When You Can’t Make A Narcissist Understand Your Feelings   

If you are in a Narcissistic relationship that just isn’t working there is something that you likely need to factor into your thinking: you are desperate to be heard. In fact, you are willing to do an awful lot of hitting your head against a brick wall in your attempts to make someone you love understand the pain that they have caused you. 

That really doesn’t do you any good at all. 

It is a pattern that has been drilled into you, most likely from an early age. 

But the important thing to focus on is what it could tell you about yourself? 

Provided you overlook the ingrained pattern of self-blame, It can tell you 3 key things that you need to understand about yourself. These are important to look at – before we even turn our focus onto why your narcissistic loved one never seems to understand your feelings. No matter how much trouble you go to to make them understand. 

So, what are these 3 key things: 

• You are used to not being heard and not meeting with empathy. 
• You take sole responsibility for effective communication – even with someone who isn’t listening and doesn’t care.  
• You have a deep need to be heard by this person who chooses not to listen and most commonly negates your worth. Not least because you are not tuned into yourself. You have never been taught to truly listen to your own feelings and meet them with empathy. 

The silver lining 

Happily, this is one cloud that does have a silver lining: the fact that these limitations occur inside your own head means that you are well placed to free yourself from them. 

Admittedly, you were never taught that you have agency over what goes on inside your own head. Rather, you were taught that it was your role and duty in life to change what goes on inside the heads of people who refuse to value you and your feelings. 

The people who taught you that knew full well that changing their minds would become your mission. They knew that it would give them a lot of power over you. For the longest time. 

They knew that their teachings would result in you powering – or dragging – yourself on through despair and frustration. They knew that you would continue to do so long after another person, who had been blessed with the experience of authentic emotional support, would have given up. 

Why would that other person have given up? 

Because that other person would have known that: 

1. They deserved better. They were already well used to far better. 
2. There was something profoundly wrong with the amount of thankless, emotional labor that they were being asked to do. 
3. That caring people simply do not behave in a heartless way. 

Identifying the lack within you 

You did not know that. Or at least you did not know that at a deep, emotional level. So, that is a lack, in the emotional way that you square up to Life, that needs to be rectified. And it can be rectified. 

You, too, can learn to have and follow an accurate emotional compass. There is a process by which you, too, can come to value yourself and confidently protect yourself from damaging people – like Narcissists. 

Having clarified those 3 key things that you need to grasp about yourself, let’s move on to focusing on the Narcissist. 

Here, too, there are a few key facts that you need to take on board 

Key fact #1. Narcissists do not lack cognitive empathy. 

Remember back at the start of your relationship with a Narcissistic partner or friend just how great things seemed to be? 

That was because they made a point of being everything that you wanted and needed them to be. 

In fact, clients invariably tell me that that person was almost too perfect… (Albeit, when questioned a little more deeply, they tend to acknowledge that despite all that perfection, there were some disquieting signs aka Red Flags.) 

How did those Narcissists know to be SO perfect? 

Because they have great cognitive empathy. 

Narcissists know what they are ideally looking for in a partner, at any given time. They knew what they were looking for in you – your empathy, selflessness, good heart, trusting nature, hunger for love, past wounds. Plus, they observed, listened, asked the right questions and even shared stories (more or less fabricated stories – but you couldn’t know that back then) to make you feel that they were just like you: kindred spirits, soulmates, twin flames. 

In other words, 

They knew exactly what you were worth to them. 

Key fact #2 Narcissists know exactly how to play you emotionally 

They know how to play you emotionally. 

And play you, they will. 

Not right at the start, for sure. But after a while, aka the lovebombing period, it all got stale for them. 

Think of it this way, Narcissists have jaded emotional palates. They need strong flavors to stimulate their taste buds. 

Their favorites include: drama, rage, accusations, intimidation and terror-inducing threats. 

They feed off you spiralling into shame, anxiety, fear and panic mode. 

They LOVE to savor your despair and hopelessness. 

Key fact #3 Narcissists DO understand 

Narcissists behave the way that they do because they DO understand. 

They are masters of cognitive empathy, remember. 

They are behaving like that because they love the strong taste of their own words. 

They love seeing how their words affect you. 

That is a huge thrill for them. 

Narcissists thrive on power. Not love. 

They might enjoy the power that they have to make you fall in love with a fake version of who they are. 

But love is not fundamentally important to them – except as tool for manipulation. 

They do not have a love tank that they need to fill. But they do have a deep need to empty out the love tank of the people that they get “close” to. 

That is not how love works, at all. 

People who feel genuine love for another do not seek power over that other. They want that other to be free to be their best self and live their best life. 

They want to make that other’s life easier, safe, sweeter. 

Narcissists don’t want any of that for you. 

Narcissists want to hollow out your life and your sense of self. 

They want to see how bad they can make it for you and still persuade you that they are your sole chance of salvation. 

The bottom line 

The bottom line is that Narcissists do what they think will give them the biggest thrills and the greatest sense of power over you. 

That requires them to respond – almost invariably – to your explanations and pleas for love – in a breathtakingly unkind way. 

On the rare occasions that they can be cajoled into replying with a more or less appropriate show of love and affection, that is simply a refinement of cruelty. 

They know what you are starving to hear, banging you head against the brick wall of their callousness to hear, and they are prepared to say it because: 

1. It will keep you sweet for the short term and ensure that you do not disrupt the smooth and convenient running of their life. 
2. They know just how devastated you will be when they revert to type. In other words, they have a good deal of gratification – at your expense – to look forward to. 

When they get bored enough or see a better opportunity elsewhere, they will move on. 

Narcissists have no love and no loyalty to anyone or anything except their own agenda 

The learning 

So, what is the learning here? 

The learning has to be for and about us the partners, children, siblings and friends of Narcissists. We have to learn what we can and cannot have – and do – in a relationship with a Narcissist. 

We cannot enjoy any of the great feelings or emotional comfort that we seek in our relationships. We cannot experience the love and validation that we want from them. Because it will never be on offer. 

Nor can we make them understand – by which we mean walk a mile in our shoes.  

Narcissists have no intention of ever walking even one step in our shoes. 

So, we have to learn the painful lesson that no amount of wanting something from a Narcissist will ever make it happen. 

We have to be able to say, “There are some people that I need to give up on. They understand what I desperately want and need and they will never, ever provide it. They make their choices which are extraordinarily bad for me. I have to make mine. Going forward, I choose to accept reality rather than try to make another person someone that they have no intention of ever becoming.” 

We have to learn to do the hard thing that we least want to confront. That is the only viable way forward.