Empaths And Narcissists

Are you an empath, and do you tend to fall for people with high narcissistic traits? If so, this episode is for you. An empath will find it difficult to set boundaries with a narcissist, considering they feel drawn to healing others. An empath can sense other people's emotions and their wounds. Considering narcissists are very wounded, an empath can get caught up in their false beliefs and misunderstandings. Empaths assume everyone has empathy and would appreciate the compassion of others.

Transcript

Welcome to the breakdown to breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the breakdown to breakthrough podcast.

So an empath is someone who cannot differentiate their feelings from the feelings of others.

This is a beautiful,

Beautiful quality when it is not being exploited by people with high narcissistic traits.

Someone who is an empath oftentimes has come from a home where there has been little empathy for the children of the home.

If you are an empath,

You may have felt growing up that it was your job to save your mother,

Or it was your job to save your father,

Or it was your job to save maybe the siblings of the home.

But there was the sense that you were there to heal other people and to take care of other people.

You're very overwhelmed by the emotions of others,

And it's difficult for you to figure out are these my emotions or are they the emotions of someone else?

When you are an empath,

It's easy to walk into a room and pick up on energies,

And oftentimes you're confused.

You may suddenly feel upset about something but not know why.

I've also coached people who resonate with being an empath and who have said,

I have found myself in relationships with men and or women that I didn't necessarily even like.

It was almost like I could sense that person's attraction for me,

And I ended up in a relationship with them not being able to differentiate my feelings from their feelings.

So they were attracted to me,

And I could feel that.

But when I stepped back,

When I developed the ability to be clearer about boundaries,

And when I was honest with myself,

It wasn't I who was really attracted to them.

If you have high empathy,

If you identify as an empath,

You are someone who feels like it's your duty or you feel naturally drawn to wanting to heal people.

You can sense the wounds of other people,

And it's difficult for you to address this idea that maybe these wounds and maybe this pain isn't yours.

Maybe it's someone else's.

How you interpret it is,

I want to help heal this person.

Like I said,

It's a beautiful quality,

But what happens in relationships that are toxic is that you and your empathy will be exploited by someone who feels more safe and who requires dominance in order to feel regulated in a relationship.

Here are eight signs that you may be an empath.

Number one,

You are easily overwhelmed by the emotions of others.

Number two,

You take on other people's problems literally as if they are your own.

Number three,

You struggle to say no to people that you believe need your help.

Number four,

It's difficult for you to enjoy alone time because you tend to worry about other people's problems.

Number five,

You experience tremendous overwhelming guilt when you do not offer help to someone that you believe needs it.

Number six,

You have a very difficult time setting boundaries with family and friends,

And especially with people that you think need help.

Number seven,

You are shocked when you come to the realization that not everyone operates in the world with the level of empathy that you do.

Number eight,

It's easy for you to imagine what other people feel and to imagine what other people need in order to fix or heal their life.

What happens when someone with high empathy or someone who resonates with being an empath begins to date and or finds themselves in a relationship with someone who is highly narcissistic?

Number one,

The empath will begin to feel overwhelmed by the demands of the narcissistic person.

Number two,

An empath usually ends up feeling like there's nothing they can do right.

Number three,

Your emotions will be dismissed by the narcissist.

Number four,

The narcissist will cause the empath to believe that their emotions are the result of overreacting.

Number five,

The narcissist will resent the empath's desire to heal them.

Number six,

In time,

The empath will eventually discover,

Hopefully,

That this person is narcissistic and that their empathy is being exploited.

Number seven,

The empath eventually leaves and or ends the narcissistic relationship.

When a narcissist pushes an empath too far,

Amazing things happen.

Before we discover ourselves as empaths or those with high empathy,

We think and we believe that everyone is operating in the world the way we do.

We are unaware that not everybody is sensitive to their environment,

That not everybody is sensitive to the emotions and the feelings and the needs and the wants of other people.

