You probably know if you watch my channel very often that it is my belief that
narcissists have one quality in common with one another and that is a lack of empathy.
Regardless of the type of narcissist, regardless of the way their life looks, regardless of their
personality it all comes down to the one factor — they all lack empathy.
Well, a 2014 study agrees that narcissists whether they are clinical or subclinical lack empathy.
But the study wanted to find out is it possible to teach a narcissist empathy?
That's what we're talking about today at QueenBeing.com
So let's get started. Closed captioning provided by Athena Moberg and CPTSDfoundation.org
My name is Angie Atkinson and on this channel, I offer free daily video coaching to help you discover, understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse in toxic relationships. I like to call it toxic relationship rehab.
So if that sounds good to you hit that subscribe button, and let's get going.
So the study was done by Erica Hepper, Claire Hart and Constantine Sedikides.
I'm not sure I'm saying that one right anyway, and it was published in the
personality and psychology bulletin, it suggests that potentially the
narcissist can learn empathy,
sort of up to a point. Let me tell you about the study.
First of all, the study was done. Like I said back in 2014 and like many other narcissism studies
The first thing they did was they had all the participants fill out basically the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory to see which ones were on the scale of narcissism, which ones were subclinical and which ones were not narcissists.
Once this was done,
they asked each participant to watch a video related to domestic violence and some of the participants were given instructions to
imagine how the people in the video might feel while others were given no instructions at all.
Now here's what's interesting about this when they did watch the video, when they reviewed the participants reaction, those who scored high in
narcissism, when they were not given instruction did not have any empathy for the people in the video.
They just watched the video, but then those who didn't show narcissism in their personalities of the toxic nature
they had empathy without instruction. Now on the flip side of this and here's where it gets interesting, when the narcissists were given instructions on
being able to give feedback on how people felt in the video,
they showed similar levels of empathy to those who are not
narcissists when given instruction to think about how the participants in the video felt or the people in the video.
Now here's something interesting as well.
They did another part, another section of this study where they had the participants watch a video of a couple breaking up
of course the non
narcissists, they showed empathy in both cases whether or not they were given instructions to think about how the participants felt but in
the part of the site where narcissists were involved,
this is interesting, those who were not given instructions their heart rates did not increase while they watched people breaking up in the video.
Those who were asked to think about how the people in the video felt, their heart rate increased
very much like an empath or a non-narcissist would. So what did this study
figure out and how does this have to do with anything? Well, the study determined that
narcissists could display empathy when instructed to do so, by being told to think about how other people felt.
So what does this have to do with your narcissist? What does this have to do with relationships with narcissists?
Well, let's talk about that.
Basically what the scientists determined is that they decided like I said, that if a narcissist is told or
instructed to take another person's perspective,
they can have empathy and they further determined that if that narcissist would choose to
have empathy for another person, say a spouse who is about to leave them or something like that, then they could employ empathy.
So it's not that they don't necessarily have the ability to have empathy. It's that it doesn't come naturally to them.
So the idea is that if for some reason they need or feel they need to take someone else's perspective and develop empathy.
It's possible, but because they don't naturally do it, most narcissists won't do it.
Does this mean that we can teach our narcissists how to have empathy and be better spouses and relatives and friends to us?
I don't think so.
And here's why, when a narcissist is caught up in their own emotions, when they believe things are X Y Z, a certain way.
Generally, what happens is that they are far less capable of trying to think about how anyone else feels, they're wrapped up in their own
emotions and do I don't believe that we're going to be able to fix the narcissists for the most part.
However, the reason I'm making this video is because if you have children, if you have been involved with a narcissist,
here's something you can do to prevent it from continuing in your bloodline.
And that is to stop the cycle right here, by starting to teach your children emphathy.
Ask your children to tell you, how does it feel when you watch this happen.
How does the person on TV feel? How does the dog feel when you kick it?
How does whatever, whatever it is that they're doing or whatever it is
they're watching. Always ask them to tell you about the emotions of the other people or animals or whatever.
And the reason I say this is because children are forming new neural pathways every single day.
And so if you teach them to always think about what other people are feeling you can prevent your child from
essentially becoming a narcissist in many cases. What do you think about that?
There's something a little extra from that study that I found very interesting.
And that was that most narcissists actually believe that they understand people better than everyone else.
They actually think that they have more ability to display empathy than other people.
I guess that's part of the grand delusion.
Yes, I said delusion. A study done a year later in 2015 indicates that most
narcissists actually have a lack of empathy because of a neural condition, a neural
deficiency in empathy and of course
this is despite the fact that they almost always overestimate their emotional ability. Now as an ethical person
I will not go into the details and tell you how you could use that against a narcissist.
But if you're watching this channel, I'm sure you're pretty much smart enough to figure that out yourself.
So we'll leave it at that. This brings me to the question of the day. And the question of the day is do you believe
that you could teach a narcissist empathy and if so,
have you ever tried it? Share your thoughts, your ideas and your experiences in the comments section below and let's talk about it.
Alright, that's all I've got for you right now.
But as always thank you so much for being a part of my day and a part of my life and hey
thanks for let me be a part of yours.
It really does mean a lot to me. Now before I go, make sure you take a look at the videos
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So we can stay connected and continue on this healing journey together. I'll see you soon.