This is an addendum to my post on Lack of Empathy and the Cluster B personality disorders. It is also an addendum to my post on why narcissists Pick the Worst Times of Your Life to Do Damage.
As usual I have articles at the end of the post written by other authors for your further reading enjoyment.
To some of my steady readers, the following 2 paragraphs will be redundant, so you can skip over them if you want. For those who have landed on my blog for the first time, you will probably want to read the first two paragraphs to get a better understanding of what is at play.
To get some perspective on who abuses, and who tends to have a lack of empathy, go to this post first. Or to get a synopsis, it tends to be people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder, all of which tend to be in the Cluster B range of personality disorders. Borderline Personality Disorder is part of the Cluster B personality disorders too, and whether they have enough empathy when tragic situations arrive in their closest people's lives, has to do with whether they also have some narcissistic traits (they will not have all of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder however). All of these disorders are on a spectrum - Borderline Personality Disorder is on the lighter end of the spectrum and Antisocial Personality Disorder is on the darker end of the spectrum.
In a generalized sense of the word, in Borderline Personality Disorder the main characteristics are: terrified of abandonment, they don't have a good sense of who they are and tend to change their personalities and style of dress often to reflect a new persona, they are changeable emotionally and tend to have strong, and even overwhelming emotional responses, and they are quite prone to black and white thinking. They can show bullying tendencies, and even some lack of empathy at times, but they are very impulsive about it (quite a bit more impulsive than the other Cluster Bs) and they tend to feel pretty guilty afterwards. There a number of "types" of Borderlines however, so again, this is very generalized and is mitigated by the type of Borderline they are. Borderlines can grow out of their "disorder" or change out of it through therapy. Narcissists, Histrionics and the Antisocial Personality Disordered overwhelmingly will not grow out of their disorders, and overwhelmingly will not want to change when given the chance. They tend to want to move on to other victims instead, or other people who cannot detect their personality disorder very easily.
If they do go to therapy, they tend to want to trick therapists into their way of thinking about issues. In other words, the focus will not be on healing their relationships, but on getting the therapist to side with them and their perspectives. It will be clear that is what they want and for their victims to do all of the work in the relationship (meaning giving in to the narcissist). They will also want their victim to take full responsibility for what happened between the two of them.
"Heal your relationship" types of therapists often fall for this trick/manipulation by the narcissist; domestic violence therapists overwhelmingly tend not to. If you really want help, think about the kind of therapist you see. Note: relationship therapists and mediator-type therapists are not trained in domestic violence and the signs, and they are also not trained in trauma responses. You can end up more traumatized than when you went in if you pick this kind of counselor. For more information about therapy with abusers, GO HERE.
Also consider that abusive relationships aren't really relationships; they are one person trying to terrorize and traumatize another person into submission. And also consider that the relationship problems aren't real relationship problems; the real problem between you is abuse (note: even verbal abuse counts).
For the purpose of this post I will be talking about Narcissistic Personality Disorder the most.
Some psychologists say that the first tell-tale signs that you are dealing with a narcissist is 1. that they rage when criticized, and 2. they push you to believe that they are faultless, that only the other person is at fault when there are conflicts in their relationships. and 3. that the other person is crazy and therefor the relationship is not conducive to working out relationship issues (gaslighting).
However, the other sign is that they tend not to show you empathy when you are going through a really tragic period of your life (especially if they have the other traits of narcissism shown in the right column) - unless they are trying to win you over during that time. Their agenda, once you are feeling "secure in your relationship with them" will be to get more power, control and domination for themselves. In other words, they try to create more trauma and drama at the time you are on your knees with tragedies so that you are putting your thought towards them instead of dealing with your tragedy. The reason they do this is because they look at it as a prime time to get more submission out of you in regards to fulfilling their desires for more power, control and domination. Quite heartless.
They are always working on making you submissive anyway through gaslighting, lots of lectures about what you should do and how you should behave. If they feel secure in their bet for getting more domination and control out of you, and they are not getting it by your attempts to put up a resistance, it will be obvious they want to abandon you or hurt you if you do not give into them. It will be clear that they have put "be submissive to me" above healing for you.
People in the normal range of human behaviors will always put your healing above their own agendas.
Narcissists are always going for trauma-bonded relationships. That's the reason they go from lecturing you ----> to lecturing with trying to control your decisions in your own life ---> to lecturing & trying to control your decisions about your own life with gaslighting (trying to make you feel that your perceptions are so skewed and wrong that you are incapable and inept at making good decisions, or your own decisions, and that they have to make your decisions for you - where their domination and control starts to show up) ---> to coercive control, domination, the beginnings of abuse (usually devaluations of your character, lots of criticizing, and sometimes insults), with either threats of abandonment beginning with some mild forms of abandonment.
All of that will still be obvious if that is all that they do.
Where it can get tricky is that while they are gaslighting, and being abusive, they will most likely do several things. Try to convince you that you are the unempathetic one. For instance say things like:
1. they did so much for you in the past that showed they were empathetic.
2. that you are withdrawing from them (which is the normal response from you) to being abused, gaslighted, being threatened and going for their own power, control and domination fantasies over your healing from trauma.