It is quite the awakening when an empath begins to recognize this is simply an illusion,

That the way you see the world is not the way that everyone else sees the world.

They don't realize that their empathy will be exploited by predator-type personalities.

They don't believe that people exist that don't have empathy or lack empathy.

It doesn't make sense to an empath that they might be dealing with someone who has high narcissistic traits.

They just think,

I haven't figured out how to say what needs to be said in order for this person who is in pain to hear me.

It's not their fault that they behave this way.

It's their childhood.

This person doesn't know what love is.

That's why they don't trust me.

Once an empath has awakened,

They become a fierce phoenix that is rising up out of the ashes.

They become unbelievably galvanized when they realize that their incredible empathy has been exploited.

Then what begins to happen is the empath begins to finally develop boundaries.

The empath recognizes that if she or he does not protect the self,

There are energy people out there,

Energy vampires that will drain them and drain their light and reduce their light and they will not be able to help other people,

Let alone themselves.

They will not be able to be the healers in the world that they feel that they are if they allow predators to drain them.

And so an empath who has finally had enough is someone who recognizes what's going on finally,

Possibly for the first time.

They become able to see people for who they really are.

They are now able to differentiate predator type personalities from people who are more trustworthy.

Now all of this energy that has been focused outside of them,

Wanting to take care of everyone else,

Wanting to heal everyone else,

Now all of this amazing energy begins to get focused on the inside.

Now as an empath,

We want to heal the self.

A healed empath is a very strong warrior.

This is someone who understands what emotional battle is like.

This is someone who's beginning to understand that just because they see the world in a beautiful way,

Doesn't mean that everybody sees the world in that way.

This is someone who understands that toxic relationships exist.

This is someone who stops seeing the world through rose colored glasses and is more realistic about the potential of being exploited.

This is someone who realizes,

Whoa,

Wait,

I need to take care of me first.

The fact that an empath is a very different energetic being than a narcissist.

So an empath is someone who is a beacon of energy and a narcissist is someone who is a vacuum of energy.

So an empath is giving,

A narcissist is taking.

Eventually,

Obviously,

If you look at it from the energetic perspective,

The empath is the one who ends up feeling drained.

Now many empaths take time to recover and a recovered empath is someone who's figured it out.

It's someone who has found their identity.

It's someone who has found their superpower.

It is a beautiful thing to have empathy for other people,

But not at the expense of yourself.

Not when you don't know how to set a boundary,

Not when you are not able to recognize and differentiate your feelings from the feelings of other people.

Not when you're not able to recognize a narcissist for a narcissist.

If you are an empath,

You tend to be someone who finds themselves in the middle of people who need to be healed and we do need healers on planet earth.

We do need people who have high empathy.

However,

For those of us who feel like we've come here to help heal others,

To help guide others,

We need boundaries.

We need to be able to differentiate our feelings from other people's feelings.

When a narcissist pushes an empath too far,

What ends up happening is that break takes place.

It's like for the first time in our life,

We're able to see how we are different than someone else.

Because up until that time,

We're thinking everybody has the same level of empathy that we do,

And that's just not true.

We seek to heal people.

So we attract very wounded people and oftentimes we attract people who are incapable of wanting to heal themselves,

Incapable of taking responsibility.

So when a narcissist pushes an empath too far,

This is when he or she gets to the end of their rope and they begin to develop empathy for the self.

Now,

Once an empath begins healing the self,

They become a galvanized healer,

In my opinion.

They become someone who now radically loves themselves.

They become someone who understands a boundary.

They become very highly intuitive.

Now,

Because they understand what's going on,

They're so much more able to honor themselves,

Love themselves.

They respect the fact that they're an empath.

They know that this is like gold inside their heart space and they become very protective of it,

Which means now we have wisdom.

So now we're able to recognize when someone is in our experience who is looking to exploit that.

It's a beautiful place to be because now you are in protective self mode.

