Something really weird and wonderful happens when we fall in love. Our bodies respond by pumping out a great deal of feel good hormones. When we walk hand in hand, or talk to our lover on the phone, we get a rush of dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Our pleasures centers are activated, and we feel a special bond or deep connection to that special someone. And when we finally make love, that cocktail of hormones explodes all throughout your body like fireworks. Love is one of the best gifts given to us by the gods, one of the only gifts if you ask me. But when you finally come down from the high, and experience heartbreak and disappointment, all that love can diminish into a hateful and even abusive relationship. Such was the case with Louis and Lestat AMC’s series Interview with a Vampire.
Now, I touched on how abuse causes the victim to become emotionally unregulated. In most cases, a victim of narcissistic abuse doesn’t know up from down or left from right. However, empaths tend to have a strong connection to narcissists for one particular reason, they love getting high. No, I am not talking about recreational drugs or one wild night of binge drinking. I am talking about how empaths love to love. They love that rush of excitement that they get when the body emits that rush of hormones that sends them over the moon. Sadly, many empaths operate like drug addicts. They are constantly looking for the next high. And they are ready and willing to go on all night binge, despite the fact that they may have to suffer from a headache, or heartache afterwards. Let me explain.
The best way to think about an empath is to watch the movie, The Green Mile. John Coffee, a giant black man accused of murdering two precious little girls, is sentenced to death. Coffee has to wait out his last days on death row, only to walk down the hallway that is called the green mile on the day of his execution. There are many critics who accuse John Coffee as being the magical negro. He seemed to exist solely to take away white people’s pain. However, I don’t agree with the critics. I think that John Coffee was more like a shaman. That magical fiery dust that he was inhaling, and exhaling was the energy that many shamans and empaths can take on from people when healing them. John Coffee’s execution was all about how we betray our very own nature, by destroying the most magical aspects of it. Anyway, John Coffee felt other people’s pain and felt a deep sense of dread and regret when he truly couldn’t help them. And that’s really a driving force of an empath, guilt. We feel guilty when we let people down. We feel guilty when we disappoint people. We feel guilty when we put our own needs ahead of others. However, there is another force that drives the empath. A force that causes us to be magnets to narcissists. That force my friends is love.
The empath is like a hound dog, sniffing around for love. We are looking to feel that rush of excitement, that cocktail of hormones that comes with being with that very special person. For an empath, that quest for love, is almost like an addict chasing his very first high. It’s euphoric and sits in the brain for an eternity, longing to be dethroned by another more exhilarating experience. The empath accepts the fact that when they come down from their high, they are going to hit the ground hard. But sadly, that part doesn’t matter to the empath, all he cares about is the next high, and how great it’s going to be, how amazing he is going to feel when those hormones start pumping through his veins again. This tends to be the pattern with co-dependents who support addicts. They actually get a jolt of energy by being an enabler. And since empaths feel things much more deeply, they can experience an intoxication that is ten times greater than the addict’s high. They feel that natural intoxication that comes with being in love.
Over time, the empaths understand that they are giving away far too much. In fact, they are enabling their partner to their own detriment. They are taking on way too much negative energy from their partner, and soon, it starts to weigh them down. Then, the feelings of euphoria get few and far between, and then, those moments of pure elation become distant memories. The empath weakens without love, and there is a deep and dark part of him that wants to leave. Yet, he can’t. Why, because the narcissists need him. The narcissist needs the empath to carry his negative energy, to carry his trauma and pain. Notice in The Interview with a Vampire series on AMC, Lestat didn’t feel remorse, guilt, or shame. Louis felt all of those emotions for both of them. So, Lestat could go out and kill and not think twice about it. But if Louis killed, he would probably have nightmares for days. Lestat continued to transfer negative energy to both Claudia and Louis through ridicule and abuse. After a while, empaths just don’t become emotional punching bags.
They become human receptacles. They become the proverbial trash bins for the narcissist to dump all of their baggage into. The weight becomes way too heavy, causing the empath to do anything to escape the narcissist’s belittling and wrath. So how can the empath escape this toxic cycle? For one, they have to free themselves from the narcissist. They will never get a grasp on their emotions if the narcissist is still in the picture. Then, they have to learn how to be responsible for their own happiness. Yes, the empaths have to learn how to find or create their own joy. I know, it sounds like a bunch of fluff, but even scientist agree that the brain can’t tell the difference from an experience that’s real, from one that’s imagined. What’s that mean? It means that you can create those amazing feelings of love, all within yourself. That’s the beauty of being an empath. Love, doesn’t have to be something that you long for. It can be something that you can intrinsically create.
