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

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).

THE DARK EMPATH AND HOW IT RELATES TO THIS DISCUSSION

Most narcissists don't know that real empathy requires constant eye contact, even when you are crying.

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.    

REAL EMPATHY CREATES LONG LASTING RELATIONSHIPS
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. 

One of the big ways you can destroy relationships is by breaking the trust between you. Undermining someone's trust who you deeply care about is a nightmare for you. I'm of the opinion that trust can never be repaired once it is broken. No person can change enough of who they are to ever be a reliable "person of trust" again.

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).

FURTHER READING

15 Signs You're Dealing With A Narcissist, From A Therapist - by Margalis Fjelstad, Ph.D., LMFT for Mind Body Green (note: this article discusses lack of empathy in Narcissistic Personality Disorder)

How to Spot a Narcissistic Sociopath (Is a Sociopathic Narcissist the Same Thing as a Narcissistic Sociopath?) - by Arlin Cuncic, and medically reviewed by  David Susman, PhD for Very Well Mind (note: this article discusses lack of empathy in Narcissistic Sociopaths)

How to Identify a Malignant Narcissist - by Elizabeth Scott, PhD and medically reviewed by Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD for Very Well Mind 

Lack of empathy in patients with narcissistic personality disorder - by Kathrin Ritter, Isabel Dziobek, Sandra Preißler, Anke Rüter, Aline Vater, Thomas Fydrich, Claas-Hinrich Lammers, Hauke R. Heekeren, and Stefan Roepke for Psychiatry Research and Science Direct (professional article)

Do Narcissists Lack Empathy? It Depends - by Greta Urbonaviciute for SpSp

Agenda-Driven Empathy: How Narcissists Fool You Into Thinking They Care - by Angela Atkinson for QueenBeing

Yes, Narcissists Can Cry — Plus 4 Other Myths Debunked - by Alex Klein, PsyD for Healthline

Do Narcissists Actually Lack Empathy? (An unwillingness to empathize is different than being unable to do so.) - by Mary C. Lamia Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Narcissism is essentially a problem of lack of empathy - by Shawna Freshwater, Ph.D. for Spacious Therapy 

How the Narcissist Hurts You Using Cognitive Empathy - by Kim Saeed for Psych Central

Cognitive Empathy vs. Emotional Empathy (Learn the differences between these two types of empathy) - by Jodi Clarke, MA, LPC/MHSP, medically reviewed by Rachel Goldman, PhD, FTOS for Very Well Mind

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

The emotional deficits associated with the Dark Triad traits: Cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and alexithymia - by Peter K. Jonason and Laura Krause for University of Western Australia and Research Gate (professional article)

Am I a Narcissist or an Empath? (Take this quiz to find out!) - Wiki How

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

Are You an Empath or a Narcissist? (Are you an empath or a narcissist? Empaths are genuinely in touch with other people's feelings and quick to offer a listening ear. Narcissists can come off as self-centered but are often unaware of it. Does this sound like you? Take our narcissist or empath test now to find out.) - Quizony

Am I an Empath or a Narcissist Quiz - Marriage.com 

Can a narcissist fake being empathetic? - Quora question (one of the answers is from someone diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder)

Are there ways to identify a narcissist's empathy as fake? - Quora question

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

Warning: The "You're Useless" Phrase, the "You're Nobody" Phrase and "You're Worthless" Phrase in Narcissistic Abuse and Domestic Violence

© Lise Winne - 2/10/23

 

This is what domestic abuse can devolve to. Yup, getting upset with you over the tiniest thing and calling you worthless because you made a mistake and forgot the cinnamon. It's crazy making!

Abusers of all kinds use these kinds of phrases, but overt narcissists seem to love them the most. These phrases are always categorized as verbal abuse by psychology and domestic violence field professionals. 

At the core of these phrases is hatred, usually spurred by a black and white thinking process, which abusers experience much, much more than the rest of us. There are very few, if any, people who really please them, so they usually spend a lot of free time complaining about other people, insulting them behind their backs, even lying about them. If you are privy to hearing about all of the people they hate and that do not live up to their standards, if they are in a love bombing stage, you may think that you are safe from their hatred, but most of us find out that we are not. 

And it is their hatred that can be dangerous to us. Hatred is usually rooted in either family prejudices (hating women in the family, or overweight people in the family, or being prejudiced against people who are mentally ill, or of a different race, or of a different lifestyle, or who are financially or physically challenged ... it can be anything).

