Lessons Learned: DIscernment and Empathy

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If anything has come from spending time around narcissists or people exhibiting narcissistic traits, it is that lessons are always learned … either by default or by force – but definitely learned on purpose. Sadly, I continue to learn many lessons and sometimes the hard way – mainly because of my failure to heed the warning signs I see before a narcissistic person has become deeply ingrained into my life and also because I am still learning to harness the gifts of discernment and empathy in a way that narcissists do not use them against me.

Lessons I have learned about myself are that I am too trusting, too naïve, and too forgiving. I care too much to the point that I wished I cared very little. I love too hard to the point that I have often wished that I did not love at all. I go into situations with people knowing who they are through discernment, but I make the mistake of not willing to believe the worst about them even when they clearly show me their worst. I want to give people the benefit of doubt. I want to believe in them more than I believe in the gut-wrenching signs of intuition that stir me into hearing “Hey, look, do you know what’s happening here? Are you activating your senses?”

I spend far too much time overriding the red flags of caution, but sometimes the flags do not often appear red at first. Sometimes they are not even flags. Now, the operations of narcissistic people are so subtle that I constantly question my experiences. I have progressed from being schooled by elementary narcissists. I have graduated to the big league of university narcissists. These narcissists don’t use flags; they are skilled. These narcissistic people have moved into my life in such crafty ways that they subtly gesture with handkerchiefs, scarves, neckties, and other accessories … not the normal flags.

Despite my intelligence, I am not nearly as intelligent as I think I am when it comes to narcissists. Just when I am certain that I am on to them (and I usually am always on to their schemes from the start), they change and flip the script. Seeing is believing, and I hardly believe what I see when being gaslighted into a different experience. Yet, on the flip side, I have become keenly aware of the games narcissistic people play. I have learned from some of the best. Although no two narcissists are the same, their games are played in the same way and often yield the same results. I get played … too often … and I usually do not realize I have been played until after the fact. I know their games, but then I do not their games. Yeah … I know. It makes no sense, but if you have lived the experience with narcissists, you know what I mean.

One would think I would have learned my lesson growing up within a narcissistic family. Actually, I learned many lessons growing up in a narcissistic family. One would think I was born with the gift of discernment – a keen sensitivity into the knowledge of who people really are below the surface even though they present someone very different on the surface. Yes, I do have discernment. One would think my gift of empathy has helped me to navigate the waters of this often arduous narcissistic territory with love and continuous concern. Yes, empathy has kept my heart flowing with the ability to see, understand, and feel the plight of others. Yet, despite all of these lessons, I was merely trying to survive in a narcissistic family. Survival was my main goal. To be honest, I was not prepared to deal with narcissistic personality disorder in the world too. I was not trained for that – particularly when I had to learn to navigate such rough narcissistic terrain on my own.

For most of my life, I have viewed discernment and empathy as pronounced curses upon me because all I experienced from their presence in my life was surmounting and unrelenting emotional pain. It was not until I was an adult that I learned that I had not ascertained the power of these gifts. I did not know how to use them as weapons to protect me from narcissistic harm. Instead, these gifts became power for the narcissists because they were able to use them to their advantage to get what they wanted to extract from me. In their hands, these gifts felt like weapons for my mass destruction. Not knowing how to use my gifts made me a target for narcissistic supply and narcissistic aggressions. I only began to learn after years of “practice” how to use my gifts to become a narcissist’s narcissist. (More on this in a later post …)

Now, discernment serves me well in the sense that I take note of what is happening in the moment. When interacting with a narcissist, I use all that I know about them while taking in the “vibes” that I sense within the atmosphere. I listen to them, but I hear more of what they do not say. I piece together everything they have told me to create a puzzle that shows me the whole picture while filling in the blanks regarding what they do not share with me. I realize from doing so that they always tell me everything I need to know about them, everything others have said about them, and everything I can use to question them. It’s really a clever use of discernment because this is how discernment really works for me.

Discernment is for my protection, and when I use it with wisdom, I often find myself unmasking a narcissist’s true identity in a way that they know they have been unmasked by me. Once I bring everything to the table, the narcissist is quick to discard themselves from my life. I have unmasked their vulnerabilities to the point that both the narcissist and I know the truth in a collective way together, and right before my eyes … just like that, I see their look of penetrating and nerve-racking fear, and they want nothing more than to escape. That look in a narcissist’s eyes has always fascinated me because the narcissist appears as a wounded child, and for a quick moment, I feel empathy for them in a way that is unlike the toxic form of empathy they have always been able to mirror, control and use against me. Yet, even still, I eventually sever ties with these narcissists because they are narcissists, and the responsibility is on them to change. (More on this later with examples … )

Needless to say, I am still a work in progress, and what I still do not learn, I continue to work on to change myself. Nothing beats a narcissist like a victim who continues to fight for survival, learns to utilize weaponry for protection against the narcissist’s games, and endures the battle in the long run. A battle? Yes … a battle. From the time I can remember, it has always been a battle with a narcissist for my domination and my complete annihilation even when I did not realize there was a fight. A narcissist wants to dominate your will so you do not make your own decisions, control your life through manipulation tactics, steal your joy through their boundless efforts to mirror your good qualities for themselves while projecting their bad qualities onto you, and completely annihilate your identity to the point that you are only a shell of who your former self. I, for one, refuse to continue to be a victim. I choose to fight. I choose to survive. I choose to win.

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