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One of the most impactful moments in a relationship with someone with untreated issues. narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is when you realize that your partner doesn’t really care if you’re in pain or hurt. This is very difficult for most people to understand. How can a person who claims to love me be so indifferent to my feelings that they are willing to devalue me, ignore my needs, and deliberately abuse me?

Narcissists lack emotional empathy

One of the main reasons people with NPD are willing to hurt other people to get what they want is that they lack emotional empathy for other human beings. They may seem like they care, but that’s usually an act.

Emotional empathy versus cognitive empathy

There are two different types of empathy that most humans have: emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. People with untreated NPD typically have cognitive empathy but little or no emotional empathy.

What is emotional empathy?

Emotional empathy is the ability to automatically (without conscious effort) feel something about what another person is feeling.

Example: You see someone accidentally hit their thumb with a hammer and you automatically make a sympathetic face. Or your child is delighted to be chosen for the soccer team and your heart fills with joy.

What is cognitive empathy?

Cognitive empathy involves thinking. It is not an automatic response. It’s a bit like acting. You know that the situation requires a empathetic response but you don’t feel anything. You think about how to convey the appearance of the right amount of empathy.

Example: Your best friend’s father died. You never particularly liked him. In fact, you’re a little upset with him for dying because going to the funeral will be an ordeal. But you keep your true feelings to yourself and say something that you think expresses the required empathy, like

I’m so sorry your father died. I know you will miss him very much. We will all miss him.

Note: In this post, I am using the terms narcissist, narcissist, and NPD as shorthand for someone who qualifies for the diagnosis of narcissist. personality disorder.

Can narcissists develop emotional empathy?

I have had clients with NPD who began to develop emotional empathy during a successful relationship. therapy. All of my clients took a very predictable and similar path.

Certain conditions had to be met for my clients to experience their first emotional empathy for another human being:

1. They were very interested in their therapy and were making good progress.
2. The person they felt emotional empathy for was harmless to them and had a lower status than them.
3. This harmless person admired and trusted them.
4. The situation they told me was very distressing and very similar to what my narcissistic client had experienced.

Example: Bill and his brother Benny

My client Bill had an older brother, Benny, who liked to torment him. His father had died and his mother had to go to work when Bill was in kindergarten. Benny was 5 years older and was supposed to bring Bill home from school and take care of him until his mother got home.

What really happened is that Benny resented having to be responsible for his younger brother. At first, she just bullied him, but eventually she started hitting him. Benny told Bill that if he ever told anyone what was happening, he would hurt him even more and break his favorite toy.

When Bill was in high school, he began to fight back. He survived some epic battles with his brother and became a strong, tough guy.

Now Bill has grown up and runs a division of a company. He is an exhibitionist narcissist and can be extremely confrontational. You have trouble managing your anger.

Bill entered therapy with me because his wife and children were afraid of his angry outbursts and his wife had threatened to leave him unless he changed. after his lonely and violent childhoodhe loved having a real family and was willing to do almost anything to keep his family intact. He had no interest in other women.

Bill tries emotional empathy for the first time

Bill came to his session excited and very pleased with himself. He told the following story:

I think I felt true emotional empathy perhaps for the first time. There is a young man at work that I hired and whom I advise a bit. He admires me. One day he started talking to me about how much he hated his older brother. They hadn’t spoken in years. I asked him why and he told me that his brother hit him regularly when he was a child. She used to hide from him. I really felt bad for him! The situation was almost like mine.

Empathy and animals

Some of my narcissistic clients were capable of becoming emotionally attached to their pets and he treated them very well. However, many of my narcissistic clients treated their animals just like they treated people. They gave them treats when they were happy and abused them when they were disobedient. This seemed to be especially true when their pets were dogs.

When I applied the above criteria for when someone with NPD might begin to show emotional empathy, I found that similar conditions applied to animals. They were more likely to develop emotional empathy toward pets that were

1. No threat to the narcissist
2. Obedient
3. Submissive
4. Affectionate
5. Attentive

Summary

People with untreated NPD lack emotional empathy. The usual reason is that emotional empathy was not valued in their family while they were growing up and they were never encouraged to develop it. The most intelligent narcissists develop decent social skills and get along in the world using their cognitive empathy. Some of my clients with narcissistic personalities begin to develop emotional empathy during the course of their therapy. It happens extremely gradually and only under very specific circumstances.

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