I once told my former counselor a fact about myself that I’ve never entrusted to anyone else: that in many of my relationships—even those dearest to me—I felt like a manipulator.
It hurt to say, like I’d dredged the word from my gut with a hook. When I’d finally pulled it out of the muck, my counselor, Phil, considered me a long moment over the lip of his iPad. Then, he smiled and said, “I know. Thank you for admitting it to me.”
What Phil recognized was that I didn’t manipulate to take advantage of people (although I’ve often been passive-aggressive, a toxic trait I’m still working incredibly hard to overcome). I did it because I was scared. I was terrified that at the dark nadir of my soul, I wasn’t good. I didn’t want to go down there, because what if I hated what I saw? I was afraid to let anyone else down there either, because what would on earth they see?
And so I presented them with what I thought they should see, and I got very, very good at tweaking myself to suit whatever version of me they seemed to like. In psychology, it’s called “mirroring.” It’s a trait often seen in narcissists, but despite that fact, it’s not an inherently bad one, nor did Phil think I was narcissistic. (You can imagine my relief.) Infants learn by mimicking. Most people with close relationships start to look and sound like each other over time.
“Here’s the thing,” Phil said, “your mirroring requires a tremendous amount of empathy,” and unlike a narcissist, I was mostly employing it subconsciously. I had to intuit my subject’s opinions and emotions. I had to understand their reasoning and personality. I had to see myself in their eyes and adjust accordingly.
Phil told me all that, and then he finished with something that made me cry: “That’s not your weakness. It might be your greatest strength.”
Therapy’s pretty cool, y’all. Everyone should do it.
Empathy is a scary thing. It takes us to the darkest nadirs of other people. It makes demands we don’t want to hear. It forces us to see things we might be happier ignoring. But it also shines a bright golden light on the best of us. That’s how shadows work. They need light to cast them.
Empathy says, “this is how it feels to be another person.” And that’s not just terrifying to the empath; it’s terrifying to the people who benefit from our inability (or unwillingness) to understand others. They don’t want you to see the immigrant chasing a better life for her family or the single father drowning in the mire of greed. They just want you to see a leech. They don’t want you to see the kid from a bad neighborhood. They just want you to see a monster. They don’t want you to see the trans person struggling with stigma and longing to be loved for who they are. They just want you to see a lunatic.
“Surely,” they say, “this can’t be real.” “I’ve never experienced it, and if it’s outside of my experience, it must be wrong. You must be wrong.”
That is narcissism. And if they let themselves feel empathy, they might recognize that. More importantly, if they let us feel empathy, we might recognize that. And so, they dismiss; they disenfranchise; they demonize. They wax hysterical about the fall of society and the end of days, then they pin the histrionics on the empaths. They tell you that your compassion only enables insanity. They tell you that your open heart strips you of your reason. They tell you that the people you admire—the teachers, the activists, the leaders—will be our undoing. They tell you that if society collapses, it’s because of you. Personally. Because you were kind when the hard choices required ruthlessness.
They manipulate you. Because they’re afraid to face the darkness in themselves.