One of the hooks of narcissistic abuse is that we can feel sorry for them or overly responsible for the narcissist.

The narcissist often has multiple personas. One of these can be the “lost, sensitive and hurting little boy.” (or girl). He may even cry and plead to be forgiven that he will go to a therapist or the behavior will never happen again and how sorry he is.
So many of us have seen that these “sensitive” episodes do not last. Very quickly the narcissistic is back to their rageful, manipulative and controlling real self and blaming you.

Even if a narcissist agrees to see a therapist it is mostly simply a tactic to keep you hooked in and they will usually seek to manipulate and control the therapist and often succeed, leaving you reeling and re-traumatized.

As empaths, we may be able to see that the narcissist is actually a broken little traumatized child under the mask. We feel sorry for them. We even think that with our love we can heal them. We can feel responsible for them and feel guilty and heartless for walking away. Please know these are all part of the hooks and tactics narcissists use to keep us attached.

They know what our gaps are. They know how to use our compassion and empathy against us. They know how to feign remorse and tears.

A narcissist is devoid of self-responsibility, accountability or genuine remorse.
When we fall for their attempts to convince us (and they can be extraordinarily convincing), they will come back and hit us even harder.

A narcissist gains his lifeforce through narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is the attention and adoration they get from those who fall for them.

That’s what all of this is about for them. They will do whatever it takes to gain supply to feed them. That is why we feel beyond drained and depleted around them – they are literally sucking our life-force for themselves.

When we feel sorry for them, feel guilty and responsible for them, see them for the broken children they are and feel empathy, we are at risk of being pulled in and smashed to pieces again.

Please know I truly understand. I went through all of this myself.
But we have to realize that it is our own co-dependency that is having us hang on to and give to unhealthy false selves risking our own demise.

Our job is to heal ourselves and seal up the gaps that allowed him to enter and allowed us to be abused. We have to choose ourselves and start to get curious about what is going on within us that we have the urge to fix another person to our own demise.

So, the best place to get to with regard to the narcissist is that of feeling neutral with no energy on him.

Through wholly committing to my own healing, I can now feel empathy from afar for the narcissist, and I can even feel grateful for the gift he gave me of forcing me to heal my trauma. While at the same, I am detached and know that my healing happened because of MY commitment to myself.

This has taken time, dedication and a ferocious desire to heal. I can only feel this because I am solid in myself that I come first, and it is not safe for me to have any communication with him whatsoever. He is not my reality.
I discovered a whole matrix of trauma and beliefs within me such as “I need to make other people okay to feel safe,” “I am bad if I don’t help people,” and “I have to tiptoe around disordered people” and so many more.

My freedom came when I released the trauma generating these beliefs out of my body.

You can reach this level of healing and freedom and you will never look back. Rather you will look back at your narcissistic abuse experience with gratitude for the gift of being your true self and living your true life.