3. Tell you that they have done much more for you than you did for them (try to make a competition out of who is more empathetic).
4. You are not living up to their perfection standards and being in a relationship with you is exhausting, and they are really empathetic, but because you aren't doing x, y, and z for them, they don't want to show you any empathy.
etc ...
However, that usually won't be the end of it. They will argue their points until the other person gets warn down and exhausted ... and they even resort to word salad arguments, gaslighting, using perspecticide, all leading up to a blame-shift, so that they are assured that you are saddled with all of the blame, or as much blame as they think they can reasonably get away with, taking your co-dependency with them into account, your vulnerability to power, control and domination into account, and your propensity for empathy into account. Narcissists make an art out of this, and on gauging your responses ahead of time (yes, they plan how to do this successfully, in their favor), and if you give in to all of this, you can fall into a state of cognitive dissonance and get abused again, and again, and fall into a pattern where you keep going back to your abuser again and again too.
You always have to be cognizant of their propensity to blame, shame and blame-shift all culpability on to you, otherwise you will be in trouble. For this reason, most domestic violence counselors would prefer their clients not argue with narcissists, or have much contact with them.
Also, their blame-shifting tactics are a huge red flag that they are not the empaths they are pretending to be.
These are all tactics and distractions that the narcissist uses to get you into a compromised situation, using your empathy against you, using your vulnerability against you, using your trauma against you, using your trusting nature against you in order to get you into a submissive state. It is highly unethical. No matter what they have done in the past, in the present day they are showing you that this is who they are.
The past is not who they are. They may have been more careful in the past (maybe they sensed you were endowed with too much power to be too cruel to). They might have sensed that you had a lot of support. They might have sensed you were not vulnerable enough for their manipulations. Many of them wait for the coast to be clear in terms of their agendas, and that is especially true of covert narcissists. Hopefully that will become obvious further into the post.
At any rate, narcissists are sometimes capable of something called "cognitive empathy", whereby they say things like:
"Oh, I'm so sorry you are going through this."
"What a tragedy! I'm sending you much love, healing vibes and all of my sympathy!"
"How awful! I wish you and your loved ones the best!"
"Life can dish up so much tragedy! It's too bad so many people are cruel these days! I love you so much!"
However, they usually don't experience empathy on the "feeling level". The feeling level is exactly what it sounds like: they don't feel what you feel. Signs that they feel empathy include:
- looking directly into your eyes and crying when you cry.
- your tragedies tend to come first in their agendas
- understanding on a deep level what you are going through emotionally, such that they feel what you feel even when it is not their direct experience
- empathy turning into compassion
- "We're in this together" types of outpourings.
But most of all, there is constant eye-contact. Often real empathy is expressed by sitting near you, comforting you with hugs and other physical gestures, crying with you, making compassionate statements (i.e. what they can do to help you heal). Again, the constant eye contact is key.
If you know narcissists, they don't do this. However, WARNING: there is a dark traumatizing breed of narcissist, one who has studied how to make empathetic gestures to the point of a significant acting ability. I talk about that later in the post. So it is not always the case that narcissists avoid eye contact, but mostly they do. They may give you fleeting looks, but they tend to look elsewhere when you are expressing emotions and telling your story. And some of their comments will probably seem odd, off-hand, or cold. Also their brand of empathy can turn off like a light switch - and most of us know that real empathy in close personal relationships can't do that. So we consider that when their empathy dies for us suddenly, it is fake. Fake empathy might be at play, certainly, but the right word is really cognitive empathy.
Can they help it?
A lack of empathy is probably the one thing they probably can't help. Some psychologists (who I feature below) say narcissists can be helped to feel more empathy, but I have never seen it myself, and if anything, I saw it get much, much worse. Most of the survivors I have talked to numbering in the thousands never saw it once either.
More likely, the ability to feel empathy probably died in them in early childhood. It can be from being a golden child of a parent with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where the child is never called upon to be empathetic, accountable, ethical or responsible for hurting others. In many of these cases, bad bullying behavior is even condoned and coddled by a parent. They are only required to be loyal to a parent, who may be highly unethical themselves. I discuss this phenomenon in my post on the bully golden child where I make it clear how this can happen.
Some psychologists say it might also be a "brain issue", and can be to some extent even when a child is put into a golden child role (that is also discussed in the bully golden child post). But some psychologists are convinced that it has to do with a brain issue that starts in the womb, but those psychologists tend to be in the minority. However, most psychologists and psychiatrists believe that whether it is organic or learned, the lack of empathy starts in early childhood and becomes part of the development and fixed elements of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Even without all of the other symptoms and tactics narcissists use, a lack of empathy is still extremely challenging, especially for children. Some of the complaints I have seen personally run the gamut: being stuck in infantilized or parentified roles forever, not getting enough nutrition as a child and relying on people outside the family for an adequate amount of food, being carted around to lovers' living spaces and having to find ways of being occupied while their parent had sex, suffering through life threatening illnesses without medical care because the parent thought they, the child, was faking it ... In other words most children of narcissists suffer long periods of neglect. Being concerned about what their child is experiencing is just not on the radar of things to be concerned about when it comes to narcissistic parents and their needs for narcissistic supply, and that definitely includes children's feelings. If anything, the parent tries to either provoke children, or they try to squash the feelings of children. They tend to be enormously out of touch with what their children are experiencing, and even who they are, especially those children who are emotionally abandoned (very common), making children of narcissists vulnerable not only to bullying and predatory adults, but to health and medical issues, nutritional issues, safety issues, and general issues that arise where they are being called upon to be much more autonomous for their own care than their age can handle.
