One of the most pernicious trends afoot these days, dwarfing even the aggressive stupidity of superpowers, is the embattled ailment between Narcissists and Empaths. FB is full of it. A wide spectrum of social media touts the means to identify the enemy not unlike the tell tale markings attributed to medieval witches. U tube has one video after another on ‘the signs’ of Narcissism, how the evil one operates, gaslights and turns sour the milk of human kindness. There follows a plethora of advice on how to manage, manipulate, arm wrestle and otherwise defeat the wily Narc in a variety of modern stocks and ducking stools. Most amusingly, an arsenal of information on how to know if you are dating one without the least smidgeon of reflection or inquiry into what the attraction might have been in the first place.
At the other end of the spectrum, in an orgy of self fellating congratulation are the sabre rattling virtues of the mighty Empath, noble, self sacrificing and armed with a check list of how to know if you have sufficiently scaled the ramparts of moral goodness. The list is as nauseating as it is long and amounts to the unholy trilogy of denial, splitting and projection which typify our most primitive psychological defenses, responsible for all kinds of interpersonal and collective tragedies.
When I found myself (see how passively that’s phrased) in a relationship with a malignant narcissist (adjective for extra emphasis) I was so distressed and identified with the victim in the equation that I sought out an analyst and dragged myself to the first session armed with kleenex and… a dream. I dreamed that she (the terrible one) was a broomstick, her face vaguely visible in amongst the besoms, which I was flying up through the night sky. My analyst, bless him, sucked his teeth and muttered, ‘well, you are riding her….and there is something witchy going on’.
What I learned over the next months, most painfully, was far from the noble ideal I had that one day my love, being so pure, would penetrate, transform and save this ungrateful wretch. It gradually became apparent that my endless and devout patience, unstinting affection and spiritual devotion intended to redeem the broomstick woman, lifting the spell which had enveloped her, was itself casting a spell, projecting my own dissociated material on to someone whose misfortune it was to be only too happy to receive it.
I discovered in me an anxiety which needed this unpleasant woman in my life to confirm to myself a much preferred image of who I was, in order to identify all the more fully with the polished and virtuous persona of one whom life had treated unfairly, who deserved better, who labored selflessly for the greater good whilst justifying a belly full of bitterness and riteous victimhood.
With her in my life I could sweep all my neurotic and inferior aspects under life’s carpet and ride high on the inflated fantasy that it was all for some great cause. I was saving her soul. My empathy was a super-power. I was on a divine mission.
The fantasy that you can save someone from themselves is like the first missile in a nuclear war. It can only get worse, engulfing both sides in a folie a deux unconsciously bonded together by the shared belief that they are special, rooted in a conviction of personal power sufficient to arm wrestle the other into submission.
The literature is full of dire warnings about how the vulnerable Empath must protect themselves from burn-out, exhaustion and scamming, forgetting that the compulsive driving force to sacrifice themselves is part of their own psychology. The greater part of this tragedy is not simply that the hapless Empath masochistically dashes themselves on the rocks of Narcissistic impenetrability, but that their efforts actually make their partner worse.
If you give your power away the other will become a tyrant. If you massage the other’s ego they will become inflated. If you project the shadow long enough, to paraphrase Jung, it will appear.
The most difficult thing for the Empath is not the terrible treatment thy receive from their grandiose spouse but to get to the bottom of their own moth-to-the-flame insistence in converting others to their own way of thinking as though life depended upon it and to renounce the delusion that their fierce persistence is an expression of love. The Narc/Empath symbiosis is a contract entered into by both parties to consolidate a delicate psyche and renounce the prospect of growth as a price worth paying for the privilege of staying with the devil that you know.
Both parties profit. The Empath gets to recreate the emotional deprivation of early childhood and polishes the strategy of compliance and goodness s/he used to mediate a loveless world while the Narc’ gets to be cast in the familiar and time worn role of ‘the bad one’ who gets to be looked after by one who will find their lack of responsiveness a challenge rather than a turn off. Both get to consolidate their self structure and both get to identify with an omnipotent variant of their otherwise fragile personalities.
Knee jerk sympathy for the tear stained Empath is to fall into a primitive Orwellian, ‘two legs good, four legs bad’, version of reality. Understanding is hobbled by the naive assumption that the poor misguided Empath is simply loving the wrong person that the situation might be resolved by moving on. Not a few comforters are to be found gnashing their teeth in a fury having listened endlessly to the complaints of the muddled moth who, having been persuaded with great effort to quit the flame upon which their wings were singed, just went and found another one burning even brighter.
Any ‘helper’ must begin by asking, ‘what is the nature of the ailment?’ Incorrect assessment renders all subsequent efforts fruitless. If someone is a poor shopper how did they get that hungry? What pain in themselves is ameliorated by focusing eternally on the wounds of others? How does it serve them to believe that some third party is responsible for and preventing their happiness?
The stumbling block, the rock upon which the Empath is broken, is the gut churning realisation that if the Narc’ did not exist they would have to be invented. The term ‘sado-masochism’ is so useful, even before you unpack it, because it denotes a system of interdependence which is lost when Empaths and Narcissists are considered in isolation. Without the Narcissist the Empath would immediately be stripped of righteousness, would have to take back their split off inferiority and renounce omnipotence. This of course is difficult and painful though it is the end of victimhood and enactment giving rise to an experience of the opposites being an inner phenomenon rather than an outer one, a stony path but one which leads to a disentangled wholeness rather than unattainable perfection.
