A Question of Responsibility
It is well-known that our kind does not do responsibility. We are not to be held to account. We are never culpable. Nothing is ever our fault. We are free to act as we please, doing what we want without concern for repercussion or consequence. Responsibility does not figure in our considerations. There is a considerable deficit on our side of the equation when it comes to shouldering responsibility. Nature abhors a vacuum however and therefore since we create such an absence of responsibility, this raises the question who is going to step in and accept responsibility? Who is going to take on more than their fair share of accountability? Who is going to plug the culpability gap? The answer, of course, is you and this is a significant reason why you remain chained to us and naturally, we know this to be the case. This is one of the reasons why we choose people like you.
As an empathic individual you have many traits which appeal to us. One of these traits is having a strong moral compass so that you “do the right thing” and you accept responsibility for your actions. That is attractive to us in itself. However, you go further than this. You are blessed or cursed, dependent on how you regard it, with the fact that you are over-responsible. Not only will you rightly accept blame when it is genuinely your fault but you will accept responsibility for us as well. This is extremely appealing. How does this over-responsibility come about?
On the one hand it is something which is intrinsic to you as a consequence of being an empathic person. You feel a deep responsibility for others and you do so because you wish to help. You do not believe that it is right to shirk responsibility or walk away when someone is in need. You widen your scope of responsibility by adopting the stance that as a decent human being you have a responsibility to aid others, assist them and help them. Added to that is the fact that we cause you to be responsible for us. We deny responsibility so you immediately feel a need to plug that gap – I return below to why you feel that need. Moreover, we make it your responsibility through our repeated projection and blame-shifting.
“It is always your fault.”
“You made me get angry, it is your fault.”
“Now look what you have made me do.”
“You should have known that was going to annoy me.”
This frequent projection and blame-shifting conditions you to accept responsibility for what we have done or not done. The more aware of our kind know that by reinforcing this double edged message – we are not responsible/ it is your fault – you will accept this to be the case. You are prone to repeated self-analysis and in order to find solutions, keep the peace and avoid those eggshells you will accept responsibility for us. An objective observer would find a certain action to be clearly our fault but you will take on the mantle of responsibility on our behalf.
“It’s my fault, I should have known.”
“He is tired, that is why he shouts at me, I should have let him rest.”
“I should have remembered that he doesn’t like fish.”
“It’s okay, I am used to it, I don’t mind because he can be wonderful to me you know.”
“It is just the way he is, I pick up the pieces, that is what I am here for.”
The repeated reinforcement that you are to blame coupled with your natural propensity for wanting to accept responsibility means that we know we can easily have you burdened with accountability and you will invariably accept it. This then paves the way for us to inflict other manipulations against you based on your acceptance of fault and guilt. You accept you are at fault so then we are entirely justified in shouting at you, cold-shouldering you, stopping you going out or having an affair. Having you as the one to blame suits our purposes to maintain our perceived superiority and provides us with justification for punishing you so that we receive further negative fuel.
This over-responsibility will extend into making excuses on our behalf when we have stormed out of a family occasion. It is our secretary ringing a client and apologising for us when we have been rude to somebody. It is a sibling who tries to play down our outrageous behaviour and finding something to explain it without pinning the blame where it ought to be pinned; on us. You accept that you are to blame and you become our spokesperson when dealing with other people as you are left to defend the indefensible. Not that you will get any thanks for any of this of course.
Why then do you feel such a need to be over-responsible for us? Where does this trait stem from? I have seen it within my own family with my sister. From an early age you have been subjected to such blaming behaviour when it was never actually your fault. This causes you to believe that there must be something wrong with you and that you are not good enough. In order to deal with this sense of inadequacy that was instilled in you most likely in your childhood you seek to over-compensate and decide that you will become good enough by being the receptacle for all blame, irrespective of real culpability. You have been convinced that you deserve this abuse, this blame and it is your duty to shoulder responsibility for what we do and what we do not do, in order to become worthwhile. It is easier to accept blame than fight against it because this is fulfilling the role that has been created for you. Always being to blame has caused you think that you deserve it and in order to do something about that state of affairs, you address it by accepting even more blame in order to reach an accord with what you regard your role to be.
We know that you need to feel responsible. It is a central plank of the empath’s constitution and we will exploit this by always blaming you, passing responsibility onto you and walking away from accountability. We will not laud you for such a selfless act of accepting responsibility but rather seize the opportunity to use it to justify our further foul treatment of you. You are at fault. You therefore deserve to be punished. You accept this and the repeated application of this only serves to reinforce and extend your sense of being responsible for us.
It is akin to being given six of the best with a cane at school for something you did not do and then asking,
“Please sir, can I have some more?”