One thing all narcissists have in common is that they talk negatively about other people, usually a lot, and they tend to be harshly judgmental too. It tends to be a daily affair, but it can be weekly as well, and it will still influence people around them.

Highly critical people tend to lack empathy too, just because their minds are on what to despise in other people. They feel better in comparison if they can trash-talk about others, what they do, what they look like, who they are ... They spend way too much time on what to nitpick apart, what about the differences of others that make them feel disgust, what about them that incentivizes the narcissist not to care about the struggles of other people.

For the rest of us, it is pretty awful to listen to negative talk about others.  

Certainly highly judgmental people are not inside the heads of others, looking at their thoughts, or even looking at situations through their eyes, and how they got to where they are now. For the most part they don't know their cultural background, or their family background. For this reason a lot of people call highly judgmental people ignorant and prejudiced, and the reason why is that if you are really open to who other people are, and explore their perspectives at length, it will expand your understanding such that you will get along with more people, and you and others in your orbit would experience more peace. 

Tolerance and peace go together. 

Narcissists can be so rageful about how all kinds of other people act, and it can, in turn, create an environment that is at best irritating, and at worst, dreadfully horrible and depressing. If they are shouting every day about someone, whether it is a new person or not, I'd bet all you want is the raging and complaining and their insults of other people to stop. 

However, we are all judgmental and it probably came from the days we lived in tribes. We are judgmental because we have to discern friends from enemies, bad fruit from good fruit, predators from prey, but when extreme, and children are listening, then being harshly judgmental can become normalized within a family, and one of the unforeseen consequences is that children can also turn on parents with the same harsh judgments they grew up hearing. So it doesn't do much good. And, of course, if the parents are harshly judgmental (not just of outsiders), but do it to family members, or a member, there can be an estrangement.  

Most of all, harsh judgements, and turning to judging people as a constant conversation activity, can often turn into prejudice, and it tends to be based on the usual ones I mentioned above: on race, creed, religion, sex, financial status, etc. 

One way you can tell who the family is prejudiced against and who they hate is: Who is treated without dignity and respect? Who is criticized a lot? Who is not getting empathy? Who is not listened to? Who is treated as a second fiddle or like they don't matter in terms of voicing their perspectives or being an integral part of the family? Are their hierarchies where certain members seem to be more valued, and where others are not? And in an extended family, what do they have in common? I would bet that it has something to do with societal prejudices like the ones I have mentioned above.

Let's just say as an example that members trash-talk about women in the family much more than the men. Trash-talkin' means: harshly judged, criticized, blamed, shamed, treated with disrespect, punished, insulted, disparaged, down-graded, talked about in a derisive way, peppered with false narratives and false motives, devalued, put on a lower hierarchy in terms of importance. Perhaps there are even quite a few women in the family who are estranged from a parent because of all of this. Maybe the parents in the family went overboard and women started to be scapegoated, and you find out they later became estranged. 

And why? My guess is that there is an attitude that women are considered to be more "useless", more "nobodies", more "worthless", the phrases we are talking about in this post. So when you get a male in the family shouting this at a female in the family, they've been taught to disparage women by example. 

And why are women hated - or why is there a family narrative of anyone being hated? My guess is that there are unrealistic or downright no-win expectations on these women, and in some way or other, they fall short every time. Usually the women aren't submissive enough - that's usually the real reason behind the disparaging. So then prejudice turns into scapegoating. 

Hatred within the family also means the abuser has either some mild or high expectations of roles, and that the roles have to be performed to exacting standards. And people are defined by the roles. The usual roles of abusive families are golden child, scapegoat, family mascot and lost child, but there are other roles that the family pushes on to a child.

The need to put someone else in a role and feeling prejudice towards that person usually goes hand in hand too. Roles and submission are much more expected from an abuser when his extended family expects the same thing. For instance, the expectation can be that girls must be submissive to the men and older women of a family. If a young adult female member strays out of that expectation, the family members rage, blame, shame and/or ostracize, or all four.

And even if you are from a different family and you are dating or married to someone who was brought up this way, that is the crux of why you are abused too. Your abuser can't get out of the mindset that you deserve it (and in this case it would be "You deserve it because you are female; you are supposed to be submissive; I have learned that females are below men in stature; I believe I have a right to control you like my mother controlled my sister; I have a right to punish you in ways that are similar to how my mother punished my sister; I have a right to tell you what to do, where to go, how to act; I have a right to rage at you, insult you, walk out on you; even dismiss you as useless and worthless if you are not living up to these standards.") 

I am using "mother" here for a reason. While narcissistic dads are much more likely to treat daughters as underlings who are expected to be submissive, and disparaged because of their female sex, believe it or not, these attitudes can take hold in the mind of a boy by a mother who treats her daughter badly, with disdain, and with enormous amounts of disrespect. And jealousy. Narcissistic mothers tend to be extremely jealous of their daughters, especially if the daughter(s) are talented, or conventionally beautiful, or highly educated and respected, or highly independent, dignified and revered. They also tend to be very competitive with these kinds of daughters too. Sabotage can also come into play. This is often not apparent to daughters who have pronounced C-PTSD because C-PTSD can mean they don't feel jealousy themselves. If you don't feel jealousy yourself, you do not know what the narcissist is going through with this emotion, so you may miss the signals that would make you look into the reasons for their jealousy, and how they are relieving it, and it can mean that you fail to protect yourself. I'll be publishing a post on jealousy soon.

And because jealousy and competition can consume the thoughts of a mother about her daughter above anything else, these mothers can act out in very destructive ways against a daughter to get rid of feeling jealous. Narcissistic Moms can actually feel better about themselves when they abuse their own daughters, or have other people do it - sort of: it is not long lasting enough for them ... I'll discuss that in the post about "Jealousy and the Narcissist". We tend to think an overbearing authoritarian narcissistic dad will teach his boy attitudes about women, including that women are inferior to men (common), but it can come from a mother just as easily, and may be a more powerful lesson because usually the self esteem of a boy comes from his mother much more than it comes from his father. 

So let us say that he finds a mate, but his expectations of a mate are that women must be inferior and need to be submissive, controlled, dominated, told what to do. If they are not submissive, then he will learn to deal with the situation the way his parent or family treats women. It could be via a swift discard (immediate termination of a relationship). Or raging. Or violent outbursts. Or the silent treatment. Or punishing her by depriving her of resources. Or even murder (especially if he has been taught to hate women to the extent that he gets the feeling they should not exist if they aren't trying to please men. Or it could be all of these things).

At any rate, the verbal abuse gets to the point where he is calling his mate "useless", "a nobody" and "worthless" a whole lot.  

Of course, this has nothing to do with the victim. And as the cartoon portrays, it can be over silly stuff, and usually is.

Perhaps she comes from a family who reveres strong women. And she doesn't understand why a man would want to dominate her in the first place. Why not real love than all of these domination plays? What's he getting out of this?

It has to do with prejudices, family and cultural attitudes about women, and the familial and cultural background of the abuser. And it is where abuse usually comes from: their family, who they listened to when growing up, not you.

They may try to talk you into that it's something to do with not reaching their perfection standards in behavior, or actions, or duties, or appearance, but if you really look closely at what the abuser is trying to accomplish by being hyper critical of you, you will usually see that it has to do with how much you submit to his will, authority, domination, threats, and how much you are sublimating.

Unless you want to prove how submissive you are, you are going to be rebelling, defending yourself, complaining about how you are treated. And believe it or not, it rarely makes a difference to them. And what do they do when you are rebelling, defending yourself and complaining? They rage, and lecture endlessly (usually), argue endlessly too, try to trash your self esteem any way they can, and they try to wear you down so you will get exhausted and throw up your hands and do what they tell you to do just to get them to stop with the tactics, and use phrases like these to make you aware that you are not particularly special to them.  

Where does the attitude come from that women must be submissive? In his family. If he has a sister who was beaten down every time she did not submit, then he is going to have the attitude that abuse works in making women and girls submissive.    

Very seldomly it can come from peer relationships or other families (unless the children of a family are neglected by both parents and their closest bond is with peers or the members of another family). 

If he saw a sister get hit, and he has most of the traits of narcissism found in the right column, he will probably be hitting you eventually if he isn't already. If he saw his sister get discarded for not being submissive, he will most likely discard you when you are not submissive.  

And as we know, prejudiced people can be very, very abusive, and even violent, especially if you are "only one" among them, or if the abuser thinks it can be done in secret, or you are being isolated, or if you are enduring lots of insults and gaslighting, or have been through an abandonment by them before (especially if it was over something erroneous), and especially if you are enduring any kind of physical aggressive touch or displays (grabbing, shoving, pushing, trashing a kitchen or smashing dishes, breaking property, punching fists against the wall or near your face, driving recklessly, fast and dangerously while you are the passenger). 

