Why narcissists never suffer burnout, yet empaths often do

None of what I’m about to write is a surprise, for it will make perfect sense.  Those who feature highly on the scale of narcissism will inevitably be most protected against burnout, for the simple matter that they care integrally for themselves, and they never care for others unless it is in their best interests to do so.

In sum, it’s always about them and what they can extract that matters.

Even though we all show some narcissistic tendencies from time to time, it’s the person who’s characterised for a lack of empathy, and who therefore exploits people and situations without concern for others, who feels entitled to act the way they do.

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Those who burn out are those who have no qualms about sacrificing themselves for others.  Those who are given to a service mindset, those who are servant hearted, and those also who are given to perfectionism (they desperately want to do their best), are those most prone to burn out.

The sociopath, the psychopath, the narcissist, will never suffer from a condition that is inherently about absorbing the stresses that others and life will place on a human being.  For these there’s always others to put the load of their own life onto.

Sometimes it’s the person who absorbs that load that transfers it to another, and it can be that people who are not even related to the relationship who bear the costs and burdens of ONE person who refuses to take any responsibility for their life.

Much of what leads us toward burnout are causes related to a sincere desire to be effective and efficient human beings.  Burnout is essentially about being the most resilient form of ourselves over a very long time period, quintessentially without rest.  Anxiety grinds itself into us, because we need to be driven to keep up, essentially driving ourselves, and yet anxiety becomes central to the condition of our lives.  When we finish something, we don’t celebrate it, we just look for the next thing, then the next thing and so on.  And much of the time it can be about managing multiple things simultaneously.

The person most prone to burnout is usually the empath, and it is no coincidence that it is usually someone who is quite sociopathic who may be behind driving the person to that outcome.

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The person who is entitled, who bears no empathy, who feels entitled to exploit another person, especially in regard to an incredibly overwhelming workload finds in the empath a person willing who will go the extra mile, a person willing to turn the other cheek, a person willing to give them a spare coat.  And the narcissist TAKES that extra mile and then some, they hit the other cheek and leave bruises mostly in the invisible places, and they take the full wardrobe.

It’s only the person who cares who tends to find themselves burned out.

Post-traumatic stress and forgiveness

Forgiving ourselves can be one of the hardest tasks in reconciling past events, whether others are involved or not.  The activators of guilt and shame loom large and seem to prove overwhelming amid triggers of post-traumatic stress.

Post-traumatic stress interacts with and is often though not always indicated by depression, anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, addiction, and cognitive dysfunction, just to mention a few.

Post-traumatic stress is a real thing, it’s in normal people like you and me.

Post-traumatic stress isn’t a made-up thing, or an idea that comes up in our head, or something we can even prevent.  It manifests like glue sticks.  Simply add trauma.

The instinctive reactions that come out of us in circumstances where the four trauma responses—fight, flight, freeze, fawn—can emerge, operationalise this stress.  It’s normal to be hypercritical around these triggers and judge and condemn ourselves or others when we or they (over)react.

Whilst judgement and condemnation might be the default, they’re hardly helpful.

What’s the most complicated about all this is the post-traumatic stress triggers are autonomic and can’t be controlled easily.

UNDERSTANDING POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS 
IS ACCEPTING IT TO FORGIVE ITS EFFECTS

Post-traumatic stress should never be pathologised.  It’s a product of cause-and-effect.  

There is a path of causation that explains the reasons why it’s there.

Especially when it’s in others, we can attempt to understand why they have responded the wrong way when they have, if only we give ourselves that same latitude.  This requires us to get beyond our hurt.  If there’s an explicable cause in why a person has behaved a certain way, we can find it easier to forgive, and we offer them and ourselves grace as a result.

Importantly, this is about being less judgemental towards others AND ourselves, giving others and ourselves the scope of leeway to get life wrong occasionally.  Forgiveness is the second chance we all need when we desire it, especially when we’re prepared to try hard to learn from experiences.

There are many negative events in post-traumatic stress that require the maintenance of forgiveness.  In this way, if we don’t forgive ourselves and attempt to understand others, the stress in us and them can build.

If we seek another person to be compassionate with us, we need to understand that we have a contribution to make in being compassionate persons ourselves.

The commitment to forgiveness is necessarily a commitment to maintaining a soft heart.

Equally, it’s important that anyone bearing post-traumatic stress seeks to heal it.

Life will hurt anyone who gives themselves to compassion, because to “suffer with” involves hardship, and some of that hardship is having our grace shoved in our face.  So we can see that forgiveness is not the easy life, but a remarkably hard commitment toward maintaining that soft heart.

It’s why it’s so important to commit beforehand to being a forgiving person.

The person who is committed to forgiveness beforehand is fortified for healing.

One of the gifts of having suffered post-traumatic stress is we see how directly it occurs as a by-product of trauma.  Trauma is a vast injustice that overwhelms the body and mind.

The traumatised person can never be responsible for having been traumatised.  It always happens against the traumatised person’s will.  When we see this, we have empathy for the traumatised person, and we can extend forgiveness, which when done right, helps us to heal our trauma.

We’re never to be forced into forgiving, however.  It can so often be a process that can take years. But the willingness to forgive is important.  The willingness and want to be there is enough as a down payment on achieving the whole deal to heal.

Evening up the unequal yoking in love relationships

Unequal relationship contributions are usually the major sticking point in any love relationship once couples get past the romance phase, where a conflicted dynamic presents.  By relationship contributions I don’t just mean what partners do or don’t do, though that’s front and centre.  It’s also about what partners contribute to their partner’s life in terms of negative (or toxic) contributions.

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First, in terms of explaining unequal yoking, the image is of oxen that are yoked together by a bow yoke to work a field, ploughing it.  It’s important that they pull together, with the same effort and the same strength, to do the work effectively and efficiently.

It’s the same in a love relationship.

This image of pulling together with the same effort and same strength is used to describe the effective love relationship whereby both partners are equally committed to the love and the work in the relationship.

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When it comes to being in an unequally yoked relationship, it feels unfair and can even feel unsafe, and it doesn’t genuinely feel like a partnership at all.  It will feel like it’s all one way.  

There are certainly situations in relationships where one partner is stronger than the other in a particular way, but where the partners even up with complementary strengths.  I wouldn’t necessarily call this unequally yoked, because one of the beauties of partnership is we can draw on each other’s strength.  This is about appreciating the complementary strengths the partners bring.  By using the word “complementary” I don’t mean complementarian—I actually mean very egalitarian.

But where one partner is consistently pulling better and stronger than the other there is a problem, and awareness needs to be drawn to the problem to see if there is potential for working a way through it.

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If it’s identified that there is an unequal yoking in the relationship, it’s always good to try to confront the issue.  When people don’t feel they can confront the issue, my query is do they feel safe enough in the relationship to pose such a question?

If we feel we will enrage the partner, chances are we won’t go there, and not being able to go there is all you really need to know about how untenable the relationship is.

Where we cannot confront issues, that’s a red flag.  It’s important that such information about the relationship is not shoved under the carpet.  It’s an important truth that needs to be faced.

Where abuse is apparent, it’s an example of where the love contribution is skewed to the point where there isn’t any, and fear and control have consumed the place of love.  The unequal yoking in this situation has the perpetrator demanding control and their victimised partner in fear.  A side note here: couples counselling is completely inappropriate and dangerous where there’s abuse.

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Perhaps the issue of unequal yoking has been faced and discussed over the years with little change.  It’s important that people have an opportunity to address the imbalance, and some partners and some relationships need a little time.

The partner with the grievance, who would love to see improved effort and contribution in their partner, might be brave enough to enlist the support of a marriage mentoring couple or friend or counsellor in either seeking to be heard, or making space for discussion.  It’s no good being unhappy in a love relationship.

It could be that there is an uneven contribution in terms of accepting responsibility, or apologising, or with the workload, or in terms of intimacy, or commitment, or faithfulness, or patience, gentleness, kindness, and generosity given and received.  The list runs on and on, but the main idea is the happiest relationships are those where contributions are even.

Unequally yoked relationships can often be evened up, but it takes humility in the partner needing to grow to improve the contributions they make.  All it takes to begin the journey is the acceptance of responsibility.  But change is proven most in sustained effort, and heart change must underpin it.

Letter to my 80-year-old self

Letter to my 80-year-old self

Part of what inspires this letter is the distinct possibility that I may not make it.  I hope to live another 25 years, and 45 would see me serve out my contract, but there’s no guarantee of tomorrow let alone decades to come.

This is the thing about life.  We take it so much for granted, and curse it so much, yet at the end of the day there’s no substitute for being alive.

Dear 80-year-old self

I hope you feel satisfied to have arrived at eight decades of life lived.  Back when I wrote this, I was almost 55 and not at all convinced that I would make it to where you are today.  At that time, when I wrote this letter, there was enough evidence around me of how fleeting life is, and how often and cruelly people are taken early.

However you feel physically and mentally, consider it a bonus that you have lived so much life.  I know you’ll have more wisdom than I do now because over the past 25 years since I wrote this you will have seen a lot of loss.  You will have lost your parents, and as I write this now, with both of them still alive, it’s a little hard to believe that they won’t be around forever.

When I wrote this, I was a grandfather to two grandchildren with another two grandchildren on the way.  It will seem strange to look back at this time I’m sure, having only just become a grandparent in the recent years.  From your viewpoint right now you probably feel like a veteran.

You may look over the past 25 years since I wrote this and consider what I don’t know now and pity me for it, but also feel a little excited for the good things to come.  For the pain ahead from the present context, as you reflect back now reading this letter, I’m sure you send your prayers backwards so I will be safe along the way and equipped to manage each challenge.

I have a question for you.  How does it feel to have lived a full life?  I suspect you may feel you want many more years ahead, you may not be ready to go yet, even if I assume from my ‘tender’ age that 80 years is worth settling for.  I also suspect that you’ve known how hard yet rewarding it is living each day as if it’s your last.

Just one more important question.  Did that vision I was given all those years ago—you know the one—come true?  Did it materialise?  I guess you’ll be saying, “Wait and see, Buddy, keep trusting the process.”  Okay.

I wish I knew now what you know as far as what is worth the effort from what isn’t.  I sincerely hope at this point that there are no significant regrets as you look back over the last 25 years.  I hope and pray I have sufficient wisdom to make most of the right decisions, and I apologise to you in advance (though it is weird saying it this way as you’re reading it from the past tense viewpoint) for those mistakes and the decision-making you’ll inevitably have made.  But, of course, you know that it would be your fault as much as it is mine. J

I wish you could teleport back from where you are into the younger version of myself to tell me some of the things I need to know, but of course that would break the rules of life.  Life is to be a daring adventure or nothing at all.  And I think right now you will understand that even better than I do now.

There is so many things I could say but let us just leave it at that.  I thank you for being you because who would I be without you?  Keep smiling even as I imagine you telling me to do the same thing.

PS. Can you keep going for another 20 years?

The power dynamics in unequally yoked relationships

There’s a consistent dynamic at play when one person in a relationship takes responsibility and the other doesn’t.  It’s a power dynamic.  When one person consistently refuses to take responsibility within a relationship, inevitably they’re exploiting the other person or people.

I’m joining together two concepts to explain the one dynamic within the relationship.  One of the concepts is the cause, and the other is the effect.  In effect, when a person refuses to take their responsibility, they exploit others, because somebody must carry the can.

The failure to take responsibility can be seen as the cause, and the exploitation of the situation can be seen as the effect.  That effect is the one in the relationship taking responsibility must bear the injustice.

Of course, in so many relationships these dynamics are occurring in both individuals—neither is grown up enough to know that it is in THEIR best interests, for their own development and prospects not to mention the relationship, that they take responsibility that is theirs alone to take.  In such relationships, where the toxic dynamics play out on a daily basis, where neither faces their truth, there is no hope, and anyone helping will inevitably stare down despair.  When both cannot or will not bear their responsibility, both are exploiting the power dynamic against the other.  Pity the children with parents bearing these dynamics.  Adults who cannot or will not take responsibility haven’t grown up.

But so often in relationships, it’s one party who bears the brunt of the cost of the relationship, taking their responsibility and their partner’s.  The partner who refuses to acknowledge the consequences of their behaviour relegates to the abyss any hope for joy in the other.

Commonly in the unequally yoked relationship is the feature that the one who cannot or will not take responsibility, cannot or will not see.  They have no desire to reflect.  There is no capacity for growth, and therefore no hope for the relationship or to be equally yoked.

This is a hard reality for the one who takes responsibility in the relationship, but it is a truth they have been aware of for a long time, an inconvenient truth, because it forces change.

