People Who Go Quiet When They’re Hurt

 

Pexel 

They Call It Coldness. 

Psychology Tells a Different Story

You know that person who goes completely quiet when something hurts them? 

The one who says, “I’m fine.” and actually means, “Leave me alone.” 

Yeah, that person isn’t being cold and they’re not broken either. 

In fact, there’s a lot more going on beneath that silence than most people realize. 

If you’re someone who shuts down instead of speaking up, welcome. You’re about to feel very seen because today we’re getting into the psychology of people who go quiet when they’re hurt. The one society calls closed off, but science calls something else entirely.

Here’s what nobody has ever told you. 

That silence isn’t a flaw. It isn’t emotional immaturity. 

According to psychology, what your brain does when you’re hurting is one of the most complex emotional responses a human nervous system can produce. And the fact that nobody ever explained it to you doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It’s quite the opposite. Most people simply don’t have the language for it yet.

When Silence Isn’t a Choice

Let’s start with the thing everyone gets completely wrong about you.

When you go quiet, people assume you made a decision. Like you sat down, weighed your options, and thought, “I’ll just shut them out.” Like it’s calculated. Like it’s a power move. 

But that’s not what’s happening inside you at all, is it? 

When you get hurt, something in your body shifts. It’s not dramatic. It’s almost like a quiet closing. Words become harder to reach. Your chest gets heavy. And the idea of opening your mouth and trying to explain something you haven’t even fully processed yourself feels genuinely impossible.

That’s not you being difficult. That’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. There’s a researcher named Dr. Peter Levine who has spent decades studying what stress actually does to the body. 

And what he found is that the freeze response is just as hardwired as fight or flight.  

It’s not weakness and it’s not avoidance either. 

When emotional pain feels too big to process in real time, your brain pulls the emergency break. It slows everything down to protect you.

And here’s something that blew my mind when I first came across it. 

There’s a region in your brain responsible for producing language. And researchers have found that it actually goes quieter during emotional flooding. 

So when someone is standing in front of you saying, “Just talk to me. Just tell me what’s wrong.” 

And you’re standing there with nothing coming out, that’s not stubbornness. 

Your brain has literally made words harder to access because it’s doing something more urgent, keeping you together.

You’re not shutting people out. You’re holding yourself in. 

And there’s a massive difference.

Where Did You Learn to Go Quiet?

But here’s where it gets even more interesting because this didn’t start recently. 

You weren’t born like this. No one is. Babies scream. Toddlers cry on the floor in the middle of a grocery store without a single thought about whether it’s appropriate. Kids express pain loudly and openly and without apology until something teaches them not to.

At some point, something taught you that expressing your hurt out loud wasn’t safe. 

1. Maybe it was a home where emotions were treated like inconveniences, where you cried, and got told to stop being so sensitive. 
2. Maybe you opened up to someone you trusted completely and they minimized it, laughed at it, used it against you later. 
3. Maybe you expressed that you were hurting and instead of being held, you got lectured or ignored or made to feel like your pain was somehow the problem.

So, you did the logical thing and adapted. You got quiet, not because you stopped feeling, but because feeling out loud kept costing you something.

There’s a psychologist named John Bowlby who basically built his entire career around one idea that the way we learn to handle emotional pain comes directly from our earliest close relationships.

And what he kept finding over and over was that when those early relationships teach us that being vulnerable leads to more pain, our nervous system doesn’t forget that. It files it away. And it pulls that lesson out every single time something hurts.

Even decades later, even with completely different people, your silence is not a character flaw. 

It’s a survival skill your younger self built to protect you. And it worked. It got you here.

The Mind Behind the Silence

And now here’s the part that might genuinely surprise you. 

Because while everyone else sees stillness, your brain is anything but still. 

While the conversation is escalating and emotions are flying everywhere around you, you’re doing something completely different. You’re processing deeply, rapidly, and with a level of thoroughness that most people never apply to their emotional lives.

Researchers actually looked at what happens in the brains of people who go quiet under stress. 

And what they found is that the regions tied to self-reflection, memory, and thinking through future outcomes are significantly more active than average people. Your quiet might actually be one of the most mentally busy states a person can be in.

What’s actually happening inside that silence sounds something like this: 

• Did I contribute to this? 
• Have I felt this before? 
• What is this actually about? 
• What do I want to happen next? 
• If I say something right now, will it come out right or will it make everything worse?

You’re not avoiding the problem. You’re stress testing every angle of it before you say a single word. Because for you, speaking before you truly understand what you feel carries real risk, so you wait until you have something worth saying.

Most people see still water and assume nothing is happening beneath the surface. 

But you know better than anyone that still water runs deep.

When Silence Protects the People You Love

Now, here’s something about you that almost nobody recognizes. And honestly, it says a lot about who you are. Part of your silence is protecting the people you love. If you’re really honest with yourself, you already know this is true.

You go quiet partly because you know yourself. You know what lives at the bottom of that silence when the pain is fresh. And you know that if you open your mouth before you’ve processed it, what comes out won’t be a conversation. It’ll be something that can’t be taken back. So, you hold it. You wait. Not to punish anyone, but because you care enough about the relationship to not blow it apart in a moment of unfiltered pain.

There’s a concept in psychology called the window of tolerance. 

It’s basically the emotional sweet spot where real communication is actually possible. When you’re outside that window, flooded, raw, too deep in it, no real conversation can happen. 

No one can hear anything clearly and nothing productive gets said.

You already knew this intuitively, even if nobody ever gave it a name. That’s why you wait. Your silence, as uncomfortable as it makes other people, is often the most protective thing you know how to do. You’re not avoiding the conversation. You’re waiting until you’re actually capable of having it. There’s a real difference between those two things, even if nobody around you can see it.

What You Actually Need

But here’s the painful irony, and this one stings a little. 

The one thing that would help you open up is almost always the opposite of what you get. 

People push. They follow you from room to room. 

They say, “You can’t just shut me out.” Or, “This is so unfair. Just talk to me.” 

And every single time that happens, it confirms the very thing you’ve always quietly believed. 

That your way of processing isn’t valid. That your emotions are only acceptable if they’re immediate, verbal, and available on everyone else’s timeline.

