Examining the echoist, the empath and the love addict
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Anyone can become a mark for a calculated narcissistic abuser, as they are highly skilled at manipulating all kinds of individuals, regardless of background, intelligence, strength, or social status. That many narcissists are initially very charming, funny, engaging, and even magnetic, makes people feel special in their presence. Likewise, narcissists often project extreme self-assurance. People can be drawn in by their feigned confidence, which can be easily mistaken for true capability or leadership.
Above all, despite their lack of empathy, narcissists often have a strong intuitive sense of how people tick. They can read emotional cues and quickly figure out what someone wants to hear or needs to feel validated. By overwhelming others with attention, affection, praise, or generosity a fast bond and a sense of dependency or loyalty can be created.
Once the malignant narcissist gains trust or influence, they proceed with subtly distorting reality by twisting facts, denying things they said or did, or making you doubt your perception or feelings. Zeroing in on people’s insecurities, traumas, or unmet emotional needs allows the narcissist to lever control, guilt-trip and manipulate. Divide and conquer tactics are also employed by pitting people against each other to maintain control or isolating people from others who might challenge their influence.
Additionally, narcissists often adopt authoritative roles that lend them credibility, such as leaders, experts or mentors, which gives their abusive maneuvering a veneer of legitimacy. Moreover, they can fluidly shift roles to gain sympathy or admiration by either portraying themselves as the misunderstood martyr or the savior who’s here to help.
Although highly skilled at securing supply from anyone in their orbit, there are some folks who are more vulnerable to the machinations of narcissists than others. In fact, there are folks who are actually drawn to narcissists.
I should know, as I was one of them.
The degree of pathology varied from one narcissist to the next, but what remained consistent was how my unresolved childhood wounds and people-pleasing tendencies made me especially vulnerable to the charm and manipulation of predatory, exploitative individuals. Much like myself, this tragic pattern of falling in love with emotionally unavailable people and staying loyal to those who cannot or will not truly see or love them, is evidenced in many of the men and women I treat for complex trauma.
As a trauma informed clinician for over three decades, I now understand what eluded me in my early recovery. Plagued by a profound sense of emptiness and invisibility, I was deeply entrenched in echoist traits.
Echoism, a term coined by Dr. Craig Malkin, author of Rethinking Narcissism, applied the myth of Echo as a metaphor to describe a certain personality style or trauma response that often develops in the shadow of narcissism. In the context of narcissistic abuse recovery, Malkin recognized how the ancient story of Echo resonated with a modern clinical dissection of narcissist-victim dynamics.
Echoism is a pattern in which a person struggles to express their own needs, desires, opinions, or even identity, often out of fear of taking up space, being seen as selfish, or triggering rejection, punishment, or shame.
Derived from Greek mythology and most famously told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Echo was a nymph who fell in love with a handsome young man named Narcissus, who was known for his beauty, but was cold and arrogant, uninterested in love. Still, Echo followed Narcissus through the forest, but because she was stripped of her voice, other than to echo the words of others, she couldn’t speak to him properly.
Ultimately Narcissus cruel rejection of Echo left her heartbroken and she wasted away in sorrow, unseen and unheard. She was reduced to a disembodied presence, a voice that can only repeat, never initiate.
Echo’s plight is a haunting metaphor for longing, absence, and unfulfilled expression. She represents unrequited love and the pain of being silenced. Her story is also about loneliness, grief, and what it means to be heard, but not truly listened to.
The dark chemistry and subconscious pact between predator and prey is exemplified in the Echo-Narcissist dynamic. Feeling invisible, overlooked, or unworthy of love or attention, echoists suppress their voice, needs, or identity in relationships and tend to attract or stay attached to narcissistic partners who lack empathy or reciprocity.
Also referred to as the inverted narcissist, the echoist is a severe co-dependent. According to Melody Beattie in Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, codependency is a term used to describe “self-defeating, learned behaviors or character defects that result in a diminished capacity to initiate or to participate in loving relationships.”
Essentially the inverted narcissist is a codependent person who is unconsciously drawn to narcissists in a complementary, compulsive way. They are a type of echoist, but with a deeper entanglement and unconscious longing for narcissistic intensity. Hence, the echoist codependent is driven to fawn, flