Empathic & Narcissistic?

[Anonymous]

Can a person be both?

[Anonymous]

Some fake it well. There is a name for it, I don't recall. There are people big on volunteer work who are narcs. They are also the ones organizing the food chains, etc. It's all about keeping up appearances so nobody would suspect they are monsters behind closed doors. At their funerals people will gush about them, and their victims are left needing therapy for decades to deal with the fact the person they knew is so different from the person they hear about.

[Anonymous]

Yes people with narcissistic personality disorder can experience empathy. Low empathy is a diagnostic criteria but an individual doesn’t need to meet all criteria for a diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can a person be both?

Yes, narcissists can fake empathy. It's something they learn to do from childhood and they become very good at it. It is very convincing, especially with covert narcissists. It's called mirroring.

[Anonymous]

I believe they call them 'covert narcissists' but it's all a spectrum. You're on it.

[Anonymous]

Most people are narcissists to some extent, only very few are clinically narcissistic. You're throwing the term around as if it's one narrow thing when it is not.

[Anonymous]

Yes! Nearly every con artist has to manage both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some fake it well. There is a name for it, I don't recall. There are people big on volunteer work who are narcs. They are also the ones organizing the food chains, etc. It's all about keeping up appearances so nobody would suspect they are monsters behind closed doors. At their funerals people will gush about them, and their victims are left needing therapy for decades to deal with the fact the person they knew is so different from the person they hear about.

+1. This describes our PTA president.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some fake it well. There is a name for it, I don't recall. There are people big on volunteer work who are narcs. They are also the ones organizing the food chains, etc. It's all about keeping up appearances so nobody would suspect they are monsters behind closed doors. At their funerals people will gush about them, and their victims are left needing therapy for decades to deal with the fact the person they knew is so different from the person they hear about.

People attempting to uncover those monsters are targeted in many ways but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Stay strong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some fake it well. There is a name for it, I don't recall. There are people big on volunteer work who are narcs. They are also the ones organizing the food chains, etc. It's all about keeping up appearances so nobody would suspect they are monsters behind closed doors. At their funerals people will gush about them, and their victims are left needing therapy for decades to deal with the fact the person they knew is so different from the person they hear about.

+1. This describes our PTA president.

+1 This describes our former PTA star volunteers, board members AND the president. It also describes two family members.

[Anonymous]

I have known a narcissist who misunderstood empathy. They believed that empathy meant identifying with some aspect of another person's life. So if they knew someone who was starting a new job, they'd compare it to when they were starting a new job and thought they were "empathizing" over the shared experience. But really they were just thinking about their own experience and projecting their feelings/reactions onto the other person. They were big advice givers and they believed their advice must be very good because they had been through "the exact same thing." But generally they'd not really listened past the initial mention of a situation. The rest of their thinking was about themselves.

This person used words like empathy and boundaries a lot because they'd been in therapy and read a lot about these issues. They were fantastic at speaking authoritatively on the subjects and it became part of their narcissistic charm. But the fundamental misunderstood these concepts, or in some cases, understood them but applied them very differently to themselves and other people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have known a narcissist who misunderstood empathy. They believed that empathy meant identifying with some aspect of another person's life. So if they knew someone who was starting a new job, they'd compare it to when they were starting a new job and thought they were "empathizing" over the shared experience. But really they were just thinking about their own experience and projecting their feelings/reactions onto the other person. They were big advice givers and they believed their advice must be very good because they had been through "the exact same thing." But generally they'd not really listened past the initial mention of a situation. The rest of their thinking was about themselves.

This person used words like empathy and boundaries a lot because they'd been in therapy and read a lot about these issues. They were fantastic at speaking authoritatively on the subjects and it became part of their narcissistic charm. But the fundamental misunderstood these concepts, or in some cases, understood them but applied them very differently to themselves and other people.

I'm dealing with a friend (end of the friendship) like this, but she's a licensed practicing counselor. (As a side note, she throws around the narcissist label quite freely, almost as though she doesn't understand the clinical diagnosis).

She calls herself an "empath." But she comes off as a self centered narcissist because her supposed heightened empathy allows her to feel like SHE knows what's right and best for everyone.

I realized that there have been many situations where I feel...gaslit (sorry to use another pop psy buzz word, but it's the best way to describe it) by her telling me things about me and my family that make me feel crappy. And she can dish it out but absolutely can't take it - because she's an empath, she always knows better than anyone else about everything.

I'm probably not explaining it well, but it's a mindfu*#.

[Anonymous]

Yes, many super sensitive people end up narcissists. Narcissism is a response to trauma. If a super sensitive person is raised by someone who hurts them again and again, yes, they can be both empathetic and a narcissist.

All the people with their simplistic view of narcissist are just as monstrous as the narcissist. You're describing human beings with SOCIAL problems as "monsters."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have known a narcissist who misunderstood empathy. They believed that empathy meant identifying with some aspect of another person's life. So if they knew someone who was starting a new job, they'd compare it to when they were starting a new job and thought they were "empathizing" over the shared experience. But really they were just thinking about their own experience and projecting their feelings/reactions onto the other person. They were big advice givers and they believed their advice must be very good because they had been through "the exact same thing." But generally they'd not really listened past the initial mention of a situation. The rest of their thinking was about themselves.

This person used words like empathy and boundaries a lot because they'd been in therapy and read a lot about these issues. They were fantastic at speaking authoritatively on the subjects and it became part of their narcissistic charm. But the fundamental misunderstood these concepts, or in some cases, understood them but applied them very differently to themselves and other people.

Sounds like 90% of the posters on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

For a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, you need to have five out of nine of the symptoms (one of which is a lack of empathy). However, a lack of empathy is not the same as a diminished capacity for empathy, and so most narcissists are going to do very poorly when it comes to empathy.

All that said, sometimes people who are autistic are mistaken for empathetic narcissists.