What you actually need is the hardest thing to ask for. 

Patience without pressure. 

Someone who can sit in the discomfort of your silence and trust that you’ll come back. 

Someone who doesn’t make your stillness about themselves.

And research actually backs this up. 

When people who process emotions inwardly feel zero pressure to perform their feelings on someone else’s schedule, they open up so much more. 

Not because they were forced to, because for the first time it actually felt safe enough to.

You’re not asking people to read your mind. 

You’re asking them to trust you, to believe that the silence is not abandonment, that it’s just how you find your way back. And the people who are actually meant to be in your life will learn that.

When the Words Finally Come

And here’s the thing that’s really worth sitting with. 

The thing that doesn’t get said nearly enough, because you don’t speak until you’re truly ready. 

When the words finally come, they mean everything. You’ve turned them over a hundred times before they leave your mouth. You’ve checked them for accuracy, for fairness, for truth.

You don’t say things you don’t mean. 

You don’t weaponize your emotions to win an argument. 

You don’t throw out accusations in the heat of the moment just to watch them land. 

When you finally tell someone how you feel, it’s not a reaction. It’s a conclusion.

And that is genuinely rare. In a world where people say everything immediately and mean maybe half of it, you say less and mean all of it.

The people in your life who have been patient enough to wait for you to speak know this about you. They know that when you say something matters, it actually matters. There’s no performance, no noise, just the truth you took your time to find.

That’s not emotional unavailability. 

That’s emotional integrity. 

And there’s a difference.

 

Your Silence Is Not Who You Are

And when you put all of this together, something really important becomes clear. 

You go quiet when you’re hurt because your nervous system is protecting you. 

Because you learned early that vulnerability had a price. 

Because your brain processes pain with a depth and a thoroughness that most people never reach. 

And because part of you is always quietly trying to protect the people you love, even from yourself.

You are not cold. You are not manipulative. 

You are not broken or difficult or too much or somehow not enough. 

You are someone who feels things deeply and completely and takes the time to understand them before speaking.

And in a world that rewards whoever reacts the fastest and the loudest, that quiet, careful, considered way of moving through pain will never stop being misunderstood by the wrong people.

But the right people, they’ll learn to sit in your silence without fear. They’ll learn that your stillness is not distance. It’s presence. The deepest, most considered kind.

And one day, maybe not today, maybe not soon, you’ll find it a little easier to let someone in before you figured everything out. Not because the silence was wrong, but because you finally feel safe enough to not need it quite so much.

That’s not a flaw you’re fixing. 

That’s healing. 

And honestly, the fact that you’re here trying to understand yourself better means it’s already happening.

VALENTINA

A Different Look at the Unconscious

In today’s article, we will explore Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious as he presented it in the book Man and His Symbols, which we are currently studying because we have returned to its fundamental concepts. There is great value in revisiting these ideas, even if we already know a great deal about Jungian psychology, because they are the foundation of Jungian theory and can also become the foundation of our own inner work. For that reason, a review is always worthwhile.

Let us remember that the theory of the unconscious is the central foundation of psychoanalysis. Its development marked the beginning of a revolution in modern psychology. That is why Carl Jung’s work is essential for understanding it, and that is precisely what we will do in this article.

Let us begin with the following quotation:

Anyone who denies the existence of the unconscious assumes that our present knowledge of the psyche is complete. And this belief is clearly just as false as the assumption that we know all there is to know about the natural universe. Our psyche is part of nature, and its enigma is as limitless. We cannot define either the psyche or nature. We can merely state what we believe them to be and describe, as best we can, how they function. Apart, therefore, from the accumulative evidence supplied by medical research, there are strong logical grounds for rejecting statements like “There is no unconscious.” Those who say such things merely express an age-old “misoneism” — a fear of the new and the unknown.

By the middle of the last century, when Jung wrote these words, there was still widespread ignorance about the unconscious, along with considerable denial of its existence. Today, the unconscious is a much more widely accepted theory, but at the time the work of Jung and Freud was heavily criticized, even within academic circles.

It was not merely the arrival of a revolutionary theory that was difficult to believe. It also challenged humanity’s image of itself as rational, conscious, and fully in control of its actions. Freud’s famous statement that psychoanalysis represented the third great “wound to human narcissism” captures this idea well. For Jung, however, it was simply misoneism, an aversion to, rejection of, or deep fear of novelty and change.

Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing that although the theory of the unconscious is now widely accepted, we still live as though the unconscious did not exist. This is partly because our way of life and our culture seem designed to make room only for the dominance of consciousness, without truly recognizing how little conscious control we actually have over ourselves. Our lifestyle is far from being adapted to that which remains in the darkness of the psyche and quietly influences us.

On the other hand, the comparison between our ignorance of the mind and the vastness of the universe is remarkably accurate. Like the cosmos, the mind remains profoundly mysterious and largely unknown, even after centuries of scientific progress and discovery. There are still unanswered questions such as why anything exists instead of nothing, what came before the Big Bang, whether the universe is infinite, whether there are other universes, and whether there are other forms of intelligent life.

Likewise, the psyche remains largely unexplored despite the advances of psychology and neuroscience. We are still far from fully understanding what the mind is, how consciousness arises, and why a collection of biological processes can give rise to a subjective experience of the world. Yet what is even more complex and paradoxical is that the mind is the very instrument we use to understand the mind itself, while that same instrument remains, to a great extent, unknown to itself.

The outer universe can be studied through telescopes, particles, and physical measurements, but the inner universe presents a unique difficulty because the observer and the observed are part of the very same phenomenon. In other words, the mind is trying to understand itself, much like attempting to see our own eyes without the aid of a mirror.

Yet these very limitations of consciousness, this inability to grasp the full extent of our own nature, are themselves one of the strongest arguments for the existence of the unconscious. The fact that we cannot fully comprehend our own psyche reveals that there are dimensions of ourselves that remain beyond our immediate awareness.

What Is Our Unconscious, Really?

In alchemy, the prima materia and the stage of nigredo symbolically referred to the exploration of an unknown dimension within the human psyche.

Carl Jung goes on to say something that helps us better grasp what the unconscious is:

If we listen to a continuous note that is just at the threshold of hearing, the sound seems to stop at regular intervals and then begin again. These fluctuations are due to periodic decreases and increases in our attention, not to any change in the note itself. But when something slips out of our consciousness it does not cease to exist, any more than a car that disappears around a corner dissolves into thin air. It is simply out of sight. And just as we may see the car again later, so we come across thoughts that we had temporarily lost.

I like this passage from Jung because it makes it possible to understand the unconscious from a much simpler perspective, one that moves away from the idea that the unconscious is merely “something hidden.”

The absence of something from our conscious awareness certainly does not mean that it has ceased to exist. It simply means that consciousness has a limited capacity to keep certain contents in the foreground of attention. We cannot pay absolute attention to everything at the same time, so some stimuli naturally move into the background.

According to Jung, something similar happens with certain psychic contents. A thought, an emotion, a memory, or an inner image can disappear from consciousness without being destroyed, remaining beyond the threshold of our attention. All of this demonstrates that the psyche contains far more than what happens to be present in consciousness at any given moment.

Thus, the unconscious refers to everything that escapes our attention and focus, disappearing from the field of consciousness while continuing to exist. Yet the unconscious can also be verified in the opposite direction, through the emergence of new contents. 

That is why Carl Jung says:

Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, new contents, which have never yet been conscious, can also arise from it. We may have, for instance, a feeling that something is about to enter consciousness, that “something is in the air,” or that we “smell a rat.” The discovery that the unconscious is not merely the storehouse of the past, but is also full of germs of future psychic situations and ideas, led me to my new approach to psychology. There was much controversy over this point. But it is a fact that, besides memories from the remote conscious past, completely new thoughts and creative ideas can also arise spontaneously from the unconscious. Such thoughts and ideas have never before been conscious. They grow from the dark depths of the mind like a lotus, and form a most important part of the subliminal psyche.

Jung argues that the unconscious is not merely a place where forgotten contents or experiences that slip beyond our awareness are stored. It is also a creative source of new psychic contents. In other words, the unconscious is not merely an archive of the past, but an active force that constantly participates in shaping our mental life.

This would explain why our psyche, like our body, undergoes a series of transformations throughout life. It is not only our personal experience that shapes the mind, but also an inner natural process with its own functions and inherent creative capacity.

This idea also helps us better understand creativity. 

You have probably read that many creative people describe their best ideas as arriving unexpectedly. 

A melody suddenly appears in a musician’s mind as inspiration. 

A solution emerges after a problem has been set aside. 

A writer discovers an image or a sentence that seems to have arisen spontaneously. 

Even many of history’s greatest scientific discoveries came to their discoverers in the form of sudden revelations.

For Jung, not only do all these things arise from the deeper layers of the unconscious, but we also carry within us something like a library containing the accumulated wisdom of humanity, known as the collective unconscious. 

Carl Jung says the following, which is important for understanding how the Swiss analyst came to formulate the idea of the collective unconscious:

…we find that many dreams present images and associations that are analogous to primitive ideas, myths, and rites. These dream images were called by Freud “archaic remnants” a phrase that suggests they are surviving psychic elements in the human mind from ages long ago

The psychoanalyst is referring to what he later called the collective unconscious. 

The symbols that appear in dreams, along with associations analogous to primitive ideas, myths, and rituals, would be expressions of a layer of the mind that lies far beyond our conscious awareness.

Throughout his long career as an analyst and psychiatrist, Carl Jung observed that some of his patients’ dreams, fantasies, and even visions pointed back to ancient symbols. Moreover, through his extensive study of mythology, religion, and alchemy, he found that these symbols appeared over and over again, even among cultures and religions that had no connection with one another. This led him to the realization that such symbols did not come solely from the outside world, but also emerged from the deepest layers of the human mind.

Freud called these images “archaic remnants,” intending to suggest that they were psychological residues inherited from humanity’s distant past, a kind of survival of primitive ways of thinking. 

Although Jung found this idea interesting, he disliked the term because calling them “remnants” suggested that they were merely leftovers from the past, like psychological fossils stored in the mind without serving any purpose, when in fact they played an active and vital role, as we will see in a future article on archetypes.

For this reason, Jung later says the following, with which we conclude this article:

There are no “dead” or meaningless remnants. They still function, and they are particularly valuable (as Dr. Henderson shows in the next chapter of this book) precisely because of their “historical” nature. They form a bridge between the ways in which we consciously express our thoughts and a more primitive, more colourful and pictorial mode of expression.

This confirms exactly what we have been saying.

These “archaic remnants” are still alive and continue to shape our psyche. 

If they appear again and again in dreams, myths, religions, and great works of art, it is because they continue to serve an essential psychological function and are not merely “leftovers,” as Freud’s terminology might suggest.

Finally, if the meaning and function of symbols were still unclear, Jung explains here that they unite two worlds that normally remain separate. 

On the one hand is rational consciousness, where we think through concepts, definitions, and logical reasoning. 

On the other is what he calls “a more primitive, more colourful and pictorial mode of expression,” which is nothing less than our deepest nature, the patterns of human behavior engraved into our very genes.

Juan Duran

The Strange Attractors

denko3d

 You are stuck in a moment and 

you don't know why. 

Can neuroscience help?

Lots of the time, you may act as though you were our own worst enemy.

No matter what, you always feel as though people don’t like you.

You keep falling for the wrong person.

You always feel the need to fix. Or be fixed.

Expecting always too much from people and ending up disappointed. Expecting always too little, and ending up disappointed.

You know that wrath and anger are bad for you but when the situation presents itself you become convinced that anger is the only possible reaction.

You know that overthinking is making your life miserable, yet your mind stays relentless.

You want to chase your dream but end up going for the safe option over and over again.

You sabotage the good thing going even though you objectively know that you are every bit as worth it as anybody else in this wide world.

You always end up playing the same game with others. Which one are you the victim, the rescuer, the persecutor?

You understand that asking for help is OK. You even recommend it to others but you still somehow can’t do it yourself.

You know it is not good for you to eat that much, drink that much, [ ?] that much (insert your favourite sin), yet you continue doing it (and hating yourself for it).

It just never stops. Old habits die hard and the self-loathing is never too far.

Why this happens? 

Why are we so often and so obviously working against our best interests? 

It is one of biggest mysteries of human nature and one that the modern neuroscience science is only starting to shed a light on.

But let’s stay with the phenomenon and the feeling for the moment. 

If we see life and every little decision we make that leads us to where we are and also include all the other things and events in life, big and small that all converge into coalescing a certain state of mind, and certain familiar train of thoughts and feelings that arise or erupt as paths we take on a multidimensional graph converging towards always the same point - that old feeling, that old unhelpful action, that habitual behaviour we resent yet still perform.

In other words, no matter what the starting point, we end up in the same position - it is like a there is a local black hole in the space of experience, cognition and decision making - and it is as though its gravitational pull is virtually inexorable.

I call these irresistible pulls, like the ones I describe at the start, the strange attractors.

Strange Attractors

Now forgive me for intentionally introducing this psychotherapy and science faux-ami. I totally know I am doing it.

For a strange attractor is formally defined concept in the dynamic of complex systems - you might be familiar with it from physics or mathematics of complex systems and the chaos theory.

Heads up, you don’t need to know about physics and mathematics to follow the rest of the thread of this piece. I think the ideas are intuitive.

Essentially, while a stochastic (random) system might seem to operate at random, because of the underlying laws, some seemingly stochastic (random) systems tend to evolve towards a specific set of states, no matter what are the starting points. These states, to which the system converges, are called the strange attractors.

If I want to be more precise, the attribute strange is assigned to those attractors that do not have simple and regular forms but are rather irregular or fractal in nature - for example see one well known attractor called the Lorenz’s attractor below. But you can ignore this for out intents and purposes here.

I am both wildly incompetent and perfectly comfortable with making this makeshift and perfectly outrageous marriage between the theoretical physics and psychotherapy practice. The important thing is - I am using it as a METAPHOR. But an interesting one to use to think about the phenomenon at hand. Sometimes the use of the right metaphors can go a long way.

Why am I bringing the funky geometrical shapes into the conversation about the mental states and the habits of our mind (that we would rather not have)? I will try to give an answer now.

Is a Mental State A Point in Some Space?

One beauty of mathematics is its abstraction. What that means that it can model everything. Mental states included.

So think about how you are feeling just now. Include in that your feelings, things that you think about currently in your inner life, the kind of atmosphere that prevails internally. The ideas and facts from life that dominate in that inner landscape. The people that occupy it and what is the tone that they add into that mixture of an internal state. Include into this how much energy you feel you have, what is the overall state of your body. And anything else that seems relevant.

All of those things provide different coordinates in a multi-dimensional space (I don’t really know how many dimensions we should be talking, but certainly more than two or three) - and we find ourselves in one point of that space at any moment of time.

The assumption I am making here is that there is a link between that state configuration and the state configuration of the brain in that moment - at least in some ways.

In the end of the day, if we always end up feeling the same feeling, coming to the same conclusion, making similar behavioural decisions, it is because there is a aspect of the brain that wind up in the same state - feelings, decision making, thoughts are all a brain states, after all - or at least a portion of a state of the brain in a given moment of time. 

These states are not universal of course, although some element of it might be, but generally are relative to the specific context of each individual, with its idiosyncratic history, cultural context, initial wiring and genetics and probably some other factors I am forgetting here. All these elements are our priors. For our priors are serving as gauge against which all the decisions, positions and what we wind up feeling and doing are calibrated, on the light of new experiences.

And some priors or set of priors carry much more weight than others. 

1. For many people, the culture they grow up in is a strong prior. 
2. The relationship with the primary caregivers is likely a strong prior. 
3. Some other experiences - a strong emotional experience or a traumatic one is likely to shift the priors. Others yet might carry less weight but still count.

I write a little more about this stuff here.

To use geometry and the chaos theory to model brain states is of course not mine. I want to point here to one paper that gives an overview of how these brain states could be linked to mental states. There will be many others.

Remember, here, I am mostly using it as a metaphor.

Settling in the Local Minimum

The main idea to remember here is the following: 

That when it comes to some complex systems the following occurs: 

No matter what the starting point is, you end up in the same place. You end up in that strange attractor.

I use the strange attractor to as a metaphor for all those instances - so common (ubiquitous?) in therapy presentations - of mental states or behaviours that we so often seem to gravitate to, often times despite our better judgment (as illustrated in the beginning).

One way to represent this is using the idea of peaks and valleys on a graph (or indeed 3D graph as on the previous figure). Once in the vicinity of a valley the ball will roll into the bottom of the valley, regardless of its starting position.

When we think of those inexorable traits, behaviours and maladaptive decisions from the beginning - it is like no matter what we say to ourselves, what we rationally decide or how different this situation is from a previous one, we end up feeling the same way. We are like that little red ball.

From Metastability demystified — the foundational past, the pragmatic present and the promising future

This is still, at this point a metaphor, as I don’t know what is the space in which this landscape exists and what is the specific process by which our brain decides to go down the valley slopes into an already well known state.

I really want to emphasise the exploratory nature of this idea and a huge amounts of epistemic humility that I hold here, while still wanting to advance a hypothesis about different types of psychological stuckness.

Two really important questions immediately stand out for me:

1.Are these local minima attractor states glitches in the system, a design feature or the necessary trade-offs of system design (the most likely scenario IMHO)? In the end of the day, any biological system has finite resources when it comes to space, energy and other biological devices for implementation.

2. Can we hack it?

Yes, and the two points might be interconnected as the answer to the number 1 might help us think about how to do the number 2.

Escaping the Attractor: 

What Would Need to Happen?

Now, what this out of left field appropriation of concepts theoretical physics has to do with anything psychotherapy?

Obviously, in my mind it has EVERYTHING. Now, I don’t know how much it translates? 

Also, to fully give you an answer to that question you will have to give me a bit of time (in another essay).

To do this, I will likely have to venture into how brain makes decisions. 

Decisions tainted with emotion, decision that go against our better judgement. 

Decisions in different contexts. 

All in hope to get some ideas as to how to jolt the system, destabilise it, so it escapes its strange attractor.

Am I saying that the neuroscience has solved all the questions necessary to do that? 

No. But, I do think we are starting to know some things that can be used here especially when it comes to understanding how the brain assigns value in different social context, peer pressure and what our value system is.

So to recap:

Old habits of the mind die hard, and we end up going into same habitual states - similar feelings, behaviours, conclusions about life and others - even if those do not necessarily match the objective reality AND are not in our best interest

Being in the same affective, behavioural etc state is likely to be underpinned by a similar neural state

The brain is a complex system

Physics knows about laws of complex systems and why some of them converge to specific attractor states while they seem random

Ana Lund

 

Narcissist and Empath Relationship

 

When an empath 

should work on 

healthier dynamics and 

when to leave

Empaths often end up in exhausting relationships with narcissists, who take advantage of their kindness without giving much in return. If you’re feeling drained and constantly giving without receiving, it’s important to recognize the signs of narcissistic behavior, such as manipulation and lack of empathy. Remember, you deserve a balanced, healthy relationship. Therapy can help you heal and build better relationships in the future. You deserve to be valued and respected.

The Difference Between Empaths and Narcissists

• A narcissist will often focuses only on themselves and use others to get what they want. 
• An empath feels other people’s emotions deeply, which can make them easy targets for a narcissist’s manipulations.

Empaths are people who are sensitive to the energy and feelings of other people. 

For example, if someone who is an empath listens to a story of something traumatic, they may more easily experience the emotions of the person telling the story and absorb these energies, sometimes leading to feeling drained. 

Someone narcissistic is nearly the opposite. 

They are not sensitive to someone else’s experience. 

Narcissists tend to be focused on how others’ stories can beef up their self-esteem. 

Where an empath might state something like, “that experience must have been so hard for you. I can imagine you’re still struggling,” a narcissist might respond with, “I went through something similar but much more intense and I got through it just fine.” 

Empaths and narcissists often end up in relationships together. 

Some people may not have the bandwidth to navigate a person’s behavior that doesn’t involve empathy like a narcissist’s behaviors might be. However, an empath may excuse insensitive behavior by over-empathizing with the low empathy person’s experience. 

For example, the empath can understand through a lens of empathy that the narcissist had a hard childhood, and that’s why they act this way. An empath is often willing to meet the narcissist’s needs over their own based on this connection with the narcissist’s difficult childhood. 

While understanding and compassion are an empath’s strengths, a narcissist is good at picking up on others’ insecurities and using them to feel better about themselves. 

A narcissist will toy with an empath by using their insecurities against them and then turn around and use those same insecurities to get closer to the empath again. 

For example, a narcissist who has figured out an empath’s insecurity of being perceived as mean might say something like “how could you have done that to me, you knew it would hurt me, and you did it anyway” resulting in the empath begging for their forgiveness. 

Later, the narcissist will turn around and say something like 

“You really are the nicest person, you go out of your way for me all the time.” 

This last statement has two purposes: 

• one, to rope the empath back in after making them second guess how the narcissist perceived them, and
•  two, to set them up in the future to ask the empath for a favor and for the empath to jump on the opportunity to be perceived as nice. 

Some narcissists keep empaths holding on by giving breadcrumbs of fiend progress (see below for description) and love bombing. Narcissists don’t always use this behavior to be nefarious. Still, they lack the skill to take ownership of their less than ideal behaviors or to have insight into how their actions are affecting others.

 

What a Narcissist and Empath Relationship Look Like:

In relationships between empaths and narcissists, empaths often feel drained because they care deeply, while narcissists take advantage without giving back. This creates a one-sided, unhealthy dynamic.

Will has been with Chris for about seven years, and they live together. 

Will has a high-paying job as a CEO of a well-established company, and Chris works as a music instructor and would be struggling financially without Will taking care of the majority of the financial obligations between the two of them. 

Will knows he has this power over Chris and will love bomb him whenever Chris confronts him about his infidelities and cruel behavior. He will take Chris out to expensive dinners, take him on shopping sprees, pay off his debts, etc.

Will has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and is particularly callous. While some narcissists may engage in these processes without awareness, some do have awareness and have impaired empathy to the point of believing their needs matter more than others. 

On the other hand, Chris is an empath. He has the strength to be understanding and forgiving but these strengths can be a double edged sword. It’s hard to imagine someone wanting to take advantage of Chris’s attributes. Chris grew up in an abusive household and has seen the addictive cycle of abuse. Because patterns repeat themselves, Chris is hardwired to seek an abusive dynamic since it’s what was initially presented to him as the norm for relationships. 

The cycle of repeating patterns can be addictive because the participants keep chasing the high of reconciliation and the comfort of familiarity. 

Chris caught Will reaching out to multiple men to meet up. Will explained that he was “too scared to commit” and this was just due to him “fearing being hurt.” Chris, being the empath in the relationship, forgave Will due to empathizing with Will’s proclamations of being too scared to love. What Chris doesn’t know is that Will feels no remorse for his behavior. He knows what to say to inspire empathy in Chris. This, combined with the comfort and familiarity of the highs and lows of a toxic relationship that Chris experienced growing up and now has in his relationship with Will, make it very difficult for Chris to leave. 

The repeating of patterns and seeking reconciliation is a common addiction for people in toxic relationships in general.

Will has no intention of changing his behavior. He feels entitled to have his cake and eat it too, so to speak. He craves narcissistic supply (ego boosting people) to regulate his self-esteem. The more people Will has to admire him, the better he feels about himself. 

Will’s trajectory: love bomb Chris to a place of security within the relationship and then hide his cheating better. 

Chris’s trajectory: aide Will in feeling secure enough to love and be in a committed relationship.

Common Tactics Utilized by People with Narcissism

Fiend Progress

Fiend progress is when a narcissist pretends to be working on themselves and may even go to therapy. However, this is just to keep the empath remaining hopeful that they will change their behavior. An empath often has a hard time giving up on someone and wants to believe that their compassion will heal the narcissistic individual. Often when an empath confronts a narcissist with their bad behavior, they can be met with rage and accusations that the empath is not recognizing all the effort they are putting in. Therapy can be used as proof that they are taking the empath seriously. However, pay attention to how many sessions the narcissist actually keeps, how they talk about the process of therapy (“my therapist said xx but I already knew that” vs. “I always have something new to reflect on after my therapy sessions”), and if true change is occurring.

Gaslighting

Narcissists are eloquent with how they speak and what they choose to share and not share. Overtime, their chosen words and messages disrupt your trust in yourself. They may misdirect you or say you’re overreacting to something that threatens their self-esteem. They are good at manipulating others into thinking you’re the problem. Unfortunately, this can even happen in individual and couple’s therapy. A fooled couples therapist may unknowingly collude with a narcissist in gaslighting you. Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic narcissists use to make you question your reality so that they can assert theirs. 

Love bombing

Another manipulative tactic is love bombing, which is where the Narcissist will replace actually working on the relationship with excessive gifts and compliments. The compliments and gifts are more “proof” they have of treating you “well.”

Characteristics of an Empath/Narcissist Dynamic

1. Narcissist’s disregard for their partner’s feelings or needs
2. Manipulation of the empath
3. Empath loss of identity
4. Empath feeling constantly anxious
5. Narcissist requiring immediate commitment and affirmations of I love you early on in the relationship
6. Circular arguments that have no resolution
7. Testing of the empath’s boundaries
8. Empath giving excessive excuses/rationalities for their partner’s behavior
9. Empath hiding instances of abuse from friends
10. Narcissist playing the victim and projecting bad behavior
11. Empath internalizing blame

Questions for an Empath to Ask Themselves:

1. Is there an imbalance of power?
2. Do I feel a sense of urgency to help my partner? 
3. Do I feel a sense of urgency to get my partner to see things differently or treat people nicer? 
4. Are my friends and family saying one thing about my partner that I have to excuse or defend? 
5. Do I often make excuses for their poor behavior?
6. Do I feel put down but can’t pinpoint examples?
7. Have I been love bombed?
8. How long am I willing to put up with bad behavior with no progress?
9. What is my general quality of life now in this relationship versus before when I was not in this relationship? Has my quality of life changed in a way that I am happy with? (Example, I have my debts paid off but I’m depressed and anxious all the time.)

Questions for a Narcissist to ask Themselves

1. What is motivating my behavior?
2. Would I want my partner to do to me what I am doing to them?
3. How would I feel if they engaged in my same behaviors?
4. Is my bad behavior worth losing someone I care about?
5. Do I relate to the narcissist in the example above?
6. What is the point of a relationship?

Establishing a Healthy Dynamic

If you identify with the empath in the examples from above, go at your pace not your partner’s. If you feel anxiety or pressure to move quicker than you want to, slow down. Trust and love is built over time. The feelings you have in the beginning are passion but not complete love. According to Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, complete love includes commitment and intimacy along with passion. You never need to give more than you are given in a relationship. In general, there should be a balance of give and take. To gauge and maintain a healthy give and take in a relationship, try the exercises below.

Exercise:

Imagine your needs and your partner’s needs on either ends of a continuum. Your concern with your needs and the other person’s needs should be somewhere in the middle of this continuum. Try to pinpoint on this continuum where you are in terms of whose needs you are currently focusing on.

Your needs <————————————-*—————————————–>Their needs

Your focus may vary at times and not always be even. You may lean toward your own needs or the other persons at various times. However, if your concern is 75% to 100% focused on the other person’s needs over your own needs for an extended period of time, this can feel lopsided and lead to unhealthy dynamics in a relationship.

Protect Your Energy

As an empath, you may be more at risk for having your energy drained by the toxicity of the empath/narcissist dynamic. There are several ways in which you can reserve your energy and be mindful of when you exert it. Here are a few exercises to protect your energy: 

1. Meditation:

Imagine a white light in the center of your chest. This white light represents protection from negative energy. Imagine this white light getting bigger until it is a halo of white light surrounding you, protecting you. Try to hold this image of a protective white light surrounding you for 5 minutes. Repeat whenever needed.

2. Demand a Fair Fight:

Don’t give in to matching unhealthy behavior. This only gives them ammo; proof that you are the bad one. Practice fair fighting rules (see below). If they refuse to engage in a fair way, walk away.

Fair Fighting Rules:

1. Ask yourself why you are upset
2. One topic at a time
3. Use compassionate, understanding language instead of degrading language: “I can see that this is really hard for you…”
4. Use “I” statements: “I feel degraded when I hear you saying…” “From my perspective, I think you’re being unfair about…, which leaves me feeling voiceless.” 
5. Take turns speaking
6. Communicate the need for a pause in the discussion. Let the other person know how long of a pause you need, and then follow up when the length of time is done instead of just stonewalling: “I am feeling really activated in this discussion and can feel myself shutting down. Can we take a 30 minute break for me to reset myself?”
7. Stay calm in your tone of voice without raising it or mumbling.
8. Take a time out if the argument is too heated
9. Attempt to compromise
10. Repeat back verbatim (the best you can) to the other person, without inputting your opinion/thoughts, what you’re hearing so they have the ability to correct something that they didn’t know came across in a certain way 

If you find that you are the only one making a genuine effort to fight fairly, this is something to take careful note of.

3. Establish Boundaries

A narcissist tends to push other people’s boundaries and limits to serve themselves, which is why it’s so important to hold strong on your boundaries to protect your energy. When you feel your physical or emotional space invaded, your emotions becoming escalated, or your energy drains, these are indicators to set boundaries or remind your partner of the boundaries already set. 

Boundaries should be something that you are in control of, not something you need from the other person. Below are examples of boundaries you may need to set in your relationship with a narcissist, and examples of what is not a boundary. 

  

  

Healthy boundary you are in control of

•   I will not own my partner’s emotions
•   I will leave the situation if I do not agree with the behaviors I’m witnessing
•   I won’t accept excessive gifts or gestures after we get into a fight
•   I am not going to stay in a relationship or conversation where I constantly feel put down

  

  

Boundary that relies on the other person and is not in your control

   Don’t put your emotions onto me

  I need you to be nice to my family

  Do not buy me gifts as a makeup to our fights

  Do not critique or hold me in contempt

  

  

4. Lean on your supports 

Your friends and family care about you and want you to be safe. If you have concerns or start to question things in your relationship, try not to isolate yourself and share these concerns with loved ones. Practice leaning on a safe person for support. If more than one friend or family member is concerned about your relationship, take their observations into strong consideration.