29 thoughts on “A Question of Responsibility”
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It’s so true!. When I’m reading you I ‘m listening to the answers of the questions I made to J, most of them just in my mind ‘ cause he didn’t let me to ask or if I did it he just never answer. He was always very occupied with Buddism, History, Politics and I was not able to understand how high was him, but suddenly the only thing he wanted was sex on line. If I talked about something he had no idea, changed the subject immediately about it. I found it funny, like a child thing, how wrong I was. Thanks H G!
You are welcome.
Nice, dominant picture at the top. Sheer perfection…
🙂
Substances. I had been completely sober for fifteen years and when I got divorced from Narc 1, I lied to myself and said I could drink normally. Two or three relapses later, in walked Narcopath into my world which coincided with a long, slow spiral descent into addiction hell. What was notably during my three year relapse was my addiction to a stimulant which flooded dopamine into my brain. This, combined with the dopamine ️and oxytocin surging through love bombed central nervous system made me a very sick puppy. Now that I am sober almost three years, I can’t believe how insane I really was to have been so oblivious to what he was doing to me.
Hi there would you mind stating which blog platform you’re working with?
I’m looking to start my own blog soon but I’m having a hard time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal.
The reason I ask is because your layout seems
different then most blogs and I’m looking for something completely unique.
P.S Sorry for being off-topic but I had to ask!
Hello Jimmy, it is wordpress.
Cara- thank you for sharing about your sobriety. I understand. Addiction played a huge part in my story and I am grateful to have surrendered that demon as well- also in 2012. It’s amazingly awful to be addicted to substances while facing addiction to human heroin in the form of a Narc.
Which came first – the addiction to the substance or to the narc? (That’s a question not a joke by the way)
I now understand the intense stare he bore into me while saying that he wished he had met me first. I’m sure that he saw Empath written all over my face. His Ex was an empathic individual as well but without the broken childhood that made her less vulnerable to internalizing the slime he poured over both of us. She moved on from him rather quickly once she got the courage to leave.
Seeing a married N was the WORST thing I have ever done in my life and I remain extremely repentant and ashamed that I threw my strong moral compass out the window when getting tangled up with him. He did dupe me into believing he was terribly victimized and that the marriage was almost over (that part was true, it was hanging by a thread due to his past infidelity as I would later learn.) It was beyond selfish of me to disregard that he was promised to another woman. Forgiving myself has been made easier by his now ex wife who I had the great fortune of meeting and who told me that, like her, I had trusted the wrong man. She thanked me for my indiscretion saying it was the straw that broke the camels back and led to her escaping him.
I would have to strongly suspect that your sister, your friends, your target of the moment and yourself have all been manipulated and abused by an N.
Your N was probably your mother – I gathered that from things you have said. We all react to the abuse differently. We internalized it, accepted that we were to blame and spend the rest of our lives trying to fix it. Trying to prove that we’re more than just an ‘object’. You, and others of your ilk, internalized it differently and created your own reality in order to fight fire with fire. In the process, you lost your true identity because the N of origin erased your identity. The Narc doesn’t care if he/she creates another Narc or an Empath.
We’re all the same. All have been wounded. You and yours create mayhem. Just different ends of the spectrum. I accept my part in the dance that allowed the abuse. You never will.
So the person who knowingly dates a married narc has a strong moral compass?
Do they really know that the person is a narc? I suspect that the person has been told that the narc is in a loveless marriage, is abused and hurt and etc and thus this appeals to the strong moral compass to help this poor person.It is all lies of course, part of the seduction and the need to triangulate. Do you speak of a real situation you know about?
I speak of the woman who cheated with and is now with my exH (narc)
She has no doubt been duped.
I once dated a married man, but he was just a sadist & not a narcissist. He also never TOLD me he was married…he was in the shower once when his phone rang & he said “answer that” and I was surprised when the woman on the other end said she was his wife (but she wasn’t surprised to find another woman answering her husband’s phone).
What happened next Cara?
Yeah I dated him for another two years after that. I didn’t stop seeing him until 2012 when I got sober.
How did oyu handle the telephone call?
Well I said something like “when were you going to tell me you’re married?” And he said “my wife has nothing to do with you. I see you because there are certain things a man doesn’t do with his wife”
Compartmentalising at its finest.
Then what happened?
Then we made angry love
its was shocking for you I guess….
A bit funny to read the exchange between you 2 .
I suppose his wife left him somewhen or did he go back to his wife?
He was married, and as far as I know his wife never left him.
Hahaha the end was funny… I am not yet at this point fortunately but was probably near LOL.- What a very good super good posting at explaining why I took all the responsibility always
Specially during the 14 years I was married. I was always excusing explosive behaviours. there would be many many stories where I would have to go an explain for things that I did not do.
It ‘s interesting to see this aspect also and not only the core shame and lack of self love addressed in the HMS.
I don’t specifically remember being always at fault as a kid, but I did maybe did take the fault on my shoulders about my parents fighting… Im going to think deeply about it.
Thanks for the post and the awareness creation . Great to learn about ourselves from the interaction with your kind <3
Very intresting
Thank you FE.