Stay with me.
Okay, Empath and empathy.
When my kids get hurt, I feel real physical pain. When I see someone I care about in pain, "I feel their pain." Not in the Clinton creepy way, but real pain. When my friends attempt to tell me about their latest injury or whatnot, I HAVE to stop them! It hurts.
When I was caring for a friend's sick horse, I could feel the pain come off of her in waves so badly that I nearly left that poor, dear, mare in the field. But I stayed.
I know this is common. There are plenty of moms, sister, daughters and even brothers and fathers that feel this intense empathy.
I felt it for him everyday. I could have never hurt him, because I would hurt just as much if not more so by hurting him.
Every other day he came home telling me of some random though he had through the day. Each time, I had been thinking of the same thing all day.
When he came home tired and weary, I forgot all my own pain and felt his. I would try to ease that pain by comforting him any way I could. As his pain eased, so did mine.
There were a few times where I felt a sudden intense feeling of distress when he was away, so intense I found myself on my knees praying for help. Then, he would come home and say, "We need to talk." I always knew.
You try a custody battle when you feel your spouses pain. It makes it hard to fight.
When we didn't talk or see each other for two years, I suddenly felt as though I was going to die. No really, I felt I had an illness that would most certainly kill me. I even took out a life insurance policy on my with him as the beneficiary so he could raise the children. Even tough it was really probably him, as cancer runs strong in his family.
You can look through every email/text/communication and see a refusal on my part to inflict any unnecessary hurt or harm.
Even after. One day I found myself in the garden, minding my own business while the kids were at Dads. Suddenly, I felt a wave of hatred and anger boiling inside saying, "I'm going to make his life difficult, I'm going to move to where it is hard for him to see the kids." I immediately knew it was not me I was hearing. I had a Gollum/Smeagal argument. "No, I will not move to make things difficult for him. No I will not act in anger. I came to Idaho because the Lord wanted us here. Not because of retaliation or any obscene motive." When the children returned that weekend, they told me their father was moving out of state and intended to take them there. I laughed, then took appropriate measures.
I often wondered if the feelings went both ways.
What if some people feel what others feel, but don't recognize that it's not their own feeling that they are feeling.
I see my child hit their hip on the table, I feel pain, I know it's my child's pain. What if some people never know the pain they feel inside belongs to someone else? What if some people inflict pain on others. They feel the very pain they inflict, but never come to the realization that the pain they feel is empathy. What if they actually think it is their own pain? Such a person would escalate every time they inflict pain, because their personal distress elevates. They don't know the true source, and they don't stop?
A Narcissist Empath? I think it's possible.
Could you possibly train a Narcissist Empath to realize that the pain they feel, is the pain they inflict, and thus, help them give a crap?
