As I took my participants through an online Shadow-work course, I realised that most people were unaware that a narcissist was the shadow of an empath, and vice versa. So, I thought that an article was needed.

In case you’re unaware of the term, an ‘Empath‘ is a person who is highly aware of other people’s feelings, to the point of often confusing the emotions with their own feelings, and at times even picking up symptoms and illnesses from other people. While some take a balanced view, there has been a tendency in many articles to glorify empaths, whereas really it is just a term. It does not make you special, and in my experience people most commonly become empaths as a response to trauma during early childhood, and it is possible to heal and balance this aspect.

Empaths usually have a pattern of attracting narcissists especially in intimate relationships, moving from one kind of abuse to another. It may seem like empaths and narcissists are extremely different, but in reality they are two sides of the same coin.

Yes, empaths pick up emotions, but this isn’t as big a deal as it is made out to be. The feelings we pick up do not have to affect us at all.

First – how do we determine whether what we are feeling is our own emotions or someone else’s? Basically anything and everything that happens within YOU is yours. For instance, there’s a wide variety of crime that you read about, but only specific ones bother you. Why? We see all kinds of wrong-doing around us, but only specific ones bother us. Why? Because these trigger memories. Unresolved memories release pain into our systems when we are faced with similar instances.

Empaths merely suffer more because they get triggered more easily, not because they pick up other people’s feelings. If you resolve your issues, you just watch the feelings come and go, it doesn’t bother you.

Empaths attract narcissists because they have a desperate need to focus on something other than themselves- because they like fixing others as a way of avoiding their own core issues. This works very well with narcissists because they like to be the focus of all attention, and are happy to take all the energy that empaths want to give. When the empaths are ’empty’, the narcissist will usually leave.