Are Empaths and Narcissists Codependent?
How to recognize and end the cycle
Let’s start by defining the word.
Codependency is mutual dependence, the sense that, "I'm not okay unless you are okay". It is the natural, empathic and initial phase of mother child emotional bonding. It is necessary to establish the child's needs for parental presence, provision and protection and the parent's ability to fulfill them. While meant to be ephemeral, without it, a healthy, happy and whole sense of self, or healthy attachment to others is not organically instilled effectively arresting development of healthy independence, or the sense, "I'm okay even if you are not okay".
Independence is the antithesis of codependency.
The most common reactions to unmet maternal needs are either the extreme of demanding they be met, narcissism or, the extreme of giving to others what one lacks themselves. Because the root of it is internal imbalance, it illicits extreme responses from others, causing emotional dysregulating fluctuations between narcissistic and highly sensitive behavior.
Let’s look at how this happens.
can you be an empath and a narcissist?
By definition, narcissists are codependent. As highly insensitive and energetically domineering individuals whose sense of self empowerment comes from draining others to fill their unmet maternal needs, like predators seeking prey they feel others' feelings to know when to seize their demands.
There are healthy and unhealthy or codependent empaths. Empaths, by definition, are a very small subgroup of highly sensitive people HSP or individuals emotionally or physically sensitive to emotions and social situations. Depending on the kind of empath they are, their ability to know what other's feel, why they feel it, and what it means varies. Codependent empaths struggle to distinguish between their own energy and emotions and that of others'. As a result, they attempt to ease the suffering of others even if it causes harm to themselves.
Narcissists and codependent empaths are the extremes of unhealthy attachment, or toxic codependency: one is the bully and the other is people pleasing respectively.
Emotional dysregulation from narcissistic to highly sensitive behavior occurs in codependent empaths when the need to feel safe cannot be satisfied by people pleasing or isolating because they are not allowed or do not have the energy to do it.
Healthy attachment instills independence by encouraging one to find alternative means of need fulfillment, but when development is stunted in codependent behaviors, there are not options. The stress of unmet maternal needs in the codependent empath will demand they be met on the only terms they know, thus being narcissistic.
self regulate emotional state
The empath imposes their sense of codependency or healing of the narcissist to feel healed which never works because their core needs for presence, provision and protection are never fulfilled. And, the narcissist imposes their sense of codependency or devouring the empath to feel satiated never works because their core needs for presence, provision and protection are never satisfied.
Undeveloped independence is injurious to the soul and the healthy self esteem we need to develop reliable intuition. Wounds formed in the codependency phase of mother child bonding maintain emotional dysregulation and nurture mental illness. Instead of the sacred bond it was intended to serve, for narcissists and empaths it is bondage to judgment and condemnation of Mama and the maternal needs she is unable to fulfill.
Whether, it is the narcissistic inner child condemning us for giving too much, or the empath inner child judging us for not giving enough, not allowing the trigger to tailspin into dysregulation is about being aware of the when, why and how of the emotional state being triggered.
Triggers are unhealed wounds.
When healing is reliant on another person, it will always be dependent. Healing independent of another person is self reliant. It is useful to know, narcissists struggle with altruism, collective awareness, or getting out of themselves while codependent empaths struggle with self care and empowerment.
If narcissism was seen as an outwardly, active force and empathy as an inwardly, passive energy, together we can see how the electromagnetic field, or mutually shared triggers from unmet maternal needs, attract empaths and narcissists. This attraction creates it own force field of energy and momentum and because this gravitational field feels powerful is confused with being powerful.
To a narcissist, collective awareness, or using one's personal power to consider the needs of another person first is experienced as excruciating humility, and to an empath personal power, or reclaiming one's true sense of self is experienced as arrogance—until emotions are balanced.
emotional independence
The bottom line is they both exist inside of us. The narcissist inner child is an empath trying to escape being bullied, and the codependent empaths’ inner child is a narcissist trying to get out of people pleasing prison. While a serious quality of life issue for those with HSP and narcissistic traits, it is easy to relate to the need to modulate emotions between these two extremes from time to time.
Narcissists and codependent empaths are attracted to each other because our outer world reflects our inner life. Now that we know better, we can do it!
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