Does the Narcissist care about you AT ALL? 

We have two versions of people in our head, but we cannot hold both of those versions in our mind simultaneously. We can care about the idealized version of you. Hell, we can adore and love that version of you, perhaps even worship you(love bombing). But at the same time, we loathe our devalued version of you. We switch between the two depending on how you act/react. Don’t get me wrong, we wish we could hold on to that idealism, but that’s not realistic because that idealism is a fantasy. I’m not saying it’s impossible to see someone for who they are in a healthy way, but it is difficult. So with that said, because we have splitting and black and white thinking, we cannot, therefore, truly love until we heal. That’s just my two cents.

I thought of something watching this- Narcissists struggle with connection and intimacy yet the only that makes me feel connected and intimate with someone is when I'm sharing my true self. Real thoughts and feelings, etc. You feel you have to live behind a mask to be socially acceptable and hence don't connect.

If it helps: I am self aware NPD in treatment. I care for you as long as you are being exactly how I want you to: an extension of my ego. When you don’t correspond to my idealization I have a splitting thinking of you. Sometimes I am so paranoid thinking anything I have told you you’ll use it against me. Like I would do. You can show me love but it’s never enough. I will always think you don’t. When I get too close to someone I panic, i hate it, I don’t line being in that position. I never forgive. Never forget. I am always the victm. And I HATE you WHEN YOU LEAVE me. I just discard you and don’t lose my time thinking about it. But I do care. I feel sad. I feel anger, I feel abandoned.

I’m a narcissist, abuse survivor. And I love watching this guy makes me feel like I don’t have to be afraid. It’s the person not the ppl . I understand stigma. I’m a highly empathetic person I have Bipolar and we r not rage monster like ppl think. Rage is not part of the criteria. It’s depression and hypomania and regular mood state . Depending on what mood we’re in is how it affects our emotions. So I get stigma. I also have C-PTSD , traumatic brain injury, and Hyper vigilance . So I’m really good at mirroring and reading people and absorbing emotions . Being able to understand.

I absolutely love your videos the raw honesty is unprecedentedly admirable.

It was good to hear this described from a different pov! My ex was a narcissist and I remember when we ended our relationship. He just went from being super in my life to bam! Like i was nothing! And it dead ass made me question everything! Like did you even love me, or care? Cuz I didn’t get how one could just go from being part of your life and so involved! Or invested! To just over you, in just a matter of a moment! But! Hearing your perspective, had me thinking that maybe because empaths are so in tune with emotions! That, we are naturally connected to all of the feelings! So we cant forget how someone made us feel! Whether it was a good or very bad feeling! So its like our body/emotions/mind naturally will Re feel it over and over again! Then we wonder, if we felt this way, does that mean they don’t remember what it was like in those “good times” like it wasn’t meaningful enough to them? To have them still care or want to be a part of your life? As a person or confidant, or friend? Because you spent all that time with one another! And its not as easy to just stop caring or not check in and be supportive! Because at one point that person was very important and mattered. So its like you want them to still at-least know they matter and you care! Even when feelings change! So for empaths, when the narc. stops showing they care so quickly after a relationship ends! It gets confusing af for us empaths, because in the end, we still feel very connected with our feels!! And though the feelings are made evident they have changed! We just don’t necessarily stop caring after words so soon! It takes a-longer time for us to kinda disconnect from all of the history and time we invested ourselves into with our partner. Hence, we re feel that connection we once had together, over and over! So we question if you ever really cared about us or what we had with one another, because we don’t want to hurt the people we sincerely care for and about! And being so fast to end things and remove yourself like that, is definitely hurtful and saddening cuz we don’t wanna hurt others so we are like but how tf did you care about me at all then? If you are hurting me right now by acting like im nothing of significance or importance. So i think maybe empaths still care alot and want to be on good terms in the ending of a relationship but we will prioritize it differently! Like we wont just make them our top priority but we still care enough to want to check in and make sure you’re okay and let you know you still matter. And we still want for you to feel important! Its just a changed boundary, but still worth caring for. Even if its from a distance now! So, when we don’t have that same consideration in return! Because we are super connected to our feels, its like we really didnt matter enough then?! Like when we were together? Because if we did matter to you. You would still want to check up and offer support through out life. And discarding us can totally derail our reality, cuz again we are connected to the feelings so now that we are no longer in a “relationship” we still very much feel connected to you emotionally. and because of that. We do still want you to be or feel okay, and like you do matter still. Even if we aren’t necessarily the right person for one another. You still matter to us. And we want to matter to you still. Regardless of the dynamics that are different now. still remember how it felt when we cared. So its like why stop caring for us? Just because the dynamics arent the same. Sorry this was like a novel haha! But, i think there is so much disconnect or misunderstanding because its so polar opposite in ways of thinking/acting, that if we both took time to comprehend the other persons pov. It would help both to understand the opposite more. Even if its not your nature! Your video helped me understand your way of processing how and why go about matters the way you do! So i wanted to help you hopefully get some more understanding about us with the feelers :). Thanks for sharing!!

