Salutations Weaponised Empaths!

You asked. I delivered.

Enter the House of Tudor

The sins of the empath. These are the traits which are inherent to those who are of an empathic nature. You possess these traits; this is why you were picked by us. You may wonder why they are regarded as a sin? This is because in our view we consider them to be sins as we do not possess these traits. These traits are regarded, in your world, as laudable traits to have. These traits however make you vulnerable to us. They cause us to be attracted to you in the first instance and the existence of these characteristics means that they are ripe to to be exploited by us. These traits are good traits to have but because of us they become polluted, desecrated and exploited.

You cannot lose these traits. They are as much a part of you as your skin tone and eye colour. They define who you are. You may, unusually, try to rid yourself of them but you cannot. It would be like trying to rip out your own heart and still live. These traits are infused within you. For the most part you will be pleased you possess these characteristics, thankful that they assist you and define you, separate you from being one of us. You ought to be aware however of what these sins are so you know what it is that causes us to home in on you and furthermore how it is that we exploit these sins for our own benefit. With that knowledge you will be able to look to protect the relevant characteristic and ensure it remains intact and is not attacked, shredded or fed upon by us.

The first of these sins is the empathic sin of honesty. James E Faust said of honesty,

“Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living and truth loving.”

This aptly demonstrates how honesty is at the core of how an empath behaves. You utilise this honesty in everything that you do. It governs how you interact with people, how you speak to people and most of all how you conduct your intimate relationships. I am not suggesting that this empathic trait makes you a saint; you will not be above pocketing the excess change if the cashier hands you back too much money or refraining from telling a friend that the outfit they think is wonderful does not really do them too many favours. Your honesty is tempered with discretion and being circumspect when you identify that a lighter touch is required. You understand when being too honest with another is not appropriate. Nevertheless, honesty is of huge importance to you. You regard it as a fundamental factor of your character to act with honesty, both in terms of those you deal with and especially in respect of yourself. This core of honesty and its repeated application to your every day outlook in life makes it ripe for exploitation by us.

The exploitation commences at the seduction. When you engage with people, you have a tendency to allow your emotions and traits to be seen by all. You do not hide the way you feel. You do not operate from behind a mask (not like others you may know of) nor from behind a curtain. You do not cloud your dealings and operate in a shadowy manner but rather you exhibit who you are from the outset. This is of no consequence when you are dealing with your fellow empaths or even the normals but it becomes especially dangerous when you come into our sights. Not only do we have a heightened ability to sense the traits which matter to us, you aid this because your honesty means that you have all your characteristics on display. Just like a proud shopkeeper displaying his wares in a pristine shop window, you exhibit (but you do not flaunt) your inherent traits for the world to see. This means that your empathic and class traits which are so important to us when we target our victims are out in the open because of your honesty. You have an honest default setting. It is akin to having no privacy settings on your social media so that whoever takes an interest in you can see everything about you, everything that you have ever posted, where you live, where you have been, your photographs and so forth. This default setting is important to us as it makes our task of identifying you so much easier. When you are demonstrating those empathic traits through your honesty, they are highlighted, prominent and readily identifiable. Accordingly, if you keep wondering why you always seem to attract our kind, it is because your honesty is causing you to stand out to us.

Your honesty means that you engage with people without an agenda, without suspicion and providing them with the benefit of the doubt. This honesty of approach means that you fail to see those red flags which are fluttering during the seduction and that you fail to hear the blaring klaxons and see the flashing red lights which signal that something is amiss. You operate in an honest way and this causes your thinking to be framed so that you expect and assume that the person you are dealing with is honest towards you. This honesty takes you into the territory of gullibility. Add to this that we are of course not being truthful with you in the way we engage during the seduction and you have little chance of avoiding what we are doing; seducing you and doing so effectively.

The inherent honesty which you possess also means that you tell us how you feel and you will do so early in our interactions with you. Since we are engaged in love-bombing you at the outset it is nearly impossible to resist telling us how wonderful it feels and that you have fallen in love with us. Your early declarations in this regard are wanted and expected. Hearing this allows us, along with seeing the relevant indicators, to know that our seduction is proving successful and that you are being embedded. Gaining such knowledge is important for us in terms of ensuring that we have the level of fuel that we want but also in terms of allowing us to bind you closer to us, for instance by asking to borrow money or by moving in together. Your honesty results in your telling us what you are thinking and feeling, which in turn gives us the green lights we require.

Your honesty makes you transparent. You cannot hide anything from us and most importantly of all, you are unable to hide your feelings from us. Thus you will always struggle to hide you joy, your delight, your ecstasy, your pain, your tears, your annoyance and your agony from us. This emotional honesty is fundamental to why we engage with you. This means that the fuel you provide to us is purer that any which might come from another source. Yes, the “normals” will provide us with fuel through being happy to see us, through praising us or annoyed at being messed around by us. Even our own kind will provide fuel to another member of the brethren through exhibiting jealousy, annoyance or anger, but in both these cases there is an absence of emotional honesty which is prevalent with you as an empath. Your emotional honesty creates a fuel which is pure, free from toxins, devoid of pollutants. It is not masked, it has not been shrouded or clouded in some way, as is the case with normals and most certainly with our kind.

By being emotionally honest you ensure that your fuel is the best of all types and naturally this is why we are drawn to you, sink our teeth into you and start to drain you of all that sparkling and pure fuel.

Your honesty makes you a target to begin with, it makes you an easier target to latch onto and the reward of this pure fuel means we want to keep hold of you and keep returning to you to feed on it.

The matter does not of course end there. Your empathic sin of honesty generates further problems for you once the devaluation commences. We are dishonest. We are habitual liars, practitioners of deceit and operate through a skewed lens of fraudulent intent. When we engage in these dishonest practices it mortally offends your innate honesty with the consequence that you respond by providing yet more fuel. This offence to your honesty combined with your honesty drives you to want to make us see the lies that we so readily allow to fall from our deceitful mouths, to have us address our mendacity and recognise what we do. This only serves to bind you to us further.

The honesty you have with your self also means that you have a capacity to be introspective and the consequence of this is that you regularly self-flagellate by blaming yourself when you can find no other answer to our behaviour. The narcissistic perspective and our toxic logic, which are invariably a mystery to our victims means that you fail to understand why we do and say as we do. Your honesty causes you to look inwards and you blame yourself. This fulfils our desire to remain unaccountable and increases the weight of the burden of our engagement with you, upon you. Your honesty causes you to accept blame either where it does not lie with you or in a greater proportion that for which you are culpable.

Your honesty of dealings also prevents you often of speaking of the devaluing abuses outside of your relationship with us. At first, that may seem a contradiction, but you would feel dishonest if you spoke about them to others without informing us first of your intention to do so. You, by this stage, have learned that it is a safer course of action to suffer in silence rather than speak out to us and in turn you will not speak of what is happening to others, not until the pressure has become too great or more likely once you have been discarded by us.

The enduring love you experience for us, or more accurately, your addiction as a consequence of our infecting you, means that when those hoovers come post escape or discard, you are unable to shroud or hide how you truly feel and once more you light up like the brightest beacon. You signal to us that your love (addiction) remains and thus there is yet more fuel to gather and that you are so susceptible to our machinations to pull you back into our grasp once again, be that to extract fuel or to commence the Formal Relationship once again.

We know you are honest. It shines from you and we identify it from the way you conduct yourself and what you say when we target you at the outset. Not only is the identification of this trait confirmation that you possess one of the many traits that we look for, it also confirms that certain actions will succeed and certain responses will take place.

It is often stated that honesty is the best policy. It is certainly a policy that we endorse. It is one of the empath’s sins and with it comes the attention, exploitation and manipulation of our kind.

The Victim.

I know there are those who do not like that word. They regard it as stigmatising and a hindrance to recovery. One understands such an approach, but nevertheless it is the appropriate word for those who have encountered our kind in the narcissistic dynamic. What does victim mean?

‘a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action’

There is no denying this would apply to someone who has been ensnared by us.

‘a person who is tricked or duped’

Equally applicable. After all, it is the very essence of our behaviour that we trick or dupe you.

‘a person who has come to feel helpless and passive in the face of misfortune or ill-treatment’

Accurate again. Of course not everybody may feel this way, but many will readily recognise it, even if they prefer not to announce it.

Accordingly, these various definitions are valid and accurate to those who have been involved with our kind, be it romantic, social, familial or otherwise.

It remains the case, however, that when it comes to the issue of victimhood and who gets to wear The Victim’s Cloak that once more our kind exhibits our well known hypocrisy. We regard you as the victim (we have to as this is part of the maintenance of our control and need for superiority) but we also then look to remove that victim status from you.

The various schools of narcissism approach this double standard in differing ways, in respect of how we stamp you with ‘Victim’ but then deny you any use or recognition of it. We both adorn you with the cloak and then remove it in some way.

The Lesser Narcissist

The Lesser treats you as a victim because you are beneath him or her. You are considered useless, in the way and an annoyance and your dithering, inability to second guess the Lesser results in a swift ignition of fury and its manifestation as usually heated fury. You are made to feel the victim, by being lambasted verbally, physically assaulted, sexually assaulted, demeaned, having your property destroyed and seeing others you cared about drawn into the whirlwind.

The Victim’s Cloak is rapidly placed around your shoulders through this treatment of you but then the Lesser immediately rips it away, shreds it and hurls it to one side so you cannot use it. Your victimhood is created through an aggressive act or acts. However, you are not allowed to retain the mantle of victim because the Lesser takes the firm view that whatever treatment has been applied against you, well, you deserved it.

“She was back chatting me so she got a slap.”

“He was lousy in bed so I told him how useless he is.”

“The house was a mess, so I smashed it up so she really had something to clean up.”

You are denied the status of victim because in the mind of the Lesser you brought the treatment on yourself. The fact you deserve it negates the sympathy, compassion and understanding that would ordinarily be afforded to a victim.

“Leave her be, she deserves what she got, quit fussing over her.”

“It’s for his own good, so he will get it right next time.”

“Stop mollycoddling that boy, he has to learn and I am teaching him.”

Of course, this conduct by the Lesser of branding you the victim through your mis-treatment and then the wrenching away of your cloak of victimhood is all part of the further control and manipulation. His knee-jerk response will have generated fuel from your reaction to being struck or shouted at, but then, as the victim, you are usually afforded concern, sympathy and help by others. The Lesser may find himself being triangulated by a concerned relative, friend or bystander. This erodes his control and unconsciously his own innate status as a victim comes to the fore. He does not recognise this. After all, he does not want the cloak to wear for himself, he is not a victim, hell no, he is better than that, but just as he believes he does not want that cloak, you are not allowed to wear it either and thus he will deny you any entitlements associated with being classed as a victim, purely because his own inherent victim status (albeit unrecognised) makes its presence known.

Even a Lesser who belongs to the Victim cadre does not consider himself as a victim. Unconsciously he does, but he considers his preferential treatment owing to his poor health, dodgy back or sheer bad luck, an entitlement of his. He will not regard himself as a victim, but someone who ought to be looked after, although of course he is playing the card of Victim cadre extensively. Why play this card? Simple. To stop you being allowed to be the victim. You have hurt your hand and cannot cook? Too bad, he is hungry and not able to walk, so you still have to do something. You feel faint? He has a fractured eyelash and you need to get him to the hospital quick smart. But remember, he is not a victim, you are, but you do not get any sympathy, consolation or help for being that victim. Thus you receive the cloak but you are not allowed to wear it and it is ripped up and thrown away.

The Mid Range Narcissist

The Mid-Ranger will treat you as a victim because they are the perpetrator of various abuses and manipulations against you. Whilst heated fury does manifest with the Mid Range Narcissist (usually the Lower Mid Ranger), the manifestation of fury is most usual through cold fury. Thus you receive the Present and Absent Silent Treatments, the smearing, the gas lighting, the Cold Shoulders and the The Incredible Sulk to name but a few of the manipulations that are available to the Mid Range Narcissist.

The Mid Ranger treats you as the victim, as these abuses are doled out against you and one might expect that the array of emotional, financial, sexual and most of all psychological abuses that the Mid Ranger uses would mean that The Victim’s Cloak would settle snugly about your shoulders.

No.

The Mid Ranger plucks that cloak from you and places it about his or her shoulders. It is their cloak. You are not allowed the trappings of being a victim because you are not entitled to support or concerned attention. No, that must be directed towards the Mid Ranger. Whilst he rejects the notion of weakness that is often associated with the status of being a victim, he believes he is the victim.

“I cannot believe I was passed over for promotion. I have been discriminated against and I am the best candidate.”

“I cannot begin to tell you how terribly she treats me.”

“I am never invited to see the grand children by my daughter. I don’t know what I have done wrong, but she is intent on making my life miserable.”

The Mid Range Narcissist wants the cloak. It is his by right and he wants everything that goes with it. He wants the Pity Party, the Commiseration Conference and the Sympathy Symposium. He is the victim don’t you know? Show some support, offer a concerned look, ask how he is, suggest a way of helping, agree that he is hard done to, down trodden and treated appallingly and after everything that he has done.

Tell the Mid Range that she deserves to be treated better, that she is well-regarded and this person who has not done what they wanted is an awful, despicable person and an abuser.

The Mid-Ranger always plays the victim even though they are the perpetrator. You are the victim because you are the one who is abused, but the Mid Ranger will never see it that way and he or she will not let anybody regard it that way as she or he pouts and twirls in their Victim’s Cloak. You can never be afforded the ‘benefits’ that should be afforded to the true victim.

Should the Mid-Ranger be of the Victim Cadre also, then order plenty of tissues because he or she will grab that Victim Cloak from you and grimacing, stitch it onto themselves, passing needle and thread through aching skin so that they can never be parted from that cloak.

The Greater

The Greater will never consciously consider him or herself as a victim. Never. After all, we are the hunters, the predators, the ones that targets and finds our prey. Not only that, we need only look at what we do, what we achieve and how we are regarded and this underlines and reinforces that we are not victims.

We do however utilise the notion of being a victim to drive our behaviours but we do not label it as being a victim. No, instead we consider it to be based on revenge. We recognise that the world is a treacherous place, full of untrustworthy charlatans and liars who come with great promises and then who fail to deliver. The simpering and fawning lick spittles who flatter to deceive, although we naturally see through all of that. Yet still, that behaviour, unwarranted and unjustified means we could consider ourselves victims (if we truly would lower ourselves in such a way). However,  we are above that and once we were victims (although we see no reason to be reminded of that fact because we escaped it) means that you, him, her and everyone else will be punished if you even hint at returning us to that almost forgotten state of victimhood.

We have no desire to wear The Victim’s Cloak. It does not belong to us. It is not our size, colour and is made of material that is inferior to us. You are absolutely regarded as the victim because this game we play with you (and one which we revel in) means you have to be the victim because that means we win and you lose. Oh, this cloak is yours alright but just like the Lesser and the Mid-Range narcississt we will deny you any right to wear it. Why should you be afforded any sympathy, support or help? You should not and here’s why ; you deserve to be punished, you have nothing to complain about.

We have given you the world by your association with us and therefore how on earth can you have any basis for complaint? You brought this treatment on yourself, so not only do you deserve it (akin to the view point of the Lesser Narcissist) it goes further than that, it is right and just for you to be treated that way. Should the criminal be afforded sympathy when his sentence is announced? No. Should the morally repugnant member of the community be afforded kindness for his heinous behaviour? No. Then, neither shall you.

You are denied the accoutrements of the status of victim. You are the victim, absolutely but you will not wear that cloak. It does not even reach your shoulders as it does with the victim of the Lesser Narcissist. We forbid it coming anywhere near you. We are the supreme judge of your fate and we always apply the maxim of

‘commodum ex injuria sua nemo habere’

Did you not know that has been stitched into the lining of the Victim’s Cloak? Of course, this maxim is not applicable to us.

Utopia. You want it. We give it to you. What you may not realise is that you are the spark of inspiration for this utopia, we are not. We allow you to design this ideal world. Interestingly, your utopias are strikingly similar. It is a place where you are loved, protected and made to feel safe. For some of you it involves the trappings of comfort and prestige. The impressive residence which has been tastefully furnished inside and is laden with the benefit of society’s technological advances. It may manifest as a wardrobe that is bursting with the beautiful and eye-catching. It may hold the sensational from the art world or the most luxurious materials that the world has created over millions of years. In other instances it may be the presentation of a cup of tea on your night stand each morning that forms part of their perfect world.

Some of you reject the material and prefer to build this utopia on a foundation which you regard as more fulfilling, more deep-seated and nourishing. A land where mutual respect is a given, the simple pleasure of a stunning sunset evoking more delight and satisfaction than anything made by Bvlgari or Bentley. You want to be cherished, desired and listened to. For some it might be the intense passion of athletic love-making before the caress of soft hands lulls you into an all-encompassing slumber. Your utopia is a place where there is no anger, no tears and peace of mind. A place where one hand fits perfectly into another and will never let it go, a hand hold that says that it is okay to be frightened but you need not be because I will always be here. It is the knowledge that if you start to fall you will be caught. The wolf will always be kept from the door and nothing lurks in the darkness.  It is a halcyon world where the scent of dill onion bread, or bacon or pancakes signifies that we are together and you never want that fragrance to ever diffuse. So many of you offer different interpretations of what constitutes your utopia yet so many themes remain the same. Love, happiness, smiles, warmth, contentment, caring, laughter and passion are recurrent.

You build this utopia. The bricks are in the words that you say when you first meet us. Those sentences over dinner become walls that create these magnificent buildings that rise upwards into the azure sky. Those whispered desires the metal girders that criss cross as the monument to our relationship takes form. The desire in your eyes creates the undulating countryside and crafts the clear rivers that run through the beautiful meadows and fields that form in  your utopia. Your touch causes ripples across the landscape, creating and nurturing as the idyll forms. Everything you say and do, every expression and every glance, every thought and act is charged with such massive potential and it is all for the greater good. It is all to build utopia. You provide us with the plans and the materials and we set to, building this perfect world. You direct us and explain what utopia looks like, smells like and feels like. We are beholden to your instruction as we merely reflect what you want. You want to be called sweetheart every time we kiss you on the cheek? We do it. You want to dance through the night to the slowest of ballads? It is done. You want to receive a loving note through your letterbox? Consider it achieved. Each and every constituent part of this utopia is created by you, all we do is take what you want and make it happen. This is what we do. We are the facilitators of your dreams. We pay such close attention to the way you design this world, taking note of what should be excluded, what must be included and ensuring that every detail is executed.

We are so dedicated in our desire to build this perfect world for you that we spend as much time as we can with you, watching and observing, so that even your mannerisms begin to be included in this grand design. We are so skilled that we absorb everything about you, every hope, every desire and every dream and weave them into this utopia so that soon it begins to form and you marvel with an open mouth at how wonderful it is. It as if every breath you exhale creates another segment of this amazing place. Each heart beat thrusts life into it, every step you take transfers energy into this wonderland, your thoughts appear as if they were being written down as we somehow interpret them and cause them to become reality. You are the architect and we are merely the construction workers who endeavour to give you what you want and boy do we deliver. Nobody can create your utopia like us. Nobody has the skill or the dedication to bring this paradise to life. Does it matter that it is a construct, made from thoughts, dreams and wishes? Of course not, it is as real to you as the screen you now stare at and the fluttering sensation in your stomach. You can see it, taste, smell it, hear it and touch it. You are amazed at how perfect it is, it almost seems too incredible but it is not because you inspired it. You provided the drawings and plans and we brought it to life.

This is utopia.

This is all that you have ever wanted.

Now we have built it for you.

Does it matter that it is an illusion?

If so, well, you started it.

Truth seeker. The pursuit of the truth. A noble ideal indeed is it not? It sounds as if you ought to be armed with your sword of justice and your shield of purity as you make your way through the badlands in order to find the truth. In fact, this is what you, as an empathic individual is unwittingly doing when you become engaged with our kind.

You are all truth seekers. The empath, the co-dependent and especially the super empath. You want the truth and you will apply your indefatigable spirit to acquiring it without understanding the toll that this misguided folly will have on you as whole. The need to be told the truth, to find it and to know it is a core empathic trait and as you would expect, it leads you into the trap of being ensnared by our kind and is heavily exploited.

Being a truth seeker is a further sin of the empath. Those who are empathic tell the truth, but that is because of that other empathic sin, honesty. The empath must always establish the truth of a situation, the truth at the heart of an individual and in so doing the allows them to reconcile their own truths.

The empath must know the truth. He or she must not only need to understand why somebody is as they are, but they have to be satisfied that this is the truth of the matter. This desire for the truth makes an empath extremely vulnerable to us since we trade in lies, deal in deceit and all our currency is counterfeit.

Take, for instance, at the outset of the narcissistic dynamic, when we begin our seduction of the empath. He or she wishes to know that this wonderful person is true in their intentions and whilst the empath might be pleased that others talk about how enamoured the narcissist is about them, or how the narcissist seems utterly smitten, the empath must establish the truth form the narcissist him or herself. This of course opens the empath up to the charm, magnetism and allure of the scintillating narcissist as we are only too happy to tell you what you want to hear, to show you what you want to see and to do what you would have us do.

Oblivious to who you are dealing with (until otherwise educated) the empath will, through his or trusting nature and propensity to deal honestly with others, accept what the narcissist says and does. That amounts to the truth. The narcissist is skilled through his mirroring to reflect back at you your own truths and thus as you seek the truth, you are shown it. What you do not realise is that you are looking at your own truth, but since it is your truth and not ours, it is so utterly convincing. The adoration that you exhibit towards us is mirrored and reflect back at you. You wish to seek the truth of that adoration and what do you see? An adoration that is on the same par as your own – how can that then not appear to be the truth. In seeking the truth but looking for it from one who lies so effectively and defrauds with ease, all you find is your own truth, but you fail to recognise it as such and thus you feel you have found the truth and you are convinced that what you see is genuine love, is genuine passion and is genuine adoration.

You might liken it to a person who carries with him or her one half of a precious gem and seeks the other half. This person encounters a mirror, but does not know that it is a mirror and thinks that they see the other half stood before them since it looks so convincing, yet try to touch or grasp or find any depth or substance to this supposed other half and it will not be there. This is what eventually happens when devaluation occurs as you see the reflection and it dawns on you that all you are looking at is what you already had, being made to appear like something more.

Thus in wanting to find the truth and being shown your truth and not ours, you are utterly convinced as to the legitimacy of our love, passion and desire for you. Your truth seeking has made you vulnerable to our deceitful manipulations from the very beginning.

Yet, the matter worsens. Your pursuit of the truth leaves you vulnerable to perhaps one of the most confusing and bewildering aspects of the narcissistic dynamic, the need to establish the truth during devaluation. Once the array of machinations are wheeled out against you, the gas lighting commences, the lies, the insults, the intimidation and so much more is used against you, your quest for the truth has you stuck in the quagmire of our manipulations for a considerable time.

Firstly, you do not accept that this monster which now prevents you from getting a good night’s sleep, erupts at the slightest criticism, becomes demanding over apparently nothing, is the person who you fell in love with or who loves you. This is not the truth that stands before you. The truth must surely have been the person who first seduced you. You know that to be the case because you sought the truth then during the seduction, you saw it and you established it. It is that magical, wonderful, adoring person who seems to have vanished and in its stead you now see some grotesque version of the person you love. That is not the truth that shouts at you and belittles you, that is not the truth that turns each time you want to go out with your friends into a battle and that is not the truth that turns its back on you every night in bed. You want to find the true us, the one you saw and established during seduction and that need, that desire and that pursuit of this truth means you remain in situ, not escaping and allowing our abuses to rain down on you again and again.

Secondly, you experience the downside of our pathological lies during the devaluation. You were lied to, naturally, during the seduction, but that does not matter. You thought it to be the truth and you established it as so and besides, those lies felt good didn’t they? Yet know, the lies wound and hurt, they scar and mark, as we tell you lies about what we have been doing, where we have been and who with. You are no fool, or so you think, for you have followed us, had others report to you and you know the truth of what has been happening. Now you must establish that truth with us. You must seek the truth from our lips without you realising that we will never do such a thing since to do so would be to cede control to you. You have not yet grasped who you are dealing with and thus you remain unaware that we use lies to achieve so much of our aims. Those lies are used to make you dizzy, make you cry, make you exhausted and we keep on going and will not concede to the truth.

How many times have you heard yourself say:-

“Just tell me the truth, that is all I want you to do.”

“Please, stop lying, just tell the truth.”

“If you would only tell the truth.”

“I want the truth.”

“Give me the truth. Please I am begging you.”

Are those phrases and those of a similar kind echoing about your mind now?

Your desire to get to the truth, to hold the truth in front of us and get us to acknowledge it means you become drawn into the circular arguments, the endless arguments, the denial, the switching and the deflections which leave you shattered, mystified and spent. Why can he not see the truth when I do? The Toxic Logic of course, but you are not privy to such information at that time and so you gird your loins, climb back on your steed and ride out once again in the pursuit of the truth. It is no surprise that you then gallop into the swamp and become bogged down by lies, untruths and mendacity.

Thirdly, during devaluation it is often the case that you will turn to others to seek confirmation that the truth you once witnessed is indeed the truth and you can find it once again. You seek the truth from our coterie, our minions and our lieutenants. You go to them and need to ascertain that we are surely a decent person, who is loving and caring are we not? You walk straight into the facade and its false truth. You hear the answers which you want to hear, we are lauded for our generosity, we are praised for our kindness, we are complimented on our good humour, easy charm and reliability. There it is, you have sought the truth once again and you have found it, yet you fail to recognise it as the false truth and the false hope which it engenders. Instead of trying to escape from this devaluation, you remain in place, taking comfort from that the facade has told you and redoubling your efforts to find the truth with us. Thus, you remain and exhaust yourself tilting against the windmill that is us when you think you are slaying the dragon.

Accordingly, your empathic trait of being a truth seeker makes you vulnerable to our seduction and extremely vulnerable to the effects of our mind games, manipulations and habitual lying. Were this where it ends, but your quest for the truth has a further blow to administer to you.

The empathic sin of being a truth seeker heightens your susceptibility to the post escape and post discard hoovers. When we open those shutters and allow the bright, shining light of the golden period to fall upon your face you instantly see that the truth has returned, that false truth which you were shown what feels like such a long time ago. Yet, all is not lost, the truth has returned, it is in your grasp and all you need to do seek it out and embrace it is to return to our fold. By seeking our the truth once again you fall prey to our hoovers and our control over you is increased again.

The desire to seek the truth is noble indeed but seeking it from one who scorns the truth and takes refuge amongst deceit, lies and fraudulent intent can only result in this character trait of yours gaining the epitaph of being a sin of the empath.

We narcissists create unusual milestones for the purposes of maintaining our narcissistic grip on our victims.

The calendar is festooned with milestones. There are those which are applicable to everybody, for example, a person’s birthday.  There are others which are applicable to a large proportion of people on the planet, Christmas, Easter Sunday, Valentine’s Day, Eid, Nirvana Day (not the band before you ask), Yom Kippur, and Diwali. There are people who celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (even on the flimsiest of reasons) and others who mark the Chinese New Year. There are many days of observance or festivals, including Freedom Day, Independence Day, Bonfire Night, Hallowe’en, National Woman’s Day, The Day of Our Lady of Africa, Remembrance Sunday and King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck’s Death Anniversary (no that isn’t made up). These days and events are commemorated by people in different parts of the world.

These milestones in history are replicated at a more personal level by individuals, for instance wedding anniversaries, an anniversary based on how long a couple has been together (from a week, to a month, then six months and then years) or remembering the anniversary of somebody’s death. There is a multiplicity of milestones which will include it being ten years since somebody graduated from university, a year since somebody left prison, five years since they were made redundant, six months since that relationship ended. Some of these milestones are not celebrated, some are briefly remembered, sometimes fondly and often with concern, relief or slight surprise at the swift passage of time.

People like to commemorate particular milestones. They will record their child’s first day at school and years later tell their son or daughter that on this day twenty years ago you attended nursery or took your first steps. A veteran may recall with a mixture of regret and optimism that it is two years since he took his first steps on prosthetic limbs. Such remembrance and commemoration is done for many different reasons, it might be a wild celebration, fond nostalgia, solemn reflection or upsetting recollection. Notwithstanding what it may be, people accumulate these milestones throughout their lives, either applicable to themselves or others that they are entwined with.

We are no exception to this behaviour.

We, however, do this for entirely different reasons. We recognise and use the more obvious milestones of birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries and so on and I have explained how those are used in  Birthday Blues for example. Yet, this is not enough. We go further than the milestones which the world has created for various people. We make our own. We regularly and repeatedly engage in the creation of unusual milestones. This is done by creating Golden Milestones and Obsidian Milestones.

The Golden Milestones are created during our seduction of you. If your birthday falls within our seduction of you, then naturally, you will be treated to marvellous gifts, a wonderful evening or day out and made to feel ultra special. All part of the idealisation but this birthday is not a milestone created by us. It was already there and just happened to coincide with the golden period of seduction. A Golden Milestone is one which is specifically created by us, to manifest as something delightful and special in the Kingdom Of You and Me. You can easily spot these Golden Milestones as they will range from the romantic to the endearingly silly. Consider, if you will, these examples :-

I send you a card to tell you that it is a week since we first kissed

I write you a poem to commemorate that it is a year since I fell in love with you (even though we have only been seeing each other two weeks)

I send you a text to remind you it is one whole terrible hour since we last saw one another

I send you flowers to thank you for filling my life with light and love for the past month

I send you a gift to mark the fact that we made love five times in one night

Viewed dispassionately, these occasions and the fact of commemorating them are absurd. However, when deployed within the illusion of the seductive golden period, they appear cute, endearing, amusing, heart-warming and loving. How much must we be in to you if we telephone you to explain that  we have been in love with one another for 1.2 million minutes or that last night was the 100th time you told me that you loved me. Sometimes these milestones are fabricated but more usually they are actually real and there are those of our kind who have calculated the number of times we have kissed, made love or called you by a pet name.