Since narcissists are only capable of cognitive empathy, with a profound level of misunderstanding others, they tend to do the following (this is their best behavior, by the way, not their worst - at the worst they won't care at all what you are experiencing, and sometimes even abandon when tragedies enact feelings):
- they tend to lecture you about how you should solve the problems in your life that will make the tragedy less tragic
- they will diminish the tragedy and the people who are effected by it and tell you not to focus or dwell on it (to make the best of it) - that is because that is what they do when they have tragedies.
- they will do research for you so that you know what kind of tragedy you are dealing with and how to respond to it
- they will tell you that your tragedy is ruining your life, or more importantly, their life. They put demands on your attention, and can even try to make you feel guilty for having feelings and thoughts about it. They might say they are being extremely patient until you can work through it, but again, it is all about them.
- they talk about how their tragedies are worse than yours (compete with you about whose tragedy was worse).
- they talk about how they got over a tragedy like yours, or similar to yours. Why can't you get over yours? - note: getting over tragedies fast is actually not normal, and is not the way you heal, so that should send up red flags.
- if someone else caused the tragedy, they disparage you for not forgiving and forgetting, or they ask you why you can't just forgive and forget, like something is wrong with you. "Forgiveness shaming" is quite common, and actually makes the trauma worse and last a lot longer, but because they want to see forgiveness in you so badly and right away for all kinds of reasons, usually for self serving purposes, they will most likely be shaming you for not forgiving or forgetting.
- that they helped you (in some small way, or in some way that they feel that you need to be grateful for) and "now you need to get over it!" - mostly they want you to get over it fast, not in terms of healing, but to get back to them and what they want from you - they have very little patience for people who are distracted by trauma and trauma symptoms.
Anyway, I hope I have enlightened you as to the differences between cognitive empathy versus the ability to actually feel empathy (to understand your agony on an emotional level, and a much, much deeper level than cognitive empathy).
And they don't know that lectures aren't helpful and can traumatize you more when you are going through a tragedy.
And most narcissists don't know that most people aren't like them. They think everyone projects and fakes the way they do.
But then there are those narcissists who do understand on a lot of levels that they are different from other human beings, especially when it comes to empathy. And they understand on an intellectual level the difference between cognitive empathy and real empathy. They even understand that in order to portray empathy the right way they have to keep constant with the eye contact, with attentiveness and soothing, and not to say anything too self-serving while this is going on - until they want to, of course, when they realize some ultimate goal in power and it seems ironclad. In other words they wait much later than most narcissists.
They actually diligently study how people empathize. And they can even fool on empathy tests at times as well.
These particular narcissists are called "dark empaths". They usually have many Dark Triad markers in their personality (a mixture of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) with scheming and planning. Their main mode of operandi is to fool others that they are empaths and then when they get into a position of overwhelming power over others, lower the boom on their victims in terms of taking complete control over them; i.e. trapping them in ways that the victims would find extremely difficult to get out of.
These people create much more trauma in their victims than your usual run-of-the-mill narcissists because run-of-the-mill narcissists are simply too self involved to study empathy to that degree. They are not really interested in empaths beyond what an empath can do for them. They know what empaths say, and they think that is all there is to it. And they aren't entirely convincing to most of us when they say they care (there is just enough looking away or a nose in the air, lecturing, and coldness in their delivery to make most victims suspicious of their real intentions). So they tend to over-play their hand early when an empath can still escape the relationship without as much trauma as victims of dark empaths.
A few cult leaders are dark empaths, especially the ones who want to kill all of their followers. They find ways to manufacture the idea that the whole cult is in danger from outside because of their beliefs or religion, when the real truth is that they are in danger from dying from inside the cult (dark triad cult leaders can and do insist that their followers willingly commit suicide as a sign of loyalty).
Dark empaths can create the kind of trauma where victims want to jump from a high building, who tell others they no longer want to live, who feel inexorably trapped (the ultimate in trauma bonding in other words). In fact, the trauma they feel is often so bad precisely because they could not detect that the person was not an empath at all (so convincing): the leader turned into this horrific, abusive, threatening, paranoid, murderous authoritarian monster practically overnight. And many kinds of narcissists do tend to switch from nice to horrifically abusive overnight, so that is where dark triads who show empathy have something in common with run-of-the-mill narcissists.
Beware of these dark narcissists. Resist the thinking that you will find an idealized significant emotional and spiritual connection and community (especially in cults). This is especially a warning to scapegoats and lost children who generally are the ones to be discarded by narcissistic parents, and are on a journey to find more genuine connection and empathy than the cold cognitive empathy they got from a parent or parents.
If you are supposed to give up your past, all of your past relationships, and be isolated within the cult, or in the personal relationship, that is a sign of narcissism at work. Some cult leaders live "high off the hog" with lots of money and cars while their followers live barely scraping by (which is the usual sign of narcissism too), but dark empath narcissists can live like their followers, in poverty, giving and giving, and sacrificing, just to get followers' undying devotion.
Trust should only be metered out a little at a time, and depending on how a person is behaving. Being aware that real empathy is expressed mostly with continued eye contact, with feeling your feelings, and soothing is definitely useful to know, but like anything, only up to a point. While dark empaths aren't very common, also remember that narcissism is on the rise in the Western world, which means more dark empaths, even if the percentage of them isn't higher.
Most of all, any relationship (aside from a boss at work) that requires lots of submission is not healthy and probably will hurt you greatly in the end. Which, of course, means resisting forgiving and forgetting to the extent where you are back in a relationship with them, resisting fawning and submitting when people are raging, demanding, abandoning, cruel, and commanding, and where it is obvious that they only want power, control and domination over you. The relationship is just a "throw-away" in those cases, for them.
All of this, of course, means resisting being a fawning submissive follower of their dubious and diabolical authority.
HEALTHY RESPONSES, AND CONTENTMENT
Narcissists tend to discard empaths and prefer other narcissists be their main personal relationships (they love mirrors), and now there is research to back it up (and another link).
I'm not sure how that works long term, but perhaps with no one bothering them about ethics, which empaths would speak to them about, and hold them accountable for, perhaps on their own they lie to each other, stab each other in the back, and somehow tolerate it all as long as they are loyal to one another and there is a prize? It's something I do not care to study, frankly. In survivor forums I hear the worst stories, primarily of elder care, but maybe the rest of the time they are having a ball, living it up, idealizing each other in the most syrupy ways imaginable?
So where do the narcissists discarded empaths go?
My feeling is that they end up with other empaths. This is what happened in my own life. I became educated in the Cluster B Personality disorders (at the suggestion of a domestic violence therapist), and to some degree I can see them a mile away and avoid them.
However, I was almost fooled by a construction worker (who was working for a friend at the time). I wanted to hire him. But something did not seem right about him, or his proposals, and he was shutting down my voice and insisting that I needed to trust in him. Most of my experiences with construction workers is that I ask questions, and they answer. If I had concerns, they'd explain in detail how they tackled the project. This guy was, in his own polite way, telling me constantly to shut up, to just put my faith in him and to stop questioning him. One evening I just wasn't feeling right about how I was being treated and I looked him up on the internet and found that he had an arrest and prison record a mile long. Good thing he didn't have an alias too. And my friend fired him once he found out what I found out.
So, my ability to sense narcissism or psychopathy is not full proof. But apparently it is enough in terms of my close personal relationships. My relationships now are with the kinds of people I always wanted to be around and with. I always had really close girlfriends growing up, and that is what I modeled in seeking other relationships. I was fooled a bunch of times (especially the love bombing stage), because I was not studying narcissism enough. I only knew the basics - narcissists get enraged when criticized; they are preoccupied with fantasies of power, success and money to the exclusion of other things; they believe they are granted special entitlement (while other people have to follow rules and laws); and they act grandiose. However I didn't know about covert narcissism, the very common brand of narcissist who isn't particularly grandiose outwardly, and that's where I messed up in my life. I also didn't know about gaslighting (even when I was experiencing it constantly), and I didn't know that the silent treatment was pretty exclusive to them if it lasted longer than 24 hours. In fact, I didn't know much about any of it, certainly not enough to make a difference in my life. And so narcissists slipped under my radar quite a lot, and created a great deal of havoc, messed with my head, messed with my career and my life, and even stole from me.
Had I studied it as diligently as I do now, my whole adult life would have probably been like it is now. I regret that I didn't study it much earlier.
I knew my closest girlfriends and my father were very different people from the kinds of aggressive personalities I was dealing with, but I didn't understand what made them different, and I was under the wrong impression that narcissistic personalities were actually more in the majority instead of in the minority. In other words, I thought that empathetic people were in a crushing minority, barely hanging on, barely heard, barely considered, being replaced with people with much darker traits.
So the fact that I was able to get out of the company of narcissists and their power trips entirely could be luck, or it could be that their personality types are in a significant minority, and maybe it is just the same "birds of a feather flock together" phenomenon that happens when "like" people come together.
One thing about empathy is that you are understood on a deep level. I do think and feel that it can create intuitive or perhaps even a psychic connection with others. A deep understanding of how others feel, respond and what they are going through in their lives means that you won't hurt each other. What hurts them hurts you too, and not just on some sort of psychic feeling level.
So when you are in a mutually trusting relationship, you understand that. You do everything you can to keep the trust alive so that it can continue to be a deep relationship that you both can rely on. It is probably built in to our DNA to some degree so that we can survive as a tribe, or raise crops together, or hunt together.
Narcissists don't do that. When narcissists break the trust and hurt you a great deal, as much as they possibly can hurt you, with knowledge they have gleaned about you and your vulnerabilities, and in ways they know will garner the most pain for you, they are also hell-bent on destroying the trust between you. They make it very, very plain that they don't care about you a bit. And, of course, they destroy the trust over the most inconsequential things usually - however it's usually not about the thing they are raging about; it is really their insecurity that you are not being submissive enough to them, doing what they tell you to do, that you are not seeing them as "the boss" or in an elevated way, and saying what they tell you to say (another thing you learn when you study narcissism).
It's easy to get in a retaliatory mindset when they attack you so many times in an egregious unprovoked way and are willing to lose the trust entirely that you used to have in them. They care a great deal of keeping up a public image that is not even true to who they are in private (common), but have no trouble smashing up your image even if they are using lots of lies to do it. It's disgusting. Unprovoked attacks do the opposite of what they want: it shows very little integrity such that you don't respect them and definitely do not want any part in idealizing them or "following them" again.
They throw a lot of rage-bombs at you that you don't deserve just because they are having a crisis about their image. They devalue you, insult you, destroy the bond between you, destroy the trust that you used to have in them, for no apparent reason you can understand (unless you study narcissism). And in an impulsive retaliatory mindset you might throw some bombs, or counter manipulations, back at them to get them to stop, that break their trust in you too. It's called the war at home for a reason. What it accomplishes in the end is that you don't trust them and they don't trust you. You could have just as easily have achieved the same end by walking away from each other and agreeing never to bother each other again.
In truly empathetic relationships the war at home simply doesn't happen. That means relationships can go deep. It is because you aren't trying to protect yourself from narcissistic attacks, which, as I said can be so small and ungrounded that it is impossible to tell what narcissists will do next. That means with true empaths you can be your authentic self. Self defense isn't necessary. Trying to figure out the next head game or blame game isn't necessary either. Roles aren't required which is very freeing and feels boundlessly loving, peaceful and appreciative. Gaslighting doesn't happen because no one is trying to control the other person (what they say, what they do, and how they behave is up to the other person - and empathy always turns them towards intimacy and empathy rather than domination and control).
Boundaries of ethics and morality also keeps you respecting each other, which is something you can never, ever experience with narcissists no matter how hard you try because they are continually sacrificing ethics and morality to get narcissistic supply.
It's really a night-and-day difference.
What it has created in my own life are meaningful long lasting relationships, some that date back to high school and have evolved over the years, and most of all peace. I feel I can open my heart more too, and be vulnerable because empathy allows it. Being vulnerable used to frighten the hell out of me with the exception of my father and the friendships I made along the way. In the present day, being vulnerable means being able to tell the truth - people who want to live in the truth want you to speak the truth.
Narcissists who want to keep a lie going about themselves or about one of their henchmen or about one of their cherished beliefs, will punish you or rage at you for telling the truth.
In contrast, perspectives with empaths are often open rather than closed. In other words, it's about exploring each other's perspectives rather than fighting about whose perspectives are right or wrong. Confirmation bias is a lot less of an issue.
I remember asking my husband what he thought the world would be like if narcissists had no power to invade nations, to do school shootings, to rob other people, to rape land for personal gain, to become the abusive Mr. Hyde with their families while spending most of the day outside the home being nice to strangers, and so on ...
And he said, "The world would be a paradise." In other words: nothing ugly, nothing sclerotic, no drivers cutting you off, no mates having sex on their spouses behind their back, no more child abuse, no more senseless shootings, no more invasions, probably no need for mind altering drugs because your mind would be content with the paradise you were living in.
What I'm about to say next may seem a bit "far out" for some people, but many of us in the world who have been beaten down in life still get out of bed with hope, grace, and dreams of a better future.
Here it goes:
I have been blessed to have gotten so many of my inspirations for art and writing from dreams. In fact, most of my inspirations come from dreams. I wake up in the morning and get to work on what I've seen or heard in these dreams.
It would seem that J.R.R. Tolkien may have been inspired by dreams too. There is a lot of wisdom in his books, especially from Gandalf, Galadriel and some of the hobbits, and a lot of fantastical happenings and beings as well (which are what dreams are made of: fantasy is inevitable in dreams, and to some extent hope too). And then there is even some seeing into the future which may be the hope part of the subconscious: some warnings about the mechanized world (Mordor) taking over the natural world (Lothlorien, Rohan, Hobbiton, Gondor, and so on). The push into the mechanized world are largely made possible by not-too-intelligent, and largely self serving Orchs. Orchs run machines all day, and are fodder for Sauron's war, and so they don't have good lives and no one is promoting their intelligence to improve their lot. Thus in wars they get killed with more frequency. They don't even have good dental work if we look at how they are portrayed in moving picture series. They are kept stupid for a reason, and they can always be defeated even when their numbers greatly out-number the elves, dwarfs, hobbits, and men. And then of course, there are a lot of references to addictions in Tolkien's work: addictions to powers, to revenge and sadism, to the thought of everlasting life, to substances and even to jewelry (the rings). And of course, submission has a role in the story too, and how submissive should you be to rulers who are focusing on issues that are leading kingdoms astray, and are destructive in all of the ways I mentioned in this paragraph.
I have had dreams about Tolkien's Middle Earth myself, dreams that altered the story slightly, or that continued after Galadriel left with Frodo, or where I am a character in the story. Not of my own choice, mind you. The most lucid dreams have a life of their own.
But I also have dreams that are entirely my own, or are just ever so slightly influenced by someone else's art or perspectives.
