Guest post written by Stephanie Roese, trauma-informed author and digital creator
What if I told you the person who hurt you most shares something fundamental with you? Not to excuse what happened, but to quiet the voice that asks, Why did I let this happen? or What’s wrong with me that I keep attracting this?
I’m not here to diagnose anyone. I’m here to tell you what I learned in the wreckage of my own family, and later in the relationships I kept repeating until I finally understood the pattern.
The narrative we’re sold
Society wants us to believe that empaths and narcissists are opposites. One gives everything. One takes everything. One is light. One is dark. If you ended up with the short end of the stick, it’s because you were too kind, too giving, too sensitive, and definitely, too naïve.
That framing kept me trapped in shame for years.
For a long time, I thought the problem was that I was too sensitive and that I felt too much. That I should have seen it coming, should have set better boundaries, should have been smarter about who I trusted. The self-blame was endless, and it kept me from seeing what was actually happening beneath the surface.
Here’s what I now understand: both sides often come from the same emotional landscape. They just learned to survive on opposite ends of it.
My story: the roots in my family
I didn’t learn about this pattern from a textbook. I learned it at the dinner table where my dad relentlessly criticized my eating habits and my loquaciousness. I learned it in the constant change of my mother’s moods. And in the chaos of growing up with two family members who had borderline personality disorder with strong narcissistic tendencies.
I’m not using clinical labels lightly. I’m describing what I lived. The emotional neglect and constant unpredictability. The way love felt like a transaction, or a weapon, or a thing that could be withdrawn the moment you did something wrong. The way my feelings were always too much, too sensitive, too dramatic. The way I learned to scan the room before I spoke, to anticipate the mood, to make myself quiet or useful or invisible depending on what the moment required.
I was the one who felt everything…deeply. That was my job in the family. I was the empath before I ever knew that word. I learned to read the tension in someone’s voice, or their shoulders; to sense the shift in the air before anyone said a word. Not because I was special, but because survival required it. If I could feel what was coming, maybe I could protect myself and stay safe.
What I didn’t realize then was that I wasn’t just adapting to my family. I was building a template. One I would recreate in friendships, in romantic and business relationships; in every dynamic where someone needed me to feel things for both of us.
The shared wound
Here’s what both research and the lived experience tell us: empaths and narcissists often equally learned early that love was conditional, inconsistent, or absent. The wound is the same. The response is different.
The empath learned: If I feel everything, I can control the environment. If I anticipate your needs, maybe you’ll stay. If I give enough, maybe I’ll finally feel safe. That’s called hypervigilance.
The Narcissist learned: If I feel nothing, I can’t be hurt. If I perform the right version of myself, maybe I’ll be worthy. If I take what I need, I don’t have to risk being disappointed. At best, that leans toward a protective numbing. At worst, that leads to sociopathic behavior.
Both became survival strategies. One became hyper-feeling. One became feeling-avoidant, but they came from the same place: a childhood where the emotional landscape was unsafe, and someone had to adapt.
Research backs this up. A 2024 study in BMC Psychiatry found that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), especially emotional neglect combined with parental overvaluation, are major risk factors for developing narcissistic traits in adulthood (Ross & Giri, 2024).
The same childhood wound can produce different outcomes: grandiosity or vulnerability, depending on the child.
Meanwhile, meta-analyses on empathy and attachment show that secure attachment fosters empathy, while avoidant attachment reduces it (NIH/PMC, 2022). In other words: children who didn’t get consistent, responsive care either learned to feel everything (trying to earn connection) or learned to feel nothing (protecting themselves from rejection).
In my family, the borderline traits meant moods shifted like weather. One minute warm, the next cold. One instance, I was loved, the next I was a pain in the ass. And the narcissistic tendencies meant that getting accountability from them was impossible. The story would change. I would be attacked. My feelings would be dismissed. What I experienced “was not what happened.”
So I learned to second-guess myself, that my perception wasn’t reliable and to look outside myself for the truth of any situation.
That was one hell of a gift; painful, but over time, it was clarifying. Once you see the shared wound clearly, the next question becomes: how does it show up differently in each person?
The different expressions of the same need
Here’s the part that blew my mind when I finally understood it: both empaths and narcissists share a deep need for adoration and validation. They just pursue it from opposite sides of the same wound.
The empath says: Choose me. Need me. See me. But they hide this behind giving, behind serving, behind being the one who understands. They give and give and give, hoping the other person will finally reflect back that they matter.
The Narcissist says: Choose me. Need me. See me. But they demand it, extract it, take it without reciprocation. They need to be the center of the universe because inside, they feel empty and unseen.
Neither learned to self-soothe that need. Neither learned to find worth from inside. Both learned to get it from outside, which is why the dynamic feels so magnetic. It’s two people reaching for the same thing from different angles, and the pull can feel like love even when it’s destroying you.
Unentangling from the wreckage
The first time I realized the pattern wasn’t just my family, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, describing a relationship that had left me gutted. She asked me a simple question: What did you learn about love in your family?
I didn’t have an answer right away. But over time, the answer became clear. I learned that love was conditional and my needs were a burden. I believed that if I wasn’t useful, I wasn’t worthy. The people who were supposed to love me could turn on me at any moment, and I’d have to just… survive it.
So, that’s what I did. I survived. I became incredible at reading rooms, anticipating needs, soothing those needs, giving without receiving, and making myself available to people who couldn’t give me what I needed. Because it felt familiar; like I was home, even felt like it was my purpose.
The unentangling has been slow. It’s been grief work. Grieving the mother I needed and didn’t have. Grieving the sibling relationship that couldn’t survive my boundaries. Grieving the years I spent explaining myself to people who would never understand, never care, either. And grieving the part of me that kept hoping they’d finally see me.
It’s also been rebuilding. Learning that my sensitivity isn’t a flaw, and to trust my own perceptions again. Discovering that I don’t have to earn my worth by giving until I’m empty. Understanding that boundaries aren’t cruel, they’re necessary; that some people won’t change, that it’s not my fault, and I don’t have to keep waiting for them to.
That realization changed everything… not just how I saw my past, but how I began to understand my patterns.
What this means for survivors
If you’ve spent years wondering why you attract emotionally unavailable people, why you keep ending up in relationships that leave you drained, why being “too sensitive” was always the problem, I want you to hear this:
You weren’t naive. You had to adapt.
The hypervigilance you’ve honed feels like love because love, in your early environment, was conditional. It looked like walking on eggshells. Your ability to anticipate someone’s needs feels like connection because that’s how you survived. You really weren’t too sensitive. You were a child who learned to feel everything because your wellbeing depended on it.
Understanding this isn’t about excusing anyone. It’s about seeing the pattern clearly so you can stop repeating it.
The path forward
Healing isn’t about becoming less empathic. Don’t start hardening yourself or building walls so high that no one can get close. It’s about learning to direct that sensitivity inward, toward yourself.
And it’s about learning to validate your own experience so you’re not running on empty, and to stop giving to people who can’t give back.
It’s time to know that your worth isn’t determined by how much you can absorb, how much you can tolerate, how much you can give before you break. It’s about becoming discerning rather than closed.
For me, that meant therapy and lots of Inner child work. I had to learn to sit with my own feelings instead of immediately processing them through someone else’s lens. I began setting boundaries with everyone, including family members who still operate from that same wound.
The result? Well, I lost a bunch of people and I had to experience that grief initially, but it meant choosing myself, for the first time.
After decades of doing the work, from the inside out, and recognizing the patterns of toxic behavior, I wrote a book on it. That was truly empowering and even bolstered my self-esteem.
Dare I suggest one gentle step?
Start noticing when you’re giving from emptiness rather than overflow. Ask yourself: Am I doing this because I want to, or because I’m afraid if I don’t, they won’t love me?
It’s time that you take responsibility for ending the cycle.
Closing
You’re not ruined. You adapted and survived a landscape that required you to feel everything or become numb, and you chose to feel everything because that was the only way you knew how to stay alive.
That’s not weakness. That’s extraordinary.
Understanding the pattern is the first step to choosing differently. Noticing it. Naming it. Saying this is familiar, but it isn’t healthy, and I deserve something different.
Your story proves you can survive anything. Now it’s time to thrive.
Bio: Stephanie Roese
Stephanie Roese is a trauma-informed author and digital creator whose work helps survivors understand emotional neglect, gaslighting, and narcissistic abuse. She wrote the highly rated Unseen Scars Workbook: A Self-Help Guide to Heal from Emotional Neglect, Gaslighting and Narcissistic Abuse.
Stephanie also creates free healing tools and resources that offer clarity, validation, and support for anyone rebuilding self-trust. Explore more of her work and blog.
She’s also a “CCL” with seven beloved kitties.
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