They begin to understand that it isn’t just a failure in the other to own the consequences of their behaviour.  They begin to understand that they’ve been exploited, that the power dynamics in the relationship has been skewed for such a long time.

When this knowledge dawns on the one who has held up their end of the bargain where the other hasn’t, there’s often a fair bit of anger, because nobody likes to be exploited.  And some of that anger is directed inwardly, like “how have I allowed them to treat me in such a way for such a long time... (and) how dare they!”  The anger is justified yet is also complicated.

The power dynamics in unequally yoked relationships are stark.

Sometimes it’s a case of recognising we’ve been exploited before we fully recognise the other person isn’t pulling their weight.  Few relationships can bear such inequality in the power dynamics over the longer term.

Forgiveness in these situations isn’t as important as accepting we did our best, that the failure of the relationship wasn’t our fault.  Indeed, it’s more a case that we forgive ourselves for putting up with such rot.  What’s more important than forgiving the person who refused to own the consequences of their behaviour is simply holding them to account.

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Earlier articles that relate to this one: acknowledging the cost of unequally yoked relationships and unequal yoking of love in relationships.

There are 5 stages of grief, are there 5 stages of forgiveness?

When we consider the five stages of grief, there are probably five stages for many complex processes, and the process of forgiveness can be just as arduous and mysterious as the process of grief—and indeed on many occasions forgiveness is interwoven with grief.

Here is a proposal for five stages of forgiveness:

1.     CONFUSION – “WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?”

It is utterly to be expected that those situations that we are called to forgive will at times flummox us.  There are situations where we are beyond being able to understand why people have done what they’ve done, and why people will either not take responsibility or fail to adequately and sincerely apologise.

Much of our initial confusion will come down to the surprise element, but just as much of our confusion can linger for such a long time.  This is especially the case when there is a compounding of the betrayal of abuse, where there is no justice.  Whenever we are triggered for trauma, perhaps we enter this early-stage confusion for what we experience in the triggered moment from what we experienced initially as the trauma.

2.    BITTERNESS – “HOW COULD SUCH A THING OCCUR?”

What qualifies us to speak in terms of forgiveness and its difficulties is having been in impossible situations.

It’s not until we have been in that place of grieving bitterness, where we have no way of comprehending why a thing was done to us or against us, and why justice continues to allude us, that we realistically comprehend the magnitude of some situations where forgiveness feels impossible.

Bitterness, in this way, is not only to be expected, but it is also a process of suffering that comparatively few have the misfortune to experience.  Little wonder so few understand.  In this way, such bitterness is instructive, however, because it gives us an empathy for those who suffer abuse that few can touch.

This bitterness of the second stage is equivalent to the anger in grief.  It is the real, full-blown experience of the emotions for what has taken place, and these feelings are not to be discounted or “bypassed,” on the contrary, they are to be validated.  Tremendous healing power prevails right there, IN the validation.

3.    ATTEMPTING – “WHEN WILL MY ATTEMPTS STICK?”

Throughout the process of endeavouring to forgive there are inevitably multiple times where we try and fail for forgiveness to stick.  This is a journey of a pendulum between hope and despair and back to hope again before we try on a little more despair.

The point is that we are trying.

The point is that there is a heart in us to overcome this.

That there is an attitude of forgiveness or wanting to come to a peace about the matter is enough.  As we roll through the inevitable topsy-turvy journey of finding that peace and acceptance in our hearts, we learn that our efforts speak as much for tenacity and intestinal fortitude as anything.

Attempting, while it’s frustrating, is about the heart, and it’s something to admire, because all those who continue to attempt and keep attempting ultimately overcome.

Take heart that you’re on the journey of overcoming.  It will certainly come to be.

4.    DEPRESSION – “WILL I EVER FINALLY ARRIVE?”

Depression for the situations of bitterness and injustice and attempting we find ourselves in, regaling in this way in some situations for many years, is just so understandable.

This journey of forgiving the reprehensible thing that was done to us is one of the hardest challenges we will ever have to face.  It’s understandable that it will take us to the end of our tether.  It’s comprehensible that we will suffer our mental-ill-health days.

Nothing makes our tenacity and intestinal fortitude stand out more than enduring the depths of depression for the injustices that rail against us.  Those who overcome depression develop a depth of understanding and empathy few can match.

5.    GRACE – “IT WAS WORTH IT FOR WHAT I HAVE LEARNED”

Interspersed along the way there are periods of grace, just like there are periods of acceptance that we try on in the stages of grief.