Calling people useless, a nobody and worthless typically has a lot of hatred and rage behind it. Obviously. And it also tends to be used most by physical abusers. 

One reason these phrases are more dangerous than other kinds of verbal abuses is because they are dehumanizing. People who dehumanize tend not to see you as human, with feelings as important than theirs. Dehumanizing means that they will not have empathy for you, and that the only thing they care about is whether you fulfill a role they demand that you fulfill, period. I bet if you've heard these phrases, the disrespect is off the charts, the rage is off the charts, the insults are off the charts, they are constantly telling you what is wrong with you, and they are either in a physically abusive stage (during the escalation of abuse), or they are constantly trying to intimidate you. But I would bet that the physical abuse has started, or will start very soon.   

These phrases, can and often do, mean the kind of abuses that can escalate to much more egregious forms of attack, since these phrases are in the "worst" category of verbal abuse. In order to escalate, he has to go beyond these phrases. The escalation is pretty certain, especially if these sayings are said with rage, and it is clear that they are not respecting physical boundaries (pounding their fists in close proximity to you, raging within 5 feet from you or in your face, pushing you aside, shouting commands at you from several feet away as well). The other sign is making demands with rage, or trying to micromanage your movements and how you perform "duties".  

Abusers usually tell you or show you in some way or another what their intentions are towards you too. These three phrases tell you that the narcissist has devalued you a lot. As I've said before, it's about as extreme as you can get. However, thinking of you as worthless can add up to any number of final results, including egregious physical injury, and even murder, so it is very important to know how much intimidation is behind these phrases and get help.

Rage with clenched fists is not a good sign. 

In terms of covert narcissists, they are not as likely to use these phrases. They try to show victims, rather than say it out loud, that the victims are useless, a nobody and worthless through discarding, something narcissists are known for. The narcissist throws you away like a toy that isn't working right for them. 

Either way, it is important not to let these phrases or discards ruin your self esteem (if you at all personalize what they have to say, or take their opinions of you to heart, or if you care about their opinions, which narcissists will always assume you do because they have very inflated views of themselves).

In many ways it is also dangerous for you to let these phrases compromise your self esteem because you can fall into a state of cognitive dissonance about your abuser where you miss the signs that the abuse is escalating. If you go to a domestic violence counselor, and they make it clear you are in a dangerous situation, they know more than you do about the signs of dangerous perpetrators. If you are caught in this line of thinking, "Well he has his good side and his bad side, and the Christian faith tells me I should forgive the sins of others, and I can tolerate it for now while we figure out what we are going to do with our relationship. And hopefully the love between us will make him change" - that is cognitive dissonance, and for the most part, unrealistic thinking, and it is often what happens to women who go back to their abusers.

But back to the phrases ...  

Some perpetrators mean to scare you with these phrases, and they make it clear that they must exert power, control and domination over you at all times, what many of them, especially narcissists with darker traits, live for 24/7. Every time they need something, want something, and are dissatisfied with something, they want to rage at you like a king does, scaring you into submission. 

I hope that these phrases, at the very least, will not be something that you personalize: look at them. Could you tell them that they are useless, a nobody and worthless, and would they act like a pleaser puppet for you? Probably not. They have to take what they dish out. Hypocrisy does not make a good argument for justifying their actions.

The reason why so many abusers are hypocrites is because they think they are special: that they are endowed by god, or by a parent, or by their own superiority fantasies, with special rights, and that you do not have those same rights. Some instances: they feel they have a right to insult you and criticize you at any time and with these kinds of phrases, but feel "incredibly hurt" if they even perceive that you might be critical of them (very, very common). Or they feel they can't trust you so they try to keep you isolated from friends and family, but feel justified in coming and going as they please, and even feel justified to have an affair on you because they deem that you are so untrustworthy that they need someone else waiting in the wings for them when you take off (also pretty common).  They feel that you deserve their rages any time they want to rage, but if you so much as complain about anything, they deem you are being incredibly unstable and selfish (also common).