Yass! This right here. Im bpd, my npd person was quite forgiving. He would forgive me usually right away, if I sincerely apologized. I always struggled with forgiveness. He'd say, why can't you just get over it (things he did)? I was like, are you effin kidding me? I'll get over it when I get even. He'd say, revenge is such a waste of time, but to me, it wasn't just one particular moment that mattered, plus before treatment I was deep in distorted thinking and went nuts over any perceived betrayal. In any case, turns out, self identity is highly connected to memory. Reliable memories are one of the components of sense of inner wholeness / completeness of a constellated self. Memories and the past are important. But I don't recommend seeking revenge. There's a better way of being and it includes genuine forgiveness.

I feel sorry for narcs, they will never feel love.......its such a human need, and they will never have it.

I still care about him, BUT don't want him into my life. They just lie 99% of the time when you hear it.

My ex always thought that i never forgive her because i cut all contact between us. Thats not true, that was because i learn about npd and, very sadly, the extremely rare that is that a narcissist can enhace his behavior. She don't even wants to go to therapy and still lying, cheating and have a lot of rage toward me, she insult me a lot. She also can't understand why i can't forgive her in a few minutes and return to the “happy stage".

Thank you for sharing your experience, it’s really helpful in understanding the narcissists I’ve known, I would say for a non-narcissistic person, they can care about somebody forever, those feelings don’t go away but if the narcissist has no empathy then they can’t understand if they’ve hurt somebody to the extent that the connection is broken, but the other person can still feel love or caring towards the narcissist at the same time they feel a loss of connection. It sounds like you’re describing a different range of emotions that can be turned off more easily.

So wait, do narcissists care? I felt like that wasn’t at all discussed, lol

You said that you do your best to pretend to care when your friends suffer and you don't get why they don't do that for you - I won't speak for everyone, but in general I think most people without NPD would rather their friend truly care when they suffer but not act like they care for whatever reason than fake caring when they really don't. I'm not pointing fingers, I get that this is not something anyone can choose, I just thought it was an interesting difference. Also, removing someone from your life when they treat you disrespectfully even though you care about and forgive them is called a boundary and is difficult to do but healthy and necessary too because they've shown you through their actions how they're likely to treat you in the future. It's like, you may love cake but if it keeps giving you a stomachache you're going to do the self-loving thing to stop consuming it every day.

But if you can’t be honest with people because you’re afraid their reaction might not be what you want to see then that is a form of manipulation to me. I can’t imagine the feeling of loss, fear or risk of feeling vulnerability and shame, that those that suffer from NPD must feel, to have to also deal with NPD and stigma, however if someone doesn’t know you have NPD and you’re also mimicking the actions of good friendship even though in truth you don’t care, it builds up a false trust and security in the other person and should you be triggered and hurt that person later on, well it is very confusing and hurtful to the other person at a minimum but in the extreme examples it is devastating ( especially in romantic relationships ), I feel Like honesty about at least one of those things needs to happen to keep the other person in a space where they get to choose their boundaries and actions. I don’t have an answer but thought I’d share a perspective on this one. It also seems super shit that this issue would only apply to self aware people as non self aware don’t give a toss either way.

NPD is kinda fascinating.. but i dont think i could ever deal with someone who has this disorder

The past matters when it’s been repeated so many times that we can’t trust you anymore. So it’s cool that you’re changed now but unfortunately we would never be able to find that out for ourselves because we’ve been burned so bad. Does that make sense?

In my point of view it’s not really possible to tell if someone cares if everything goes just fine and everyone agrees. And the care and then stop caring and then care again you describe sounds somewhat like this to me: ”I’m a good cyclist. I can only go on flat surfaces or downhill though.” ”I’m good at sailing. I can only sail with the wind in my back though.” ”I’m a good driver, as long as there are no other cars around.” “I’m not poisonous”, said arsenic, “as long as you don’t digest me.” It’s when things go against a person’s preferences and plans, when things are inconvenient or hard that it shows. Do they give the benefit of the doubt? Do they go out of their way not to hurt when angry? Do they try to really understand the other’s point of view rather than winning arguments? Are they patient? Tolerant? Helpful rather than scornful or judgemental? Or is it their way or the highway when things don’t go according to plan? As I see it there must logically be a correlation between empathy and care. Lower empathy should mean lower care, so it follows from the construction of the disorder that care is diminished too. But in another sense this goes for everyone else too - because we all have differing levels of empathy and thus care towards different people. It’s just that a narcissist’s circle of empathy (and care) is much tighter. And if you do those things (the trying not to hurt when angry and so on) not because you care but because you know how it affects others and yourself - then I’d say you’d have a functional equivalent to caring that is something to be really proud of, given where you came from. Which I also think is the first step to real empathy, if that is possible, because that kind of behavior increases reciprocity and eventually the two-way trust that is essential to emotional safety.

This is a very interesting discussion, it really highlights to me the contrast between black and white thinking, vs the spectrum of complex gradient shades of colour. The complicated spectrum is how I can care but not want someone in my life, it’s where where cumulative experience and actions kind of all cumulate on a scale but it’s not a binary scale of black and white, it’s much more spherical - there is no flipping of a switch for me. If I discover someone else appears to flip a switch, what I now understand may be splitting, I would not be able to trust they cared consistently because instead of gentle ups and downs, it’s more extreme idealisation and devaluation which I struggle to comprehend, so our way of caring and attachment is incompatible. So perhaps when someone thinks “you never cared about me” it feels like you never cared because you don’t have the same consistency for caring or complicated spectrum of attachment and caring. Not sure if that even makes sense. But thank you for sharing your personal insights, when I hear you describe your way of thinking, it helps me to understand much more logically and much less emotionally how someone perceives people, relationships and interactions in a way that is different to me.

The past is relevant, trust me. X Well done for this amazing content ❤

Thanks a million, you helpin us❤

They may have forgiven you but the past damage had gone too far , where they were afraid you could repeat that behavior again to that same level if not worse since you have fleeting emotions , they care about you to the extinct they don’t want anything bad to happen to you but they know compatibility wise or even friendship probably couldn’t be possible if you already hurt them too deep or to that degree. They may have forgiven you , but doesn’t mean they want the opportunity for it to happen again in the present time because it very well could , if you only see people in moments. Even if you changed , you could change back to before since history repeats.

I agree that people need to be happy that we're trying to be "human". Lol

I was in a poly relationship and when my (at the time) bf ranted to my (at the time) sister chick about me being away for three days, all I heard was that he was angry because he missed me and he wanted me there with him. I found it flattering where she took it as sh*t talking. Lol she secretly recorded the whole thing (2 hours worth) and he said things like “If she really cared about me, she’d BE HERE… Not watching a f*cking dog.”

You are funny. Sorry about the suffering tho. Seems you are coping well considering the enormity of the disorder. 🌷

Well to me is relevant cuz everytime I try to give the narcissistic person on my life the benefit of the doubt he betrays my trust again and again and again, which makes me feel stupid this is my fault cuz I'm not learning from the past and that's why I keep living the same cycle over and over with this person, that's why is relevant to me at least.