Anyway, one of the dreams I had was during the height of experiencing narcissistic abuse - I was being tortured over not being submissive to a series of lies. This was the dream:
The dream concerned two very tall beings that I met in the forest. One was female and the other a male. They looked sort of human except they were twice as tall as I was, with long white hair cut in a "V" streaming down their back, past their waist. Some other differences: they had very wide flattened foreheads, where their foreheads did not slope back like present day humans. In other words, there was quite a bit more brain-matter than present-day humans as well. Their eyes were also big, and somewhat slanted.
When I looked at them, I could feel more empathy emanating from them than I felt in my entire life. I felt a relief that I had never felt in my life also, and I started to cry, thankful that they were there, and the male said, "You are worth saving. Follow us. We have some medicine that will take care of that."
So I followed behind them in a wooded forest where the trees were quite substantial, larger than the usual forests I visited during my waking day time hours. As I said, these human-like beings were huge and it was hard for me to look down at the path because I wanted to study them like an artist would, to look thoroughly at their features, and to know who they were as beings.
They had me sit in an organically styled chair that had a big red cushion for a seat, and they gave me the medicine in my arm - it was a shot. As I was waking up, I could actually still feel the shot on a physical level for quite awhile, a minute even.
In my grogginess when I first knew I had exited a dream, I thought, "Is that medicine to help me from feeling sad? Is that what humans are evolving to? Can we please just evolve into that sooner rather than later? Are we capable of it?"
Anyway, I still have a tendency to discount my dreams as "just dreams" even though they have given me so much inspiration. I should always be grateful that I have them, right? Not everyone has them, and certainly not everyone has, or remembers, so many lucid dreams. But then the "lower thoughts" roll in: "Oh, it was just a dream. Now I have to deal with the real circumstances, as awful as they are." But on the other hand, like Tolkien, I had a dream of what humans could be, given enough time, and generations, and wisdom enough to give up on anything that runs contrary to empathy.
As in Tolkien's Middle Earth, we are at a crossroads. We can keep going in the direction we are going with thick low black clouds rolling in (something I really saw: they were the result of fires burning in the west, and looked other-worldly, not anything I ever saw before, very ominous and acrid, effecting my lungs, something that the fantastical realm of Mordor might produce, but was real instead, something that alarmed me greatly and made me realize that we are on the brink of disaster with climate change and creating an earth that may not be inhabitable to us any more). But we are also at a crossroads with the other things that Tolkien brought up: over-building, over-mechanization, greed, invasions, wars, how we treat each other, narcissistic concerns, addictions to things and people who are unhealthy, etc.
Whether we decide it with a war as all-involving as the Siege of Gondor, or solve it by slow evolution, or just die in what we have created, is the gargantuan issue of our day.
I also look at Putin's invasion in this light too. It could turn into a world war, and if Belarus and China get involved, it is likely to end up that way. There is not a speck of empathy in invading a country, none, and it is pointless too, because as soon as fossil fuels start to be in short supply, or another type of energy takes over, Russia will lose then, at that later time. The bombing of people's houses and businesses, the raping, the intentional killing of children, the atrocities, the forced evacuation of citizens to Russia, it's all a devolution away from empathy and our higher selves. And even if Russia, China and Belarus manage to overtake Ukraine, the Ukrainians will be trauma bonded to Russians. That's the worst possible outcome for Ukraine, and for the world (the tolerance of slavery will be an issue again), and even, in the long run, for Russia. They will not be able to win the minds of a people who have been terrorized, tortured and robbed to this extent.
That's pretty much all I have to say today on why I'm convinced that empathy is the only road out of this mess. I got a little off-track with this post with the inspirations of dreams, but I hope I have inspired some people who read what I have to write, that empathy is the main path forward if we are to survive as a species.
As for how to deal with the parts of the population who have very little empathy or who have none at all, I don't know how to deal with that problem except to avoid them. If we all avoid them and they can't get into positions of power, maybe that helps move our evolution forward? That's where I am in my personal journey with this problem.
But what if they are invading you and bringing a war to your home?
I do have some ideas on how to deal with school shootings and other mass murders, most of which are largely perpetrated by young men with significant narcissistic traits and who are also consumed with paranoia and prejudice (that is an upcoming post).
How to Identify a Malignant Narcissist - by Elizabeth Scott, PhD and medically reviewed by Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD for Very Well Mind
Yes, Narcissists Can Cry — Plus 4 Other Myths Debunked - by Alex Klein, PsyD for Healthline
There Are Actually 3 Types of Empathy. Here's How They Differ--and How You Can Develop Them All (Understanding the three types of empathy can help you build stronger, healthier relationships.) - by Justin Bariso for Inc
Empathy in Narcissistic Personality Disorder: From Clinical and Empirical Perspectives - by Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Elizabeth Krusemark, and Elsa Ronningstam for National Library of Medicine
‘Dark empaths’: how dangerous are psychopaths and narcissists with empathy? - by Nadja Heym and Alexander Sumich for The Conversation
Narcissistic Test - Psych Central
This Narcissist Test Will Tell You If Someone Has Narcissistic Tendencies - by Kelly Gonsalves and Kistina Hallett, Ph.D., ABPP for Mind Body Green
Quiz: How narcissistic are you? (quiz) - by Associate Professor Ross King, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health, Deakin University for Deakin University
Psychopath, Narcissist, Sociopath or Empath? test - All the Tests
Am I an Empath or a Narcissist Quiz - Marriage.com
Can someone have narcissistic personality disorder, but be very empathetic too? - Quora question
Note: I would not recommend taking this article seriously. It doesn't cite professional articles or studies, and can confuse readers, but I put it on the reading list anyway to stir conversation: Empathic Narcissist: What It Means, 15 Unique Traits & How to Cope with Them - by Nicky Curtis for Love Panky
Do you think it is possible for most of us to miss the signs of narcissism? Their false selves are about acting? Which is why they let down their mask at home and torture everyone, or at least someone, in the family?
