: the narcissist will always project evil and all the bad things they are onto other people. You won't make the mistake of projecting good qualities on to others again. You will see more clearly how other people are. You will be able to handle narcissists in the workplace in a way you never were able to handle them before, and be able to see them "from a mile away". You will also be able to tell when other people are dangerous more effectively. Wisdom plus empathy is what you walk away with from an experience like this, and that is a good thing.

IN CONCLUSION

When you have empathy, you "put the brakes on" before you really hurt someone. You reserve your anger and outbursts. You think before you talk (usually). In normal non-abusive relationships, empathy also gives you the ability to forgive another person who has hurt you. You are open to explanations and discussions about what happened and why it happened. 

In abusive relationships forgiving them to create peace between you can put you at risk for more abuse. Abusers expect you to reserve your anger in a way that is not realistic (to totally bottle it up) while they let their anger go to the point of egregiously hurting other people with verbal, emotional, psychological, and physical abuse. They don't practice what they preach in reserving their anger (which, for them, is really outright rage). They also expect you to forgive them in a way that they would never do, so again, it is unrealistic and out of touch with real human behavior. 

"DAY #1: LACK OF EMPATHY (30 DAYS OF NARCISSISM)" -
by Dr. Ramani Durvasula:

"Cold Hearted Narcissists Who Are Grossly Insensitive"
by Dr. Les Carter for "Surviving Narcissism":

Further Reading:

You only need a one-question test to identify a narcissist - by Rachel Feltman

excerpt:

... as narcissism increases, empathy will continue to fall ...
"I've been studying aggression for about 30 years, and I've seen that the most harmful belief that a person can have is that they're superior to others," Bushman said. "Men are better than women, my race is better than your race, my religion is superior to your religion. When people believe they're better than other people, they act accordingly."

The Narcissist and Their Lack of Empathy - by psychologist Alexander Burgemeester for The Narcissistic Life

Mothers, Empathy, and Child Neglect (The way we rear children has changed through history and it differs from one place to another. What also changes are views about child neglect.) - by Dan Agin, Contributor to the Huffington Post

Gaslighting Behavior Is a Sign of Weakness (Here are five tips for leaving a relationship with a gaslighter.) - by Suzanne Degges-White, Ph.D. for Psychology Today
excerpt:
      Do Gaslighters Have Empathy for Their Victims?
     Gaslighters have extraordinarily little emotional depth, and they may try to “fake empathy,” but they don’t experience true empathy. They will tell a partner that they “understand what they’re feeling,” but their emotional shallowness doesn’t support emotional empathy; however, it does allow for cognitive empathy and instrumental empathy. These types of empathy reflect a type of empathy that can be used for nefarious reasons—they do see what’s going on inside your mind, but rather than be emotionally affected by your fears, your uncertainty, or your confusion, they capitalize on those feelings in such a way as to exacerbate your anxiety and increase your emotional discomfort.
     Manipulators are skilled at using their target’s emotions as tools of psychological destruction. Gaslighters aren’t “accidentally” confusing you; they are intentionally creating situations in which you question your own cognitive faculties and your own senses. Control is their aim, and this leads to psychological disruption, learned helplessness, and clinical levels of depression and anxiety.

How does someone deal with a parent who has a lack of empathy for their child? - Quora

Am I evil? I feel no love, care, empathy or connection with my children and husband. I want to but it's just not there. - Quora

All of these I found on Facebook: