What attracts the psychopath to the empath is the sweet, kind and full of life and willingness to give qualities of an empath in which none of these traits exist in a psychopath. The psychopath's way of dealing with their childhood trauma is to suck the life from others because they themselves feel hollow inside.
Often empaths are targeted by sociopaths because they pose the greatest threat. The empath is usually the first to detect that something is not right and express what s/he senses.
Empaths with their strong need for connection, weak boundaries, and compromised internal strength make perfect targets for a narcissist. To get the upper hand, the narcissist only has to emotionally bombard the Empath to coerce them into cooperating with their demands.
Psychopaths lack any emotion and care for people and situations. They feel no emotion for other people and they wouldn't feel more emotion towards someone just because this person is an empath. The empath would be stressed and afraid and constantly alert on manipulation and mindgames. They may question the psychopath.
Those with histrionic, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, schizotypal, passive-aggressive, self-defeating, antisocial, paranoid, borderline, avoidant, dependent, and sadistic personality traits also were attracted to psychopaths.
To sum up, given the above reviewed literature, we may conclude that individuals with psychopathic traits are found to have a deficit in dispositional empathy, particularly related to the processing of distress and negative arousal cues (i.e., affective empathy and affective ToM).
Narcissists, for example, are attracted to people they will get the greatest use from. Often, this means they pursue and target empaths.
But eventually, if the empath decides not to return to the relationship, the narcissist will move on. This can be difficult for both individuals. An empath may wonder if they were the ones that overreacted, or feel guilty that they “gave up” on their partner.
Their honesty and frankness and self-love stump the narcissist when their harsh cold insults used to devalue them don't work. Super empaths have a strong enough self-image to use their empathic powers to defeat even the most cunning and calculated narcissists.
You can hurt a psychopath's feelings, but probably different feelings and for different reasons.
The narcissist is drawn to empaths because the latter are emotional sponges. An empath in love will listen to the narcissist with undivided attention and a desire to understand them. When the narcissist shows genuine appreciation for this openness, the empath feels rewarded and special.
“Empaths not only feel for others, but absorb those feelings in their own system,” says Orloff, whose private practice is in Santa Monica, California. Additionally, empaths are often able to pick up on unspoken feelings as well, drawing on subtle energy fields that emanate around other people's bodies.
Personality types ENFP, ENFJ, INFJ, and INFPs are natural empaths per the MBTI Personality types. Empaths are also called Idealists & Diplomats. Highly Sensitive People belong to these MBTI types. Intuitive Feelers or Empaths are only 20% of the population.
Keep Setting Boundaries
But if you want to protect yourself as an empath, you will need to keep setting boundaries. Here are some tips on how to do so: Write it Down: The first step is to list all the ways your partner violates your boundaries. Record how it makes you feel any time they do this.
Intellectuals can make good partners for certain empaths because their sense of logic compliments and grounds an empath's emotional intensity. Ask for help. Intellectuals love to solve problems. Be very specific about ways they can assist you with a problem or task.
An empath is a particularly sensitive person, someone who is able to feel and experience exactly what others do. While empaths can make wonderful caring friends, in a romantic relationship they can often find it difficult because they tend to quickly become very intense.
Dark empathy is characterized by emotional distance disguised as charm and understanding. It is usually motivated by personal gain. Dark empathy is related to the dark triad personality traits. The dark triad refers to the malevolent personality types of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
Psychopathic criminals can switch empathy off and on, research suggests. Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on and off at will, according to new research aimed at identifying why such criminals are callous and charming.
People who score high in "dark triad" personality traits are able to empathize.