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous,
DeleteI apologize for the late reply.
Yes, a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde personality style is a sign of narcissism (torturing a family member or members, and being overly sweet to strangers).
Yes, to your other question too: they act out roles, depending on who they are trying to impress or manipulate. That's another reason for the disparity of being nice to strangers and cruel inside the home.
So in the context of this post, appearing to be empathetic when they are not, is an acting job. And also, most narcissists disparage people who they are nice to behind their backs.
It can happen to non-narcissists too: when we see immorality, we don't always speak up. The relationship is such that it is either superficial or undesirable. Let's say you are a child and an uncle pinches your cheeks really hard at a family event. You've been taught to treat adults with respect, so you do, but then when when you are with your brothers and sisters in private you disparage him and his practice of pinching cheeks. That's what most abusive narcissists do all of the time - it's an ingrained part of most situations for them. With their family, they don't feel the need to be polite, so the impoliteness and the disrespect rip when they get home.
Great article, I realized many in my family had no empathy especially the main narcissists. Health stuff really made that glaring, they simply were unable to put themselves in another person's shoes. I saw lack of empathy displayed to others, everything was about dividing people into "winners" and "losers" too and the losers supposedly deserved everything they got. Coldness too is a major sign. I'm glad you warn of the dark empathetic types, watch out those types are scary, they will glom onto your challenges, grief, acting like they "care" and "share" the same emotions and experiences and then wham out of nowhere, you will see the coercive game playing and control begin, and they will exploit what they learned about you during the love-bombing phase to wiggle in. Some of the best ones will try emulate the empath's "connection" where one feels intuitive connection but the empath, sometimes only has intuition save them, knowing they see something "weird in the eyes" to keep them from totally taking over.
ReplyDeleteEmpathy is complicated for autistics, we suck at showing it I think but its not like the NPDs who simply lack it. I often fail to have the right soothing words to say to suffering people--oddly some friends think I am great at that but in group situations, I seem to flub things up, and brain function problems from executive function to anxiety complicates things, like I forgot a newer friends birthday the other day and apologized, they weren't mad. I need to make a giant birthday calendar of all friends. LOL Some of us are overwhelmed a lot and know crying in front of neurotypicals is always a bad idea. I have worries that my ability to connect with others, outside of marriage, and online friendships has been permanently damaged by having extreme NPDs etc around me, but then I did find positive friends too though sadly got separated from them too often via outside circumstances, death, moves, health stuff and deafness. I often felt pressure to shut down my emotions, even the good ones. There's one scene I remember from years ago, where I am crying over my sister moving away after she was married, back then the relationship was already troubled but there was some positive moments I still had from early high school before she was completely turned against me, and she told me, "Stop your blubbering" or something along those lines and turned around coldly and walked away to get into the car. I kind of live in the mode even now that emotions are unacceptable things to show to most, always having to flat-line them to survive in the world but not sure how much of that is autism influencing things. Sadly though the "modern" world, guess that's best phrase I can use seems to be going against emotions more and more, they want all "feelings" shut down, a sign narcissists have taken over society, they only want feelings of adoration and obedience.
One sign of the eroding empathy in the world I worry about is people no longer desire the same connection with others. I even think of how conversation operated 20 years ago, compared to now. Now I feel like I'm walking on eggshells everywhere with people ready to "cancel" me for having the wrong opinions, it's not a safe authentic space to be is it? I wonder if all the tech is making people colder. One can watch old movies and see a wider range of emotions, which I know one is not getting the whole story there but something is changing with humanity.
continuing
Hi Peeps,
DeleteI agree that verbal politeness was expected 20 - 30 years ago, which I do think makes a difference. There is an attempt at civility and respect. That seems to have disappeared in the present day.
You made a good point, and probably speak for many ACONs: "I have worries that my ability to connect with others, outside of marriage, and online friendships has been permanently damaged by having extreme NPDs etc around me ..." Many ACONs become hermits, nature lovers, artists, and extreme introverts, kinda like in "Where the Crawdads Sing" when the dysfunctional family leaves their girl Kya to fend for herself in the marshland, and she becomes a nature lover, an artist and a writer all wrapped into one. Sounds about right.
But I remember also seeing some posters for ACONs to the effect of: "Consider that you're wanting to be alone most of the time and that you can handle absolutely everything that life throws at you to be the result of extreme trauma. We deserve to belong to a tribe despite what we were taught from Narc parents when we were children ."
