Why Empaths Fall for Narcissists: A Therapist Reviews The Housemaid
I don’t tend to see the narcissists in my therapist office.
There is likely a reason for that.
A lack of accountability for changing their patterning, likely. Also, I believe my messaging, my story, my therapist vibe…speaks to their ‘victims’…although for reasons I will come to explain, I am not a fan of that word to describe them, and for me, language matters.
The ones who walk through my virtual or physical therapist door are the ones who feel “powerless” to those narcissists.
The empaths who felt it all, and when the love bombing turned to breadcrumbing at best, abuse at worst, believed they could be the ones to change them. To fix them. That maybe if they just worked a little harder to manage their feelings, it would go back to when things felt good. When they felt loved completely, intoxicatingly, by this person.
The ones who learnt, somewhere along the way, that they were responsible for the feelings and needs of everyone but themselves. The ones who believed that if only they behaved better… dimmed the brightest parts of themselves… it would finally be enough. Enough to be loved.
These are my clients.
I know this pattern from the inside too.
The sense of needing to change your behaviour to be in control of the emotions of others, to feel loved.
It took me a long time to recognise, and now I get to help others recognise, that they were never actually powerless. They were always in control. They just chose what that control looked like in order to survive the systems they were part of at the time.
It was strategic. It was intelligent. Far more than they ever give themselves credit for.
The pattern
I watched The Housemaid recently, and it’s a story I know intimately, through the stories I hear.
A narcissistic man, who learnt early that control meant safety. That admiration meant worth. That being good enough and lovable was something to chase, not something he already was. Passed down to him by a cold, closed-hearted mother with impossibly high standards, he never felt loved enough by a mother that we know will have her own story too.
And then, the women. Strong. Fierce. Independent. Falling into a trap that is far more understandable than we like to admit, because it never looks like a trap at first. It looks like being chosen. Being seen. Being wanted, finally, by someone who seems so sure of themselves. Someone to depend on, instead of depending on themselves.
This is the pattern I sit with
It rarely begins with control. It begins with intensity. With being desired in a way that feels like coming home. The empath, wired to give, to attune, to sense what someone else needs before they’ve even said it, meets someone who mistakes that gift for supply. They know how to spot us. The empaths. The warm-hearted. Slowly, so slowly it’s almost undetectable, the goalposts move. Loving them starts to mean shrinking for them. Keeping the peace starts to mean losing your own voice. And because empaths are so skilled at reading a room, at reading a person, they adapt before they even realise they’re doing it.
This is not weakness. I want to say that again, because it matters.
This is not weakness.
It is a nervous system doing exactly what it learnt to do.
Keep everyone calm, keep everyone loved, keep everyone from leaving.
The thing is, these women live in these patterns until they recognise… ‘no more’. ‘I am done’.
It happens gradually over time, but for them, it feels like a lightning bolt of awareness going off in their mind.
Survival no longer means keeping the peace to stay…survival means keeping the peace until we can escape.
That is intelligent. That is strategic. That is conscious use of power and control that is far beyond what the narcissist is able to do at that stage…because it means they have exited the loop.
The attachment loop where the intensity feels like LOVE. Where confusion, uncertainty and fear feel like EXCITEMENT. Where the recognition is, I would rather be on my own than be in a relationship that compromises my PEACE. Where they recognise that their life no longer needs unhealthy attachment to survive.
So these women play the long game. The patient game. For them. For their children. This strategy takes a kind of quiet, private power that doesn’t announce itself until it’s ready.
The truth is these women are incredibly powerful. Anything but victims.
They are also loving. Caring. Empathic. Smart. Emotional and intellectual, in equal measure. So much more than they give themselves credit for.
Until I, or someone else, helps them see it in themselves.
The shift
I’m powerless, to I’m empowered.
I’m out of control, to I have always been in control.
I’m too much, I’m unlovable, to I’m lovable just as I am.
What we work on in my therapist’s office isn’t building strength from nothing. It’s recognising the strength that was there all along. Then turning that same insane level of emotional and strategic intelligence back towards serving themselves, instead of everyone else, to create absolute powerhouses of women, literally capable of changing the world for the better.
For those of you who aren’t there yet, who haven’t found your way to recognising your own inner strength and resilience… I see it. My job is to believe in it for you, until you believe in it for yourself too.
Repeat after me
I did what I needed to do to survive.
I am doing what I need to do to survive.
I got out when it was safe enough for me to do so.
I will get out when it is safe enough for me to do so.
Laura x