Your loved ones may have insights that your empathy blinds you to. They may see something as abusive where you see it as a response to something deeper your partner is going through. If the person you are in a relationship with has severe Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), is being abusive, and has not shown any genuine interest in changing despite multiple chances, it might be necessary to leave. If you decide to leave someone like this, you may need to go no contact. They know how to lure you back in and any amount of contact puts you at risk for being drawn back in. 

5. Leave if You Need to 

In cases where a person has moderate – severe Narcissistic Personality Disorder, change would be unlikely without intensive, frequent therapy that they are fully committed to. Given the nature of narcissistic personality disorder, this commitment is unlikely. You do not have to endure abuse for any reason. Most times, no contact is the best way to move on and heal from narcissistic abuse. If your partner knows how to manipulate you, they will always need another explanation or to see you one last time. Say your peace and block. If you have already given them an explanation and an understanding that you are leaving, you don’t owe them anything else.

6. Psychotherapy

Therapy can be helpful in recognizing an imbalance in a relationship and giving unbiased feedback to situations. Therapists can aid in maintaining boundaries and additional exercises to care for yourself, like self-talk and self-compassion, and have a healthy relationship. They can also help you recognize the warning signs of someone who might mistreat you.

It often takes a long time to fully heal from narcissistic abuse. It’s important to give yourself that time. If you and your partner have gotten to a healthier place in your relationship, you may still need time to heal from the past experiences the two of you had. If you decide that the relationship is irreparable and your partner won’t change, you may choose to break up. It’s a good idea to refrain from dating until you’ve established equilibrium in yourself and life. By doing so, you will be ready to pick a partner who is an equal and has the ability to contribute equally to the health of the relationship.

Use the therapeutic space to analyze what left you vulnerable to this person coming into your life. What were your family dynamics growing up? Sometimes empaths develop from having a narcissistic parent, and needing to be attuned to their parent’s moods to survive. They may have learned to sacrifice their needs and feelings in favor of others.

How to Measure Equilibrium in your Life

This life wheel exercise can be helpful in determining if you are in equilibrium. 

Here’s what to do:

1. Draw a circle
2. Draw 10 radiating lines from the center of the circle
3. Slice these lines into 6 sections
4. Label each section: Family, friends, fun, partnership/dating/romance (whatever most applies to you), career, and health
5. Next rate each subject on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 is doing the absolute best) how well you are doing in that area of your life.
6. Then color in that number of rings from the center of that section
7. Now look at your completed circle
8. Which areas need help?
9. How can you shift your energy/focus to the areas that need help so that you are treating all your needs more equally.
10. If you are/were in a relationship with a narcissist you may notice that you score low in all areas of the life wheel.
11. If you are in a relationship with a narcissist and aren’t feeling good, focus on another area in your life to pick yourself back up and not leave you too reliant on your relationship

 

In Conclusion, Know Your Worth

You never need to rescue someone at your own expense. 

As an empath, you have a lot of beautiful strengths but you may also be more vulnerable to having difficulty setting boundaries and sacrificing yourself to save someone else. 

Try to practice being your own advocate and protector. 

If you find when you advocate and protect yourself it brings out rage or abuse in your partner, it may be time to consider an escape plan. 

As an empath you may be prone to not wanting to give up on someone because everyone should be able to heal from compassion but this is simply not true. Some people will eat up your compassion and you, and never change. 

I saw this quote on social media, so if you know the author leave it in the comments: 

“Waiting for someone to act correctly is a disrespect to yourself. You’re compromising your worth just because someone can’t fully afford it”.

  

 Courtney Miller, Nitasha Strait

Understanding projections and integrating them

 

Banksy’s recent sculpture 

portrays a man resolutely stepping into the void, his face veiled by a flag. 

It suggests an ego fused with a collective symbol—the flag—losing its individual vision and 

unconsciously advancing toward its own downfall.

The phenomenon of projection 

and its transformative potential

Projection. To approach it, we will return to the study of Carl Jung’s essay “The Spirit Mercurius”.

In simple terms, to project is to see in others or in an object something that actually resides in us. For example, when we see a flaw in someone else that we ourselves also possess.

Jung said in his seminar on the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche that what irritates us about others is very likely to be found within ourselves. Which does not mean that if you detest corrupt politicians, you are like one of them.

However, it does mean that, even if your behavior is honest, your psyche probably knows something about corruption or the greed that generates it, and that, in some way, you have been attracted to it, even if you have never succumbed to such a desire and are an upright person. This is the case of Nietzsche, who harshly criticized the masses, the people he considered morally inferior, and did not realize that despite his intellect and genius, his way of life was no different from theirs.

It is not pleasant to know that the flaws we detest in others are within us; 

however, there is great potential in realizing this, 

for projections are a goldmine for our personal development. 

Carl Jung says, in the later parts of his essay on Mercurius:

“As long as nothing is known about a psychic existence, 

it is projected.”

Here we encounter a more sophisticated concept of what projection is: not only a flaw of ours that we see in others, but “something psychic that remains unknown to us.” That psychic element could be any psychological component of ours that we have not assimilated: whether it be an emotion, a trait, a trauma, a fear, a way of thinking, a wound, an impulse, a defect, a virtue, an instinct, or even an archetype— even our own psychic energy.

Our greatest projection, according to Jungian psychology, is religion, along with its rituals and symbols, for in them we project our entire process of psychological realization (individuation).

We project onto others, but also onto objects, onto our worldview (the world itself would be a projection of the totality of the psyche, Jung also said), onto symbols, onto art, onto our homeland, onto nature, onto animals, and even onto concepts and the perspectives we hold about everything. 

In all of this, we see structures, entities, and elements of our psyche.

Our outer world is a universe full of projections, and becoming aware of this helps us awaken, to become deeply conscious of ourselves, to cultivate and nourish the seed of the unique being we carry within.

Jung also says:

“We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. 

(Letters, Vol. II)

To say that we project is not entirely correct, for it is really our unconscious that generates projections; we are simply the ones who experience them. 

Projection is a mechanism of the mind through which we are able to see and interact with psychic elements that we not only do not know (or are unconscious), but also do not know how to deal with.