I actually don't think you can heal enough, especially from the debilitating physical symptoms of C-PTSD without paying attention to becoming part of a tribe, or community. But I understand it is hard.
Unfortunately I also think it is important for a lot of the population to study narcissism and psychopathy since they are on the increase and creating a more cruel nation: mass shootings, so many school shootings, more conspiracy theories than I have ever heard, significantly more bullying over greed, and just all of the things narcs are famous for. It tells me that children aren't getting nearly the care they need, or the right kind of care.
Luckily talking about narcissism is getting way more attention. When you and I first starting writing our blogs, there were very few professional therapists or psychologists talking about this problem except in professional esoteric journals and school textbooks, but now there are so many. There was a call for the "What just happened to me?"-people out there, and psychologists started answering en-masse on social media platforms.
Thanks for your story, Peeps.
ReplyDeleteMy NM would do some fake empathy to people but never displayed any to me. My sister never bothered with empathy since she was taken care of, she didn't have to bother with love bombing, fake charm or even pretending to have empathy. She simply didn't. Watching how she reacted to even her own children getting sick, was weird. There was no feeling or worries there. I am glad you had your positive friends and father as examples of better out in the world. I think some of that came rather late for me. It's true you cannot be close to anyone in the world of narcissists, I always saw doors being shut in my face, it ended even the 30 year old duration friendships. I sometimes fear because my only positive role model in life--the one aunt had such limited time with me and I was surrounded by such a preponderance of narcissists and their enablers, I was kind of late to the game in even finding out what healthy relationships looked like.
Being authentic in real life seems harder and harder. Empathy by too many just seems to be a weakness they desire to exploit. I've noticed too, that the feeling of being "too much" for people has grown stronger, since emotional aptitude is shrinking, emotional discussions, etc, are avoiding by more people.
Too many jumping up to "cancel me" for the wrong opinions. I believe the world is disintegrating into a non-empathy place, tech and AI doesn't like feelings. I read on some metaverse thing, they wanted to have employers hire using AI, think about that one, computers making decisions like that instead of real people.
With Russia, Putin is bad news TOO, though I think the USA's sponsoring a coup there and more has made the place more unstable. I don't think it's worth WWIII. I feel very bad for the innocent people in Ukraine and all the ordinary Russians getting drafted to fight there too. It's a mess. When the right wing thinks Putin is a hero who is going to beat back the globalists like Klaus Schwab, I think "Not so fast". However I know I do not support the left wing-approach to the Ukraine, our infrastructure here is failing as billions gets sent overseas. Ukraine seems to be the new Afghanistan, and money clean-out. Sadly world elites have brought us nothing but war and death it seems and now with their love of unleashing plagues on us, they have another life destruction tool in the tool box. I hope that stuff about biolabs in the Ukraine isn't true but I don't know.
Your dreams seem to have deep warnings in them. I've had strange dreams about a cold tech world I don't fit in, usually I'm running away from the "aliens" or "robots" and there's weird urban landscapes where all the trees and nature are dead. I know these dreams elude to my anti-transhumanism stances. It kind of goes with emotions. There's too many who want our humanity wiped away and sadly that includes empathy.
Your dream reminds me of those. I seriously see the AI, 15 minute cities junk, technoUtopians--as part of the loss of empathy, well Kunstler sees this as a distraction that won't happen but maybe we will end up with the Hunger Games two-tiered society with primitive living for most of us but wealthy technos in big SMART cities.
I think of all the cold people who were around me, wow some of them were like completely like ICE, but can people with no empathy enjoy life, at a certain place they cannot. There's no art or soul or enjoying music, nature at a deep level for them. I think some of the narcissists hate us alone for that.
I think you have something there re: colder technological AI advanced world with too many human brains still in the 10,000 B.C. phase.
DeleteI have seen a number of ACONs mention what you have said: "Hunger Games two-tiered society with primitive living for most of us but wealthy technos in big SMART cities". I didn't think it was possible growing up, but we seem to be accelerating very fast into that.
I think you know that I'm writing a novel? I try to get inside a narcs thoughts in the novel based on all of the research I have done. I focus the thoughts of the narc on getting more flattery, riches, attention, revenges, how to commit abuse without anyone seeing, putting endless amounts of energy on blame-shifting and all the lies that have to happen to get the blame-shift completely infallible - except it never is - and just all of this wasted pointless energy and spiraling down into more lies and other un-ethical behaviors to cover up the last lies they told. And of course the lack of empathy and endless DARVO-ing.
It's no wonder they focus so heavily on everyone else's behaviors and faults: they don't want us to see any of theirs (because they are so dark).
The main character eventually sees inside the mind of the narc and leaves. The character tries to converse with the narc and the narc can't hear it through all of their sclerotic ego filters.
I was so happy not to be them when I'd write the narc's part. How awful! Most narcs don't amount to much either (except maybe riches through delegation, inheritance, power and luck sometimes), but their minds are littered with this manipulative junk.
The empath sees life, experiences real joy, has real emotions.
It is true that we have to hide emotions around narcs, but most of the time, if we are mostly with other empaths, we don't. We live a life of freedom; they are in a jail of shame-based maneuvers and lies.