Now you've developed the boundary to protect the self.

Now as an empath,

You have so much more energy to flow towards people that you are now seeing more objectively,

More clearly,

And through the eyes of wisdom.

Never again will you be fooled by someone who wants to take advantage of your empathy.

You are able to develop such an amazing dose of self love.

You recognize yourself as an empath.

You recognize that this is a quality that allows you to validate,

Resonate,

And help other people see in themselves what they need to heal for their benefit,

For their spiritual advancement,

For their evolvement.

You recognize it as a beautiful quality and you no longer will allow someone to take advantage of it.

So you are no longer worried about what other people think about you.

Now you're worried about you.

Now you are taking care of you.

You become almost like completely immune to negative people's energy.

It doesn't matter to you.

You are not on planet earth to heal people who are not on the planet to heal.

You are not on this planet to help take care of people who don't wish to take care of themselves.

That's not your place.

Empathy,

When it's flowed in the direction towards people who are on the path to evolve and who are self accountable and who are self responsible,

That is when your empathy becomes of service.

And when an empath begins to realize that someone with high narcissistic traits has completely exploited that,

It's a beautiful time because now the empath is taking care of self.

All of the healing energy that you are offering other people,

You're now able to offer it to the self.

When a narcissist pushes an empath too far,

That's when an empath begins to heal the self.

Once the empath comes out of the cocoon,

They become a galvanized strong warrior of love and light,

Not which the likes of a narcissist really wants to tangle with in the future.

Narcissists will fear the healed empath because the healed empath can see through the narcissist.

The empath is no longer willing to be a source of narcissistic supply and the narcissist can sense that even though they're dealing with an empath,

They've met their match.

The empath can see through someone with high narcissistic traits and they're not here on planet earth to make the narcissist feel any less about themselves.

An empath is not here to make anyone feel less than.

An empath is here to be empathic and to help other people learn to have self compassion and self empathy as empathy is the healing emotion.

When a narcissist meets a healed empath,

They want nothing to do with this person who they know has come through the dark night of the soul.

If you're someone who resonates with being an empath,

What you need to do is focus on the self.

What you need to do is to learn to differentiate your feelings from the feelings of others.

What you need to do is to take stock of how often you have found yourself in relationships that required you to walk on eggshells,

That you naturally wanted to heal other people.

Take stock of the people who have taken advantage of you,

See the pattern,

And then at that point recognize that you have a right to take all of this empathy and flow it towards the divine self.

Reviews

What a fabulous talk which was made so easy to understand. Thank you💗

Exactly what I needed to hear. This is so helpful as a life long empath having a narcissistic mother. Thank you.

Great info. Super dense. Will need to hear that again.

🙏🏽

Oh my goodness, I’ve always known I was an empath, but you explained this so perfectly. I’ve been in too many narcissistic relationships, friendships as well. Thank you for opening my eyes to this. I can’t wait to listen to more of your work!! 🙏❤️

Thank you. 🙏

Wow beautiful insights. Thank you Lisa for your empathy, compassion and light. Your teaching and energy is felt in my soul and I love being a student here with you. 🙏❤️💃

Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. Your insight is illuminating and invaluable. This is exactly what I needed to hear this morning bless you. 🙏🏽

i absolutely love how your list of empathic qualities. even in healthy relationships i needed that reminder. thank you 🙏

Helpful to know what the traits are and how powerful we can be and no longer attract those emotional vampires that suck us dry.

Excellent and a wonderful validation of where I’ve come from …now a thrived empath. Narcs avoid me like a plague now, having done wonderful wound healing work and still do when triggered . An empowered empath is a force to be reckoned with. Best place to live at🙏‼️

💃💕💪🧘‍♀️

Thank you Lisa, exactly what I needed to hear today. You and your loving words make me feel supported and loved, by Myself!! Thank you

Beautiful timing. Everything that Lisa said absolutely resonated with what I've just gone through.

Thanks for sharing.