Empath/narcissist dynamic

Can 2023 please be the year that we stop viewing every relationship through the narcissist/empath lens?

It’s oversimplified, and I’ve found that the labels often block us from healing. Once we’ve put people into a category, it’s a lot easier to avoid doing our own work.

Before I go any further, I’d like to clarify two things.

1. I believe there are 3 levels of awareness when it comes to narcissist/empath dynamics:

• Unaware of narcissistic traits/empaths/codependency.
• Awake and aware of the dynamics- potentially hyperaware as a means of survival (this is where education can be helpful).
• Healing and ready to experience what comes next. Doing personal work to prevent repeating patterns.

If you’ve found this entry, you’re most likely in the 3rd group. This is who I have in mind while writing it.

2. Validating the fact that you have been victimized can be an important part of a healing journey.

Please SEE the ways in which you are not “good to go,” be with the wounded inner child, etc. ..absolutely, 100 million percent.

Do it as long as you need to, and THEN:

Once you feel strong enough, take RADICAL ownership of what your adult self is participating in, and ask the very painful question of whether it’s getting you to where you want to be.

This next part sounds harsh but can actually be life changing in terms of ensuring you don’t attract the same situation again.

Narcissism and codependency are opposite sides of the same coin.

When we step back and look at the interplay between two people, we find that they both need something from the other one in order to be “okay.” It is functional on some level.

It’s an energetic exchange that goes both ways, and is usually held in place by a cord of attachment (research cord cutting if this resonates).

As Zack Alexander so expertly put it in a recent Instagram reel, when we’re severely under-resourced in our lower chakras, we will try to pull from others in an attempt to access a sense of safety.

It’s not always malicious, intentional, or even conscious- but can feel very draining to the other person regardless.

I’ll be the first to say I’ve been on all sides of this, and that it sucks- and it’s miserable.

The times when I’ve played the “empath” role were also the times I’ve felt the most virtuous and saintly. Aka, the “good girl” program. ..closely related to the martyr program, etc etc.

I felt needed and special, and it was only by addressing that payoff that I could extricate myself from the situation.

The only way out was to BE WITH my own “pain hole,” as I randomly called it during a late night phone conversation a few months ago.

If we do not make peace with our own internal spaciousness, we’ll continue to be susceptible to (functionally) dysfunctional relationships.

The empath/narcissist dance is two empty cups trying to fill each other. It’s not love, it’s need.

It’s inner child attachment wounding trying to get what we didnt get back then- or as Alice Miller so skillfully worded it in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child, a “desperate attempt to re-write the narrative.”

Wow.

Between her, Byron Katie, and Melanie Beattie, they basically had it all figured out by the 80’s. ..”nothing new under the sun” with humans lol (Bible reference).

To conclude, if I could tell my past self one thing it would be: you can’t expect people to place a higher value on you than you place on yourself; and that by participating in a situation you’re allowing it on some level.

This is after living through my own little hell- and taking responsibility for the parts that I unconsciously created.

Okay, that is all for now. Writing this has been simultaneously cathartic and draining, so it’s time to switch tasks.

Quick note in comments section.

💖