So if we are tired of dealing with all of their rationalizations for hypocrisy (and their being so darned special that they think your attention should be on them at all times, and what they have to say, and their views, and their paranoias and conspiracy theories, and what they want from you), we should be able to see these phrases for what they are: much like Dorothy, the tin man, the lion, and scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz who saw the mean wizard for what he was: an old feeble man with a weak voice working levers behind a curtain to make his wizard ferocious and terrifying.

In other words, these wizards of abuse are actually scared little entitled children who are often extremely jealous, and also believe others are jealous of them, with a broken self esteem, behind a ferocious, and perhaps even dangerous, mask, just like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.

And notice in The Wizard of Oz how the wizard wasn't satisfied after Dorothy, the scarecrow, the lion and the tin man did everything that was demanded of them, but the wizard still told them it wasn't good enough and to come back later. That's very much how an abuser does things too. 

And the injustice that Dorothy's group expresses is very much how victims react too .... unless the wizards of abuse can keep talking them into what their victims are doing wrong, and that their motivations for pleasing the wizard are continually wanting: bad, wrong, crazy, stupid, useless, and worthless, like only the way a "nobody" would do it. In other words, you can always decide you need respect, than trying to win this infantile game of being their perfect pleaser puppet. It rarely works to please them anyway, because people who hate you can't, and will never, be pleased. You'll be spinning like a top and exhausting yourself in the process while they adopt more and more abuse tactics to keep you spinning harder, and harder, and more dominated by them. 

And being submissive is a sure-fire way to end up with PTSD. We are not meant to be puppets of someone else's domination fantasies. 

If you only get the silent treatment (another form of abuse), consider that you may have gotten off easily.

Some abusers who have actually gone public to tell their stories have said that they gave the silent treatment for a good reason: because otherwise they might have killed or injured their victims. It was the best way for them not to break the law. When you are perceived to go out of the type of role they assigned for you, they get very, very enraged, to the extent that they feel they cannot control it and control what they will do with it. 

It is also why you shouldn't plead with them, or argue with them when they give you the silent treatment, a tactic that is pretty exclusive to them if it goes on longer than 24 hours. I think many of us usually come to the realization that they become even more rageful if we initiate contact to settle the dispute. Relationships with narcissists aren't like other relationships where both people argue their points, or plead with each other to understand, where you both come to many realizations, and finally come to a conclusion that makes both people happy and feeling loved. With narcissists, they do not accept resolutions that make you both happy (they feel like you should make them happy, period). They also are not interested in understanding you or what the conflict is about. They just want you "in role" because being out of role seems like an act of hostility, of instability, and a recalcitrance to them - think of tyrannical authoritarian leaders who want to destroy a country because all of a sudden the country they want to destroy has gone democratic (even though the country may have been going democratic for a long time) - the democratic government is no longer acting like a puppet to the destructive authoritarian country - this is how narcissists view people in personal relationships too, puppets to their narcissistic supply needs, end of story. 

The way I now look at an unbroken narcissistic silent treatment is that it means they are in a constant state of rage over you being "out of role", and if it goes on for weeks, months or years, it means they are still in a rage. You don't want to deal with them when they are in a rage, so you let the silence go on and continue to come between you. Eventually, you'll forget about them. They may see that you have moved on, and have found happiness, which makes them rage more, and can even spark them to attempt a hoover.

I totally understand that it is shocking that they don't care about you at all, but it is part of their condition not to care about the fate of others (lack of empathy is one of the stand-out characteristics of narcissism). They'd like you to believe that you deserved it, just as murderers like to convince juries that their victims deserved to be killed, but it really does not belong to you and besides the upbringing they had, it is also the result of how abuse escalates.  

Most victims tend to find happiness because nothing is worse in life for most people than abuse, violence and sadism.

And more often than not narcissists are much more cruel than other kinds of people. However, if your self esteem really has been broken by them it can point to another danger which I discuss in a paragraph below.

But for those of us whose self esteem is not decided by them, we will find happiness. They usually don't because the "puppet fantasy" can never be truly achieved, no matter how hard they try, no matter how many people they try it on. So, they stew in their rages in the silence that they created. 

For those of you whose lives and self esteem have taken a deep dive after a silent treatment, it can be dangerous in terms of mental and physical health, so it isn't just about how these phrases escalate to other forms of abuse, but what it is doing to your body and mental health.

Most survivors seek mental health counseling from therapists. There are therapists who specialize in domestic violence and others who specialize in trauma. 