These Golden Milestones are viewed favourably by our victims, silly and wonderful reminders of how delightful our relationship together is. Monuments to the unique and special coupling that has been occasioned between you and I.

From our perspective, whilst they may appear fun, slightly throwaway and romantic, these Golden Milestones serve an important purpose. They enable us to keep binding you to us, they allow us to demonstrate just how infatuated we are with you and to gauge our control over you. They allow us to draw fuel from you, positive fuel occasioned by your laughter at the daft statistic we have just explained to you, or your tear-brimming eyes as you realise just how much thought and effort we have gone to, to calculate how many times we have been to a particular restaurant which you love, so since we are on the cusp of the twentieth visit we have booked it this weekend. These Golden Milestones actually come draped in red flags because you will not find them in any normal or healthy relationship. Those relationships celebrate the one week, the one month and then a year of the relationship’s existence but will not descend into the detail. The detail evidences our obsession with you, how we regard our relationship as one really of statistics – how long we have spent with you, how many times you have said something to us, how many times we have been to a certain place, how often we have done a particular thing together. This is hugely indicative. Notice how it is devoid of actual feeling but is all based on frequency, content and quantity. Mechanical. These are capable of calculation which equates to control.

Whilst the creation of Golden Milestones may be endearingly silly, it is the creation of those Obsidian Milestones which arise during devaluation which truly show our penchant for being self-absorbed. The purpose of the Obsidian Milestone is to create our own special event at which we are the special guest, the revered recipient of attention and of course furnished with fuel. The Obsidian Milestones are breath taking in their absurdity  and triviality from your perspective (and they need to be in order to have the correct impact on you), but of course we do not see them that way.  Consider these:-

It is the seventeen-week anniversary since Tiddles the cat died

(It was your cat not ours and we always hated it)

It is nine years since our mother passed away meaning we cannot do anything all day long

(Some people may be upset on the anniversary of the death of a loved relative but they do not become paralysed for the day nine years after the event and moreover you know that we did not get on with our mother and we did not even attend the funeral)

It is the five year anniversary of the disappearance of a child and we weep and wail about it

(We do not know the child or even anybody vaguely related to the child)

It is a month since our brush with death

(A car beeped its horn at us as we stepped out into the road, but it was nowhere near us)

We have been in our newly promoted position for two months

(You bought the champagne when we got promoted, but we expect more acknowledgement and recognition on this two month anniversary)

It is 25 years since the death of our beloved friend

(We have never even mentioned this person previously).

The creation of this Obsidian Milestons has various common themes:-

1. Notice how they are nothing to do with you or our relationship with you;
2. They will be about something unrelated to you and invariably something to do with us, either our loss or achievement or someone we know who has achieved or lost
3. The Obsidian Milestone will often be a complete fabrication;
4. If not a fabrication it will be premised on not only the most tenuous of connections but the flimsiest of reasons for there to be any commemoration

These Obsidian Milestones are used for the following reasons:-

1. To berate you for being so cold and callous to forget that on this day eighteen years ago we lost our job – we scold your lack of recall about an event you either knew nothing about or could not reasonably be expected to be concerned by as a means of exerting control by making you feel bad and to draw negative fuel;
2. To bring the attention of you and others onto us so as to give fuel;
3. To detract from credible commemorative events of other people (your 30th birthday celebration coincides with the devastating shed fire which destroyed our collection of car magazines ten years ago)
4. To make you feel sorry for us so we are provided with fuel
5. To use as excuses not to do certain things (“I would come to dinner at your parents’ home but I am besides myself right now over the anniversary of the death of Bugle the Budgie (who never existed))

The creation of Obsidian Milestones will not be seen outside of the narcissistic dynamic. They are milestones created to gain fuel and to exert control, through their sheer absurdity and drama creation which leaves you bewildered as to why it has impacted on us so much, potentially feeling guilty for not knowing (should you have known that today was that particular anniversary?) and concerned (owing to your empathic state) to ascertain what is wrong (we may not at first actually explain what the Obsidian Milestone is but instead keep you guessing as we wail, cry, sulk, mope around or look angry).

Which Golden and/or Obsidian Milestones have you experienced?

(