I Will Never Empathise with Narcissists

Over the past few years as pop culture psychology and self diagnosing increasingly becomes acceptable, I’ve noticed this peculiar mindset of people pushing the narrative that having mental health disorders and disabilities excuse abusive behaviour or mistreatment of others. It’s frustrating because trauma being understandable doesn’t make maltreatment acceptable and seeing victims and survivors alike who RESERVE THE RIGHT to not forgive their perpetrators be demonised makes my blood boil.

This especially aggravates me when it comes to the debate of whether or not narcissists are absolved of their abhorrent behaviour because of their disorder. As someone who also has mental health issues and disabilities I understand it impacts people differently. Regardless of the condition, I do my best to be understanding and empathetic but when it comes to narcissists? Absolutely not. After escaping and surviving a handful of narcissistic relationships throughout my life, I absolutely refuse to even SYMPATHISE with a narcissist.

What people fail to realise is just because someone apologised doesn’t mean the person (or people) they’re apologising to, if they even apologised to begin with, has to accept it the same way nobody is obligated to forgive or receive forgiveness. Any time I see people try to argue why narcissists shouldn’t be demonised it automatically tells me they either don’t care about victims/survivors or that they have saviour complexes of some kind. While I am someone who does their best to educate themselves (and have thoroughly educated themselves on narcissism), there’s nothing anyone can say or do to ever make me empathise with them.

A lot of us carry pain and trauma with us from catastrophic events we experienced in our lifetimes but don’t use it as an excuse to abuse and mistreatment others and I’m tired of seeing people coddle them. Narcissists aren’t these helpless little babies, they know what they’re doing and take pleasure in the pain they cause people. It’s weird and it’s fucking twisted. Even being in the radical acceptance stage of my recovery you will never catch me pitying narcissists just because I know and cognitively understand their perspective.