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Thank you all for your thoughts. I am just asking this question for one reason. I am a 45 years old, I do not know psychology, and I just recently noticed some posts on facebook talking about empath/narcissist. I started making some online searches on the internet to know better about these two synonyms. Before that, I just considered narcissist as bad people trying to damage and play you just because they are raised this way.
Now I have different thoughts after I learned about empath/narcissist. So if a narcissist is naturally born this way, they should not be judged because it is not their fault, even though "they think what they are doing is correct and they do not apologize for it and ..."
Same way in the wild life, the leopard wants to eat by nature, that's why it attacks its prey to survive. Narcissists (vampire energies), as they are defined in many posts, tries to nurture themselves by attacking or sucking the energy of other empaths/people so they can survive.
Thank you again for your replies.
OP, empath and narcissist are antonyms, not synonyms. Narcissists generally aren't capable of empathy, or maybe only in very narrow circumstances. Empaths are the opposite; people who are unusually sensitive to other people's emotional states.
Narcissism can run in families. There can be signs very early, not from trauma but just wired that way. Some wiring is really off with true narcissists, the fact that they can't see anything wrong with themselves ever.
Thank you, tamajanq, this is helpful. So if you tell a narcissist they're being rude or condescending, they're not able to acknowledge it? Because they're not capable of perceiving it in themselves? I've noticed, that when some narcissists get flack from people for their behavior, they're puzzled, or they think it's certain people around them, who have taken an automatic dislike to them seemingly for no reason. This is hard to believe, that people don't know the effect they have on others. Is it really possible, they're not being intentionally rude or cruel? How can they have so little self-awareness?
ON another thread, someone explained that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a form of mental illness. This would help explain, why they seem to be so clueless, as to the effect their words and behaviors have on others.
Thank you, tamajanq, this is helpful. So if you tell a narcissist they're being rude or condescending, they're not able to acknowledge it? Because they're not capable of perceiving it in themselves? I've noticed, that when some narcissists get flack from people for their behavior, they're puzzled, or they think it's certain people around them, who have taken an automatic dislike to them seemingly for no reason. This is hard to believe, that people don't know the effect they have on others. Is it really possible, they're not being intentionally rude or cruel? How can they have so little self-awareness?
ON another thread, someone explained that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a form of mental illness. This would help explain, why they seem to be so clueless, as to the effect their words and behaviors have on others.
I think they think of themselves more as people of high standards, particular, special, maybe even spoiled, but not as awful and cruel. If they hurt or offend us they think it is because we don't understand someone like them, or that we are jealous of them.
It isn't treatable so I don't know what you can do with that, whether is a mental illness or not. There is nothing anyone can do to convince them they have a problem so it's a lost cause.
I think they think of themselves more as people of high standards, particular, special, maybe even spoiled, but not as awful and cruel. If they hurt or offend us they think it is because we don't understand someone like them, or that we are jealous of them.
It isn't treatable so I don't know what you can do with that, whether is a mental illness or not. There is nothing anyone can do to convince them they have a problem so it's a lost cause.
Yes I agree with your assessment of a narcissist based on my experience...My mother is a classic narcissist...she has a haughty attitude with people she decides are beneath her status...and no she never will change...and if you try to point out any of her behavior as being less than perfect watch out...she will flip the script and turn it around on you...basically everyone in the family has had to marginalize her which she notices but blames everyone else...she will carry on about how nobody tells her anything...well not ***** Sherlock why would we??? Anyone who has been at her mercy (depending on her financially or physically) lives to regret it. The only person she was scared to pull anything on was my father...he saw what she was but didn't have to experience much of it...he died before he ever had to be dependent on her... I'm sure she would have made his mental or physical decline a nightmare for him...
Links about where children get narcissism from, namely the adults in their lives.
Still, parents' and other adults aren't the only guilty party. The media and especially the entertainment industry is at least as guilty about it as those adults are - if anything, even more so. I'm sure that even back in the 19th Century, before mass media, the local youth culture also exerts influence over a child's mentality, who ends up becoming a teen with that mentality, and often an adult with that mentality - despite everything the parents and formal cultural institutions taught them. If they get negative responses from people they most look up to, then parents and cultural instututions will have little effect on their attitudes - except perhaps 30 years down the road when they finally get a retrospective clue.
I just want to know if empaths/narcissists are born this way by nature or they became empaths/narcissists due to social interactions and due to their history.
Thank you.
I think at the core-it is genetic. And because of the genetic disposition, I think the person seeks out traits that they do not have which would cause these types of pairings.
Thank you all for your thoughts. I am just asking this question for one reason. I am a 45 years old, I do not know psychology, and I just recently noticed some posts on facebook talking about empath/narcissist. I started making some online searches on the internet to know better about these two synonyms. Before that, I just considered narcissist as bad people trying to damage and play you just because they are raised this way.
Now I have different thoughts after I learned about empath/narcissist. So if a narcissist is naturally born this way, they should not be judged because it is not their fault, even though "they think what they are doing is correct and they do not apologize for it and ..."
Same way in the wild life, the leopard wants to eat by nature, that's why it attacks its prey to survive. Narcissists (vampire energies), as they are defined in many posts, tries to nurture themselves by attacking or sucking the energy of other empaths/people so they can survive.
Thank you again for your replies.
Not be judged? Well they should certainly be avoided if you're the empath. Energy vampires are very bad for the well-being of the empathic person. I know from personal experience.
And empath and narcissist are most definitely antonyms, not synonyms.
The so-called "nature vs. nuture" conundrum is a false dichotomy. And trying to assign percentages to each one has no empirical basis.
Issues like this have been discussed by Richard Lewontin, a brilliant evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator.
He points out, rightly so, that natures interacts with nurture, and nurture interacts with nature, so that one can't in any meaningful way separate the the two. Both of them influence and effect each other.
He discusses this in various works, but one is The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment.
Every quality and function we have, is a result of both nature and nurture. The two are inseparable and we would be nothing without them both. Humans have what is perhaps the most flexibility in what they can become, of any species. They say that even sexual interest and function has to be learned as we grow up or it will be missing in us as adults. It is a mistake to try to assign percentages of causation to either our genetics or our environment, as separate elements in our lives.
Still, parents' and other adults aren't the only guilty party. The media and especially the entertainment industry is at least as guilty about it as those adults are - if anything, even more so. I'm sure that even back in the 19th Century, before mass media, the local youth culture also exerts influence over a child's mentality, who ends up becoming a teen with that mentality, and often an adult with that mentality - despite everything the parents and formal cultural institutions taught them. If they get negative responses from people they most look up to, then parents and cultural instututions will have little effect on their attitudes - except perhaps 30 years down the road when they finally get a retrospective clue.
I agree, and I hinted a bit at this with social media, although the issue has always been present to some degree well before this and as you say in the 19th century and before.
There is also the special type of person called a covert narcissist. They don't present like classic narcs at all. In fact, they do appear to have empathy for people and often enjoy helping out. At the core though, they are using the other person's needs as a way to be a martyr, therefore puffing up their own view of themselves.
In my experience, I have the covert narc to be even more dangerous than the overt narc because it is much easier to for them to get into your life.
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