It’s just that most people don’t seem to change… and I guess it depends how bad the things they did were. My biggest thing is don’t say you forgive me, if you actually don’t… that’s unacceptable to me.

If you are in a relationship with someone you tend begin to care for and she lives you u conditionally and. Loyal and trustworthy do you have e the tendency to push her away further and further and treat the ones you care about worse than everyone else? Do u make her come to you first and refuse to even compliment and show interest at all just to emotionally destroy her? Does it not bother you to hurt her when u know she is in pain for no reason at all that she caused. This is what I went through and it stunted my entire life abd broke me and he knows it but still doesn't bother to relieve me of the pain even tho we are still friends? He treats me as if I don't exist and it's mind boggling.

my mother is a narc. and ex boyfriend who happend too life next door...... He told me a lot about what was going on his head the restlessnes....always thinking i wil leave him and smear him. What he did too his exes......that he has a problem with himself. But after he got smearing me.....threaten me....stalking me....lay down next too my fence to hear what people have to say......get me into problems that cost me a lot of money because he told lies.....i cut him off. Also went too court too stop him..... and up til today he is still stalking. Can you tell me why ? because if you care a little do you do all that ?

It might be helpful to come at it from a black and white thinking place. Because you have black and white thinking that means it's binary. Either you are better than other people or other people are better than you. One has to be true because the logic is binary

I think the best partner for a Narc is another Narc. Have you ever dated one?

Please don’t be offended or hurt it’s not my intention I’m just outlining my own understanding: How is it possible to care without empathy? What you’re talking about is not how I identify or understand care towards another I’m actually confused .

Can you explain the narcs hierarchy ? Is this personalized for each one? Based off money , success , looks? What if the narc is not as successful as you job/ money etc ? Does that make you automatically better? Do they give you respect then to some degree? Or see you as competition more and want to destroy you? Especially if you have more resources than your narc bf?

So do you find yourself caring more for someone who treats you really good or someone who treats you really bad?

It's so interesting to listen to this. It make me wonder if 90% of everyone I had in my life is highly narcissistic. Both my parents can seem to get along with enyone but when alone with them all they do is talk shit and gossip abot other people. They seem to feel good about themselves doing that. They even talk shit about their grankids. Most people problably like to feel and make other people feel equal, on the same level. They don't put themselves or others in hirarkies. And they are able to combine their strenghts and weeknesses. Sure there are situations were hierarki has it's place, hum....probably why certain personality types is drawn to it... Well it's interesting to hear other mindsets in any case.

That's what I always try to tell my friends. How much does the choice that I am making count for something? If I don't feel the way you want me to feel but I make the conscious choice to treat you like I feel that way anyway what difference does it make?

Can you make video about idealisation/devaluation/discard, blck&white thinking and snowball effect and also final discard and that npd person can walk away just like that - no emotional connection…

Think your friends might not know how to ask but they probably want to know what that means. What does it mean to you that you are better than them. What does it mean about them?

Nameless I started watching you because of cluster b milkshake. My last gf was BPD and I'm a cluster b as well. Could you explain what happened in this video. Your thoughts and thought process seemed erratic. Were you worried about something? Were you anxious? Had something happen? Did the distraction of your cat put you off your trail of thought? I'm asking because this was the feeling I got being with my BPD. It was like there were so many things going on at the same time for her to be able to make it into a logical sequence. It made it difficult for me to split out all the competing ideas to reformulate it in a way I would understand. Being a cluster b who has very structured thinking I found it hard to understand the message that she was trying to convey. I found equally difficult to understand the message that you were trying to convey. But I see in the comments that others understood what you meant. My instant reaction is to dismiss you because I don't understand you. As a self-aware - I question this feeling whenever I get it now. Because it has an underlying emotion but I don't know what that emotion is and I'm trying to work it out. I have a sense that it's something like this: I don't understand this person so that makes them unsafe, so if you dismiss them they get away from you. I would really appreciate your input and your thoughts.

Nameless, did u just dox your name...?

Haha, your Gemini is showing 😉 Do you ever feel like a human question mark? 😂

Your volume sucks. I can’t hear you well.

you look like david tennant

you look like david tennant