silent takeover
You’ve been told your whole life that sensitivity is weakness. You’ve been told that the thing that you feel when you walk into a room and can instantly and instinctively know exactly where people are at, reading all their beauty and truth and lies between the lines in their faces and the folds in their bodies - is a curse.
But what happens when you start to wake up and heal yourself as an empath? And what happens when a healed empath meets a narcissist?
We’re often told that the sensitive person is putty in the hands of the master manipulator, but in reality, the empath who has integrated their sensitivity and healed their trauma, learning to harness their gifts, is the narcissist’s worst nightmare.
Let me tell you the story of what happens when the healed empath meets a narcissist, and decides to stop playing nice.
For so long us empaths have been moving through life absorbing pain that wasn’t ours, gaslighting ourselves and questioning our worth as we struggled at times to function in what to us seemed like a barbaric world, and wondering why our relationships always felt like we were being left empty-handed.
Then something clicks in your life. You start waking up. You get some therapy, heal your trauma, and start to see clearly. You start to see that all these patterns of self-recrimination have been a paper tiger, you’ve been boxing a ghost and the thing you thought was a curse is actually your superpower.
The shady people in your life, the narcissists and the abusers, who have been thriving on your fog of confusion, start to notice a shift, as suddenly you see with a stark and all at once staggering clarity, the rules of the game.
You stop blaming yourself for the abusive behaviour of others. You stop punishing yourself at not being able to make peace with people that have no interest in cultivating it. Words start coming out of your mouth that up until now you have been shy to speak, and now you say them with grounded clarity and conviction. Words like ‘no’, ‘toxic’, and ‘boundaries’.
This new-found vision doesn’t just bring clarity, it brings fire - because once the empath starts to wake up, once they start to see the pattern, they stop blaming themselves and making excuses for the narcissist’s behaviour. They have cracked the code of the game, and there is no going back from that insight - they stop focussing on what is wrong with them, and start seeing there never was anything to be ashamed of, noticing instead what is false about the dynamic of that dance they are in with the people around them that wish them harm.
This is the beginning of the shift between themselves and the bullies around them. For so long they have fawned and shrunken themselves in the shadow of these people, cowering to those they thought were tyrants, but had simply counted on an illusion of power. Now the tables have turned. This is the beginning of the end for the narcissist.
It’s not just with narcissists either. This new awareness and open vision the empath feels casts light on all areas of their life; from friends, family, and spiritual companions, to teachers and guides. No-one is exempt from their new ability to draw inference and connection, seeing the patterns in the relational fields around them, and seeing that they were never too sensitive, only surrounded by those that often didn’t appreciate their gift. As their natural gifts of insight take new shape and start to harness their true power, they begin to shift focus and re-evaluate who they spend their time with, and why. Their whole life quickly falls into a new alignment guided by strong, clear values. They are entering the real world for the first time, coming into their body, becoming alive, and they know what that means now.
The narcissist sees this shift. They hate it. They hate it because the person who they loved kicking around is no longer backing down, no longer apologising for things they didn’t do wrong. The empath is aloof, distant, and all the buttons that the narcissist used to push don’t work anymore. They are losing control and they feel it; they can’t control someone who is no longer confused. They can’t manipulate someone who can see exactly what they are doing.
The empath starts smiling when they used to wince. They remain calm when they used to become affected, they stay silent when they used to argue or ignore the narcissist when they used to become upset. This is terrifying for the narcissist. They double down, and push harder, vying for reactions in ever desperate spirals, because they want access, they need it, they need to feel like they can mould and shape and play with their usual puppet, this is all they have in their puerile little lives.
This is when the torture begins for the narcissist. A boundary is not just a line, it’s a message, and the signal is clear - you don’t own me, you don’t control me, and I don’t need you in my life - the ultimate insult to someone who defines themselves by their ability to manipulate, use, and control other people.
Narcissists need a constant supply of validation and admiration; their inflated egos are so fragile that not getting the attention they so desperately seek feels like death itself. This is when they start getting increasingly desperate - they start to run you down behind your back, character assassinating you to your friends, they try and guilt trip you, blaming you for changing, they start getting angry at you, calling you crazy, trying to twist your words and rewrite your history - they need chaos, they need you in panic mode so they can push and pull you all over the place. But it’s not working anymore. You’re holding your ground and it’s driving them nuts.