But as I've said, the silent treatment is not all you receive from narcissists usually. And so the dangers need to be talked about. These phrases are just some signs of danger. This post is about getting the low-down on what these phrases actually mean, and why they are used (mainly for manipulation by the abuser), and what the dangerous outcomes can be.

"you're useless"

Narcissists tend to see people as utilitarian objects or tools. They love you if you are useful to them, and they hate you if you become, or are, useless to them in terms of the agendas they want. 

It is often why they discard people who are caught up in other issues: caretaking a loved one, getting a diagnosis for a terminal or chronic illness, or alternatively when you are caught up in good things in your life like getting married to the person of your dreams (where they often either don't show up to your wedding, or where they show off so that the attention is on them), getting a significant award for an achievement (where they might skip that event too). Narcissists hate it when your attention isn't on them all of the time, which is what narcissistic supply is all about. 

One of the reasons why narcissists have an easy time discarding people is because of the fact that they don't see people much beyond tools and objects for their use. 

If they say they love you, it may mean they love you momentarily, or because you served a purpose for them in getting what they wanted. Perhaps you made a dinner they liked, or you took care of them when they were in the hospital, or you inadvertently bullied someone for them, or you made their ex jealous by your presence, or you made them look good in their social circle by being at the top of your graduating class or getting a scholarship, or you took on a role unconsciously in their life that they felt they badly needed.

As I've said before, roles are extremely important to narcissists, but not to the rest of us (if we are at all enlightened, we see people beyond roles, even beyond the roles of certain jobs and careers). Narcissists don't, not even in their closest personal relationships. They can't separate what they want from other people from who a person is.  

Likewise, very few us use the "You're useless" or "They are useless" phrases when we describe people who aren't doing what we expect them to do, but overt narcissists tend to use the phrase whole lot, even when describing their own children, or a spouse, or an ex-spouse. 

So be careful and be on guard when you hear the "useless" phrase when it comes to describing other people, especially if they are using it in a close personal relationship. Children, parents, a spouse, siblings, and friends are not "supposed to be useful" unless they are gainfully employed by the person using the phrase, and the job description is clear as to what duties they are supposed to perform.

Another tid-bit that goes with this that I think you might be interested in:

A lot of narcissists and especially sociopaths (who believe that people should serve some utility to them even more than narcissists do), is that they will say things like, "I don't like that actor."

Now acting is a job, and usually comes with a lot of education and a long career, and actors are often required to do different parts, even drastically different parts from one film to the next, or one play to the next, and the best of them have to learn to use different accents and perform certain types of body language so that they can "seem" as close to the person they are portraying as possible. 

But if you ask a sociopath what they don't like ("is it the acting styles, the parts they play, their appearance, the roles they are cast in, what they do outside of acting, or is it something else?"), they often can't separate the actor from any of this, even from what the actor does outside of acting. You'll often only get: "I don't like that actress, and I don't want to see anything she has a part in, and that is all there is to it." 

There are better ways to decipher whether you are dealing with Cluster B personalities high on narcissistic or sociopathic traits than asking them what actors they don't like and why they don't like them, but if you want just one more "sign", then this can be "useful" to you in terms of whether they may be narcissists or sociopaths who may, some day, find you as "useless" as the actors and actresses they don't like. 

"You're useless" is not necessarily dangerous on its own (though it can be), but when used in tandem with the next phrases "You're nobody" and "You're worthless" it certainly points to danger. I tell why: 

"you're nobody"

"You're nobody" is a pretty common phrase for domestic violence offenders. And like the rest of the phrases on this page it is also meant to hurt you, and to give you a personal devaluation (where a discard can often follow). Because it is intended to hurt you, and your self esteem, it qualifies as abuse. 

When I did a survey on what abusive parents say to their kids, this was right up there in the "common" category. 

Now why on earth would any parent want to say this to their kid?

And once they start saying it, they tend to say it repeatedly. 

Do they have rocks in their head? No, but they do have blind spots. 

And this is what this phrase is largely about. "You're invisible to me" was part of that survey too, and as far as I'm concerned, "You're nobody" and "You're invisible to me" are too alike to be discounted as not  the same. The meaning here could be put together as "a nobody is invisible, and since you are a nobody, you are invisible to me." 

I would bet, if a researcher wants to take this further, that narcissists who go around telling "loved ones" that they are a nobody (children, siblings, who ever they deem to be "un-useful" at the time they are saying it), are narcissists who give the silent treatment, either interrupt what you have to say or stonewall, who devalue and discard people they are in close personal relationships with, and who use perspecticide and invalidation on their victims. And what I found out is that this is the road that led to estrangement. 

