Dark Empaths Are Not Empaths

We are emotional shape shifters

The term Dark Empath is derived from two other terms to describe personality. These are the Empath personality and the Dark Triad personality traits.

Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of others beyond a person’s own perspective. Empaths are attuned to other people’s moods, good, bad or other. They feel everything. They absorb the negativity or positivity surrounding them regardless of how it’s expressed.

There’s two flavors of empathy — cognitive and affective. They are independent of one another, but also often work in tandem. Cognitive empathy is the ability to see things from another’s point of view. Affective empathy is the capacity to vibe with others’ emotions.

The Dark Triad is a personality inventory that explores the socially undesirable traits of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy.

The term Dark Empath didn’t exist until a few months ago. It was thought that people were either normal, an empath, or dark triad. A recent study showed that there was another previously unknown group that was high in empathy but had other Psychopathic tendencies.

A Dark Empath understands emotions like an Empath, but we are not affected by them. We are in tune to emotions for our own benefit.

From the age of 8 I saw both a psychologist and psychiatrist until I was 19. In my adult life I’d go when I had the insurance or my life became unmanageable. I saw around a dozen shrinks in total.

The only thing they had in common was a different diagnosis. When I was a child my diagnosis was Attention Deficit Disorder. As an adult I was diagnosed as Bipolar 1 & 2, Schizoid, Sociopath, Borderline, ADHD, and a couple said I was fine.

I’ve been on almost every anti-psychotic, antidepressant, stimulant and mood stabilizer stocked at the pharmacy. Nothing worked. I was still as me as ever…

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