This is when you become untouchable. You start winning the war effortlessly, because you see there is no war to win. The war is a chimera infecting the mind of an infant, projected onto the world and counting on confusion, designed only to deceive so that the narcissist may receive worship. It’s a sleight of hand, and once the trick is seen, like a stage performer who messes up the act, the magician loses all their magic, and becomes a mockery of themselves.
You’re not responding to their dysfunction anymore. It’s boring. You’re protecting your field and only letting those who deserve your gifts into your space. Boundaries create space, and narcissists can’t survive in space. Your silence, your confident withdrawal, your peace, starts to speak louder than their tantrums.
The people around you know it too. They see you are not only unaffected, but dangerous, and not to be messed with. They see that for the immature and volatile people around you to unravel, you don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to hurt them, because that’s their game; you’re simply starving them of the food they need to survive because you’re no longer on the menu. You no longer have to weather the storm - you are the eye in the centre. This starts to inspire others, they want the same protection.
This is the point where the narcissist starts to see, through the mirror of the healed empath, the one thing they’ve been running from their entire lives - themselves.
The power of the empath becomes apparent when, out of their new clarity, they start reflecting the narcissist back on themselves, so that they are forced to face the ugly truth of their behaviour, and how they treat others. This isn’t done out of spite, but compassion, and as a gift to those around the empath who would normally be under the cross-hairs of the abuser. Once the empath starts to use the same tactics of the narcissist back on them, casting doubt on the validity of their assertions by gaslighting them back, calling out their insecurities and projections for what they are, exposing their manipulations, backing them into a corner in which they must start contorting themselves by defending their own lies, the narcissist starts to realise that mirrors don’t lie, and they stand naked and exposed. They’ve been seen clearly seen for what they are, and it hurts.
Narcissists can’t handle truth, they operate in the shadows. Their entire identity is a mirage, a fiction, a dream built on performance and image and superficiality. When the empath begins to turn the game on it’s head, and shine the mirror on the narcissist, all the unhallowed, insecure, wounded shades of self that the narcissist has been hiding through their selfish, destructive façades, come crumbling down, not with a crash, but with a quiet, still, and unshakeable finality.
Suddenly every word the narcissist says starts to be seen not just by the empath, but, in the dance between the empath and flailing narcissist, by all of those around them also. This play becomes public, and the desperate confusion of the spinning abuser being infuriated by all their efforts bouncing back into their own hands by someone who no longer pretends not to care, but who doesn’t need to, confirms that the coup of the fake philosopher king is over.
This reclamation of the true ruler, and the banishment of the tyrant, disrupts the entire ecosystem and creates new standards, new rules, new boundaries, new love. The empath no longer tolerates even the slightest hint of abuse, they no longer accept fake apologies without evidence of reform, which they know is unlikely to be forthcoming. They stop negotiating with those that don’t truly seek compromise, and they walk away when their values are not respected. The empath becomes their own centre of gravity.
This new way of holding themselves in the world is magnetic. The empath starts to attract all the right people into their life, because like attracts like, and those that aren’t worthy simply fade away. The empath becomes radiant, powerful, whole. The narcissist can’t stand this because they are no longer getting the attention they need, and the joy and unshakeable peace that the empath feels reminds them of everything they so desperately seek, but can never seem to find.
The final death rattle of the narcissist may unfold in puny attempts to remain relevant; they may try old hooks and scripts, tired worn out tropes of an unimaginative mind. The empath sees through all that now though, they have finally learned that their love is a gift, and not to be sold.
The narcissist was just an ugly detour in a brilliant life. They were the slimy catalyst for a fuller awakening into the empath’s true power. The empath is not coming back, and the narcissist finally has to accept that, as excruciating and humiliating as it is. It’s final, and it hits them harder than they can handle. The vacuum they feel is the void created by a person who realised the gambit they were running had run too long, and they had overplayed their hand, lost, and been found wanting.
The empath doesn’t need closure. They don’t need drama, or victory, or resolution. For the empath, the inner work is the path, and they walk away not because they don’t care, but because they care about themselves more - they are not going to turn down their light to feed another’s darkness - they choose healing, and love. And nothing says love louder than self-respect.
This, is the silent takeover.
- Peace.