I had no empathy or ability to feel anything but my own needs and desires.
I grew up in a physically and sexually violent and traumatic family starting at a very young age.
As a result, as a child, I was never able to work through the stages at which one develops basic developmental skills like empathy. Even basic cognitive skills like multiplication or entire years of memories are missing because I haven’t been in my body for so many years.
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Instead of having the capacity and presence to learn those basic developmental skills, I learned strategies that helped me adapt and survive a traumatic upbringing. What those adaptations for survival end up turning into are narcissistic and schizotypal personality disorders.
On a certain level, navigating life was easier when I didn’t feel compassion or empathy. My decision making was clear. It was creepy, calculated, and bloodless, and the only question I needed to answer was, “How will this benefit me?”
And then I acted and acted accordingly.
Sorting through relationships and making decisions was also more accurate because everything and everyone was something you commoditized or used.
Getting what I wanted was the only goal that mattered. Lying, cheating, betraying, stealing, manipulating, and colluding — all behaviors I engaged in frequently at the time — were fair game because my agenda was not constrained by emotions.
Like most cruel and entitled people, I didn’t care about the consequences unless they prevented me from getting what I wanted. Or if it gets me in trouble. I’ve never had a serious problem.
By serious problem, I mean prison.
Emotional and relational problems, yes. But I did not consider these issues a problem. Plus, I thought at the time, if I had any of these problems, it was everyone’s fault, not mine.
This is not the case anymore. I have complex, more nuanced feelings, emotional empathy, and emotion now.
To be clear, most people with personality disorders or adaptations that skew toward narcissism or schizotypy rarely develop cognitive empathy (the ability to recognize, understand, and respond accordingly to another person’s mental state or emotional state), let alone develop affective empathy. Emotional empathy.
Emotional/emotional empathy is the ability to emotionally “react” to another person’s feelings while at the same time understanding that those feelings are different from one’s own feelings.
To reiterate, developing anything close to these skills is rare for someone who started where you started.
This did not come easily.
I have been in therapy for many years, starting around the age of seventeen. But the emotional and psychological Kevlar that is the cornerstone of narcissism made any honest self-awareness or responsibility on my part impossible.
What changed me and made true mental health and self-awareness possible was the acute force of another trauma: specifically, the sudden and violent murders of my father and brother.
This happened about 25 years ago. At the time, I was on the road to perform. One night, I got a call at 3 a.m. and learned that my father and brother had died and I needed to go home.
Frantically, I started packing my belongings. But five minutes later, on a long-abandoned level, I realized that despite all the cruelty and abuse I had suffered at his hands growing up, I somehow still loved my father. This was completely beyond my understanding. But the fact that I still loved him somehow was inevitable.
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This realization brought me to my knees and began tearing down my narcissistic defenses. The love I had for him underneath my defenses was a death blow to how I organized myself to survive.
In the decades since, this reality has systematically broken down the armor of narcissism. He forced me to build a compromise or die and turned me into a human being.
After decades of building neural pathways that didn’t exist and moving through the sometimes painful process of greying out the black and white of my disorders, I can now sense, hold, and feel emotions.
Miraculously, I am in a peaceful and loving relationship with my husband. Our relationship is warm and satisfying.
I can feel true happiness and joy, and feel the happiness and joy of others.
I can truly celebrate when people have good things happen to them, and grieve with them when something tragic or terrible happens to them.
And I feel a deep peace and rightness in my emotions and in my body, something I’ve never felt before. My feelings are complex and nuanced.
But what’s even more remarkable… I’m experiencing love, connection, and understanding in a way I never knew I needed – like a person needs food or water.
Over the decades, through a lot of therapy, commitment, and very hard work, I have gone from being a cold, malignant narcissist with no real ability to feel for anyone to being empathic and deeply feeling the people and things around me.