For example, a person who projects their bad temper onto another and is displeased by it is not only indirectly becoming aware of what they are not yet capable of seeing in themselves, but is also, in a certain way, engaging with that bad temper.

The strong bond created by hatred and projection

I like what Jung later says about this:

“Something of the bearer of the projection always adheres to the projection, and if we attempt to integrate into our consciousness what is known as the psychic, achieving this to some extent, then we integrate something of the universe and its materiality; or even more, we are assimilated by the inanimate, because the infinitely vast cosmos is much greater than we are”.

I love the previous quote because it aligns with something I had believed for a long time: 

when someone projects onto you, they are depositing part of themselves; they are attaching something of their own to you. 

That is why when you hate someone, or when someone hates you, a strong bond is formed between the two people, much more intense than the bond created by friendship or generosity.

Hatred and resentment toward others are, at times, more than justified (for example, when we have been deeply harmed—which does not mean that hatred is not harmful in that circumstance), but at other times we tend to exaggerate our hatred; 

we hate and reject because we project inadmissible things from ourselves onto others. In doing so, we attach something of ourselves to that person and become bound to them.

That is why Marcus Aurelius says: 

“The best way to defend yourself is not to become like them”, 

(Ἄριστος τρόπος τοῦ ἀμύνεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι), others translate it as: 

The best revenge is indifference. 

Although Carl Jung, in the previous quote, by telling us that if we integrate the psychic (if we recognize and become conscious of which parts we are projecting), shows us a wiser path, for we are integrated by the universe; that is, we adapt to existence, to the laws of life, to our totality, to our nature.

We immerse ourselves in it as if it were part of our very structure, what we truly are, since behind the projection lies the immensity of the creator of the projection, that is, the Self that seeks for us to become one with it.

Carl Jung also says:

“Everything that works from the unconscious appears projected on others. Not that these others are wholly without blame, for even the worst projection is at least hung on a hook, perhaps a very small one, but still a hook offered by the other person” 

(~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 99).

When we experience a projection, it does not immediately mean that others have nothing to do with it. For that reason, we must discern very carefully and be honest about what is truly provoked and what truly belongs to us, so that the situation may be balanced. If we manage to carry out this exercise with honesty and humility, we can navigate any situation successfully.

As a personal experience of this, I remember that during my military service there was a corporal who made my life impossible for months. In the final stage of training, at the shooting range, he tried to provoke me in a tense moment, as the tests were demanding. I felt a great deal of anger, but by observing myself honestly, I discovered that the real problem was not him, but my thinking about myself: I was projecting onto the corporal the possessive thoughts that created little confidence in me, since deep down I believed I would fail the test, even though the corporal was indeed a difficult man, without a doubt—but even more so was my thinking toward myself and my permissive attitude toward that thinking. Before shooting, the corporal warned me that he would be beside me also firing and “woe to you if you miss most of the shots.”

By becoming aware of my pattern of thoughts and seeing no way out, I said to myself: God, do what you see fit; then I decisively let go of the desire to maintain control of the situation. Immediately I calmed down, felt a great conviction and determination, and when I fired something unexpected occurred: all my shots hit the silhouette, even at 100 meters, and 90% were lethal hits, despite the fact that my rifle’s sight was not calibrated. The corporal barely achieved a 30% hit rate on the silhouette, although his rifle sight was also not calibrated (like everyone else’s). That day I was the best in the test and was congratulated by the company commander, and in subsequent tests the good results were repeated with the sights already calibrated. The corporal never bothered me again.

Projection and the mastery of our inner nature

We conclude this article with the following quote that contains a valuable reflection:

“Never and nowhere has man mastered matter, except when he has accurately observed its behavior and listened very attentively to its laws. And only in that case has he been able to master it to a corresponding degree. The same happens with the spirit that today we call the unconscious: it is as refractory as matter, as enigmatic and elusive as it, and it obeys “laws” that generally present themselves to us as “crimes against humanity” in their inhumanity and superhumanity”.

Here Carl Jung is addressing a topic that concerns us if we are to understand the importance of unveiling projection:

I said that our projections are a true goldmine. I reaffirm it, and not of vulgar gold, but of alchemical gold—the kind that represents the expansion of our understanding and consciousness. But to extract it, we must examine our relationship with others and with the outer world, and contemplate what we project with honesty and sincerity in order to understand and assimilate it.

When we become conscious of our surroundings, of our city, of our home, of the objects around us—even of the device you’re reading this on—we can see a magnificent, almost magical mastery of humanity over the outer world. This occurred due to our species’ capacity to observe and analyze external nature and thus understand the laws of nature. This is how we went from mastering fire to modern systems of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the sophisticated devices that have enabled travel into outer space, and those that allow us to explore and analyze the cosmos.

The formula remains the same for our inner nature and our unconscious—not only for our projections, but for our entire self, for our work upon ourselves. 

Only when human beings carefully observed psychic laws were they able to become civilized and evolve spiritually, intellectually, and morally.

Although inner nature, like matter and outer nature, operates with laws and elements that surpass us, that are superior to our control (they are superhuman) or that contradict everything we believe aligns with humanity (inhuman), that is why Jung says they appear as (crímenes de lesa humanidad). Yet contemplating them expands our understanding and allows us to take another step on the ladder of the evolution of our consciousness.

For this reason, today more than ever it is important to have the capacity to contemplate ourselves behind the veil of projections and to see the laws and elements that lie behind them, in order to also discover the unique individual behind them. This is also a way to prevent falling into the mental abysses of our time, and to avoid taking a false step while wrapped in the veils of our era, as shown by Banksy’s recent sculpture.

I conclude with the following quote from Jung, which I leave to you as a task for your personal reflection:

As long as the ego remains unconscious, it corresponds to the Freudian superego and is a source of perpetual moral conflict. However, if it detaches itself from projection and ceases to be identical with public opinion, then one is truly one’s own self and not. The ego then functions as a union of opposites and, therefore, constitutes the most immediate experience of the Divine that is psychologically possible to imagine 

(Carl Jung; “Transformation symbolism in the mass”; CW 11, para. 396).

 Juan Duran