Are Narcissists and Empaths All That Different?
The short and unpopular answer? No.
The last dozen years have seen an explosion of attention in popular culture to the relationship of narcissists and empaths. It is often simplified to some sort of fateful pairing, in which the evil narcissist knowingly and maliciously seeks out their “mark”, the poor, defenseless empath, who is then sucked into their vortex. It’s all very heightened and dramatic. There’s a clear villain and victim.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a serious, clinical mental health disorder. The more commonly known, “overt” subtype of this disorder, which features so often in the pop culture story, is described as follows:
Individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder exhibit a grandiose sense of self-importance, need for excessive admiration, and lack of empathy. They may display a sense of entitlement, believe they are exceptionally unique and can only be understood by or associate with an elite few, and/or be preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty, intellect, or ideal love…Limited empathic responses are characteristic of these individuals and the motive behind any seemingly altruistic behavior is to enhance self-esteem.
There is a second subtype, which is the “covert” narcissist:
the vulnerable, “fragile” or thin-skinned, covert subtype is inhibited, manifestly distressed, hypersensitive to the evaluations of others while chronically envious and evaluating themselves in relation to others. Interpersonally these individuals are often shy, outwardly self-effacing, and hypersensitive to slights, while harboring secret grandiosity.
Lucky me, I’ve loved both.
Let’s back away from NPD for the moment, though we’ll loop back around, in order to acknowledge that all of us potentially carry hardwiring for narcissism. As in, a capacity to be fixed over a period of time in a self-centered and entirely subjective emotional and cognitive state.
Narcissism is, in fact, a hallmark of human development. One of the definitions of narcissism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects”. You know who can’t developmentally distinguish self from other? Babies. They’re developmentally awash in narcissism. Does that make them all little, evil, narcissistic masterminds? No.
Who might lend themselves to being labeled little, evil, narcissistic masterminds are toddlers, and if you’ve never raised children and feel horrified that anyone would suggest such a thing, sorry, not sorry.
Toddlers have developmentally advanced to the point where they cognitively understand that there is a distinction between self and other, but often they just don’t care. They are trying to discover the extent of their own power to affect the boundary between self and other in order to understand who they are in the context of their environment. Developing care for and understanding of their impact on their environment, particularly other people, as a result of these power-plays is part of their essential developmental work.
Throwing an epic tantrum can be an example of emotional distress and dysregulation. It can also be an attempt to bend your world to your will, to center yourself exclusively in your environment. Part of parenting a strong-willed child, in my experience, is to acknowledge this self-centeredness and work firmly and tenderly to introduce boundaries and awareness of others. This might be messages like “we don’t hit people or scream at them” or “we don’t break things in anger” or “when you fall out in the grocery store it gives mommy such a headache that she will immediately run for the car, strap you into your car seat, and then stand outside the car crying, so you’re not going to get that thing you want anyway so maybe stop doing that”. Yeah, that happened.
All of us, having grown up as humans, have experienced developmentally appropriate periods of narcissism. It’s in our psychological hardwiring. Now, let’s loop back around to the definition of overt Narcissistic Personality Disorder above. The last sentence reads, “Limited empathic responses are characteristic of these individuals.”
And here’s where we get to the interesting bit. There’s a difference between being empathic and experiencing empathy. Being empathic starts with being emotionally porous, being susceptible to other people’s emotional states. Being sensitive to other people’s emotions, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that you “take on” their emotions. It can simply trigger a cascade of subjective, emotional reactivity. You don’t actually “see” the other person at that point; you are trapped in an emotional firestorm entirely your own. They may have been the catalyst, but you are the fuel.
Some people who would be labeled “empaths” never get past this cycle of porosity and emotional reactivity. It is actually incredibly emotionally narcissistic, albeit passively. This doesn’t mean they’re secretly the covert subtype, just emotionally self-centered.
Empathy isn’t simple emotional porosity. It is picking up on other people’s emotions and actually imagining and attuning to what they are. Both subtypes of Narcissistic Personality Disorder actually display, as noted, empathic responses. Psychologists call it cognitive empathy, being able to know what other people are feeling or thinking. What they lack is emotional empathy, the ability to actually feel what other people are feeling and attune themselves.
Emotional empathy is where empaths end up if they step beyond their own emotional reactivity. But in that heightened, emotionally porous state it is easy to slip back into your own emotional reactivity and then be unable to tell the difference between what is coming from outside and what is coming from inside. It is also, therefore, easy to project your own feelings back onto the people around you.
Who’s the narcissist again?
I’m not actually trying to be glib or blame the victim, particularly victims of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I’ve been one, and it’s devastating. Part of my own healing, however, is understanding that these sorts of relationships are a dynamic between two people. Both people are emotionally porous and, on some level, empathic, and both people are prone to destructive subjectivity; it’s just that the person with NPD is destructive to others while the victim is self-destructive.
There are also plenty of so-called empaths out there who are not involved in relationships with clinical narcissists, and who are, as I noted, trapped in this passively narcissistic (self-centered) cycle of emotional porosity and emotional reactivity. That’s where you end up with people who are emotionally sensitive but often unable to maintain healthy, lasting emotional connections.
The answer to both the Narcissist/Empath dynamic and emotional narcissism in empaths is integrity, specifically emotional integrity. Emotional integrity, or emotional intelligence, involves allowing and acknowledging all of your feelings while working to maintain just enough distance between yourself and your emotions to discern where they come from and how you want to act on them. It may even involve not acting on them at all, no matter how strongly they are felt. It also involves developing emotional boundaries with other people, which, depending on your level of porousness, may involve limiting or eliminating contact with certain people, or periodically with people entirely.
There’s a reason many emotionally healthy empaths are unapologetic introverts. They need to regularly retreat from outside emotional pressures in order to regroup and manage their own internal emotional discernment without influence.
I don’t call myself an empath. The word is so overused in popular culture it makes me uncomfortable. But I have come to appreciate that I am highly emotionally porous to other people and can be self-destructively emotionally reactive. Therapy, constant self-reflection, limiting my social circles, embracing my introversion, and learning to set boundaries have all been part of transitioning from simply being empathic to being able to feel and act with compassionate empathy— understanding other people’s emotions, feeling with them, and taking steps to help.
Are you an empath? What do you feel about all of this?
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Very illuminating and clarifying! Thank you! This is helpful on so many levels. ❤️