Grace, like acceptance, doesn’t stick until it sticks, and that’s the truth of it.  Grace is the ultimate understanding and acceptance of the importance of extending mercy to others because of the mercy that has been extended to us—in Christ.

There’s no pressure to arrive at this cherished halcyon of destinations, because there is always a lot to learn along the journey.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever, ought to expect that we’d just “arrive” at the grace of forgiveness.

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What a journey life is that we must wrestle long and hard to come to peace with situations that occurred against us.  But the fact is, injustice is common to all of us, and perhaps it is the biggest challenge of all to overcome, to arrive at a place of forgiving the trespass against us, even as our trespasses are no longer counted against us—in Christ.

Taking the steps to forgive oneself

We find ourselves in situations in life where forgiving another person is complicated by the need to forgive ourselves.  And in some situations, all that is needed is to forgive oneself.  It’s not drawing too long a bow to say that forgiving oneself is a bigger challenge much of the time.

It’s common in life to experience the vicarious trauma of feeling responsible for other people’s actions.  We know logically that these things are not our responsibility, yet we feel responsible at least partially.

This is because someone much take responsibility,
and if nobody else does, we do.

Much of the time this is because we’ve not been in control of the situations that came against us.  If it was our parents separating and divorcing, we couldn’t change that reality so perhaps we felt that it was up to us to do something about it.  It was up to us to take responsibility, and even where they took responsibility, there was something untenable about losing our family in this way.  The buck had to stop somewhere.

If it was the situation where we were abused or neglected, even though we couldn’t control what happened to us, we tend to think that there must’ve been something we could’ve done—even if that thinking is totally illogical.  Logically we know there wasn’t, and because we know we had no control, and because having no control is an untenable situation, we rationalised that we must’ve been at least partly at fault, even though we know we were completely innocent.  This is our mind at war with ourselves.

Of course, there’s a huge dichotomy in all of this, as our unaccepted reality warred with our logical mind.  There’s little wonder we struggle to forgive ourselves.  Amid such cognitive dissonance, which is just a fancy term for saying there was an incompatibility of thoughts and feelings within us, we found we couldn’t reconcile it.  We couldn’t receive any peace.

Sometimes it’s situations where our dreams were crushed and we felt we could’ve or “should’ve” done something different, even if we could not have done anything different.

In situations where there is regret for what we cannot undo, even as we process it again and again and again, we find ourselves arriving at a place of self-judgement and self-recrimination.

We reconcile that if we were responsible, we were the ones who were wrong.  And whilst that’s a cold reality to swallow, perhaps it’s the key to moving forward.

If we were the only ones who could’ve prevented or stopped something, or done something different, we arrive at the same place each time.  And even when we know in our mind of minds, knowing that we know that we know, that we were not at fault, the lack of justice leaves us in a place of still needing to attribute some cause.  We feel scapegoated, because in the absence of someone responsible taking responsibility we take responsibility.  And what maddens us each time is we know how maddening that principle is—taking responsibility for what we’re not and could never be responsible for.

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Forgiving oneself is one of the biggest challenges many people face, and the outworking of such a challenge is we either introject with self-judgement or self-criticism or we project our anger onto others, commonly onto those closest to us.  This is because, in the absence of someone to accept responsibility, we take that on, yet half of us seethes for the injustice of it.

It’s no coincidence that when people do take responsibility for the injustices they do against us, we don’t experience the flip-flop of anger toward them and anger towards us.

In coming to a place of forgiving oneself, it’s good to recognise that:

§     If we were to blame, and we can’t fix it, we are worth a second chance, and that’s centrally about agreeing that we’ve learned something.  We all get it wrong from time to time, and we are all worth a second chance, especially with ourselves.

§     If we were not to blame, and in many situations it’s like this, we can’t be responsible, and we ought not to be held to account—by ourselves most of all.

Forgiving ourselves is about accepting that none of us live in a vacuum.  We are all acted upon just as we act onto others.  There are always reasons for the things we do and say and why we did these things and said them.

Forgiving ourselves is about accepting our past can’t be changed.

Accepting what cannot be changed, therefore, is half the journey to wisdom, and the other half is having the courage to walk boldly into a new day.  There’s only one thing we can change, and that’s our future.