However, it can mean something significantly more dangerous for those of you in a relationship with a partner who abuses, a sibling who abuses or someone who practices elder abuse ... 

So assuming that "You're nobody" is just another phrase for "You're invisible to me, and I don't care what you have to say; I don't care who you are; I don't care what your thoughts and feelings are; I don't care what you have to say to me or what your perspectives are because all I care about is what I have to say and what my perspectives are; I don't care whether I never see you again or not because after all, you mean nothing to me."

A lot of people who are not psychologists and domestic abuse therapists say to "discount" phrases like this as unregulated rage, that maybe they are "stressed out", and that they'll be calm once again, but a lot of domestic violence survivors say that they may get a calm period, but their abusers are right back at it again moments, days or weeks later, and always worse than they were before: more in-your-face, all the way to the most egregious forms of physical abuse. 

Sometimes it is a combination: the perpetrator physically abuses the victim, then goes silent on her, then plays the victim. 

When gleaning forums, it turns out that from all I have seen, "You're nobody" and similar phrases like "You're invisible to me" and "You're worthless" and "I wish you were never born", and "I wish you'd just go kill yourself" and "I'd be better off if you weren't in my life", or "I'd be better off if you were just dead" and phrases in the "general camp" of the three phrases I bring up in this post tend overwhelmingly to be physical abusers.

Parents can sometimes be the exception, but often they aren't. 

The usual escalation process is: verbal abuse, graduating to verbal abuse with emotional abuse, graduating to verbal, emotional and physical abuse, with the physical abuse often starting with pushing and shoving. Since this phrase is "over the top" in terms of verbal abuse, it would stand to reason that escalation is assured. 

Also from gleaning forums and blogs by survivors, abusers often tell you what their intentions are. "You're a nobody" means that they have every intention of making you a nobody, whether you are  wiped out by them in a silent treatment, or wiped out in terms of your voice, or wiped out in terms of punches or murder. 

They are telling you that they want to make you a nobody in their life, to get rid of you in some way. 

I would even bet that these phrases, when used in tandem, point to as many danger signs as assaults to your face, head and neck; it's just more of a preliminary act to physical abuse than the later assaults are. 

"you're worthless"

Again, "You're worthless" and "You're a waste" are pretty similar phrases. Both are meant to hurt, and both are categorized as verbal abuse. 

"You're worthless" is similar to "You're useless" except it is more about shaming than about blaming (usually). "You're worthless" can mean, and often does mean, "You'll always be useless".

"You're worthless" is also similar to "You're a nobody" too. 

"You're worthless" can mean "You're worthless to me" or it can mean "You're worthless to the world", but in domestic violence situations it usually means "You're worthless to me." 

"Waste" is more about something to throw away, and again, I wouldn't be surprised if you receive the silent treatment or a violent type of attack shortly thereafter, whereas "worthless" can mean that they find you not worth anything as far as their agendas go, not worthwhile as far as putting you into a role that satisfies them (whether scapegoat or pleaser puppet roles), or worthwhile as far as their ambitions go. 

When it is said in tandem with phrases like "You're nothing to me", "You're nobody", and "You're invisible to me", I wouldn't be surprised if it put your system into "high alert": a sense of danger, hypervigilance, fight or flight reactions, anxiety, un-surety as to their volatile intentions.

VERBAL ABUSE AND PTSD

Verbal abuse can cause PTSD, especially abuse that is this aggressive and annihilating. 

For now I list symptoms on the bottom of this post. 

The further reading section also has some articles about the effects of verbal abuse. 

THE SILENT TREATMENT AND THESE PHRASES

Some narcissists use these phrases in addition to giving you the silent treatment. And some narcissists just go directly to a silent treatment without giving you these phrases, but they may think of them as they are doing it. The problem is, in terms of safety issues for you, which of these three phrases are they trying to convey, or are they not trying to convey any of them, or are they trying to convey all three? 

The silent treatment (of which "ghosting" and "cancel culture" count) can be have many reasons behind it. However, if they were abusive at the time they gave you the silent treatment, like calling you names, referring you as an animal creature, trying to destroy your self esteem, doing lots of gaslighting (i.e. referring to you as crazy with people you both know, or calling you crazy to your face), neglecting to respond when you try to give them some reasonable solutions (like meeting in a public place to talk out your differences), then the silent treatment has to be considered an escalation of abuse. Once you have received all of these abuses, they are highly, highly likely to keep escalating. There isn't much to do to stop it other than getting help:
- keeping a record with police of any harassing or threatening e-mails, texts or phone calls, and then keeping police abreast of any more threats or harassment, so that they know what is going on and how to intervene).
- getting a good safety plan from your domestic violence center
- getting financial advice if they are practicing financial abuse (something domestic violence centers also usually help victims with in terms of advice and/or shelter) 
- talking to a lawyer
- grieving and healing

Instead of trying to wrap your head around all of the various possibilities in terms of what they are trying to convey in terms of how they see you, and which displeasure they are experiencing, most domestic violence counselors will tell you to go "no contact", usually. The rule of thumb here is if they give you "the silent treatment", you go "no contact". I think if you are in this situation, you'll get that response from most counselors who work in the domestic violence sphere.

This is because with the silent treatment, the kind of safety you have to adopt isn't as clear, so you have to assume the worst.   

If they give you the silent treatment without abusing you, then you can consider other things. But it is still possible they are trying to show you contempt. Or that they just prefer someone else's company. It is always best to seek a safety plan regardless because you never know ... 

The silent treatment is hurtful to most people, and reassuring you that they care, or calling you to find out how you are doing, is what most people do when they "go missing into a period of silence". If they don't have a good, heartfelt response to going silent on you, even when you've reached out a number of times to talk to them, or talk through a problem between you, consider that they have no empathy for you. A lack of empathy usually points to narcissism, sociopathy or psychopathy (lack of empathy tends to go hand in hand with these disorders, in other words). 

And narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths are not safe people to be in relationships with. 

FURTHER READING

Recommended: The Dangers of Verbal Abuse - by Kellie Jo Holly for Healthy Place
excerpt:
     Abusers who have not yet turned to physical violence could be "time bombs" with fuses of unknown length. If your abuser feels that his "normal" verbally abusive techniques are not working, he will probably move into physical abuse to maintain his control.
     Abuse escalates over time. Time spent in abusive situations and relationships cause you to feel beaten down and devastated - but it is never too late to get help.
What could happen if I stay?
     Remember that your abuser benefits from abusing you. S/He gets his way and lives the life he wants to live while you do everything in your power to "make them happy" at the expense of yourself.
     Here are some possibilities of what can happen if you choose to stay with your abuser: S/He could escalate the abuse until he kills you ...

RECOMMENDED: 15 Disturbing Forms of Verbal Abuse in Relationships. The abuser feels more powerful when he puts down his victim. - by Berit Brogaard D.M.Sci., Ph.D for Psychology Today
excerpt:
KEY POINTS
* A verbal abuser may regularly tell the victim they're too sensitive, have no sense of humor, etc., which denies the victim’s inner reality.
* Any form of ordering or demanding is a form of verbal abuse.
* Threatening is a common form of verbal abuse and can either be very explicit or subtle.

RECOMMENDED: Why Verbal Abuse Can Do So Much Damage ("Tough love" and "discipline" are often just rationales for maltreatment.) - by Peg Streep for Psychology Today

My own post: constant insults and criticism (verbal abuse), how to deal with them

Verbal abuse is a dangerous form of workplace bullying - by Thorman Petrov Group Co., LPA for Thorman Petrov Group, Your Ally in Workplace Justice

4 Reasons Verbal Abuse is So Dangerous (and what you can do about it) - by Andrea Zintz, Ph.D.

Why Verbal Abuse Is So Dangerous - by Emma-Marie Smith

EXAMPLES OF VERBAL ABUSE: A Comprehensive 2022 List - by the administrators of Soul-Mate.com

Domestic Abuse - a Help Guide article

“You’re A Useless Man!” – When Men Fall Victim to Domestic Abuse - by Lim Zhan Ting for Family Central

You are NOT worthless - by Lynn for Get Domestic Violence Help 

What's the best comeback/response to "you're useless"? - Reddit question

"We're doing so much for you and you're useless" - How to not get triggered? - a similar Reddit question

People can't use you if you're useless. - a Reddit comment with 46 replies

Russia's Leaders Won't Deal With a Domestic Violence Epidemic. These Women Stepped Up Instead - by Madeline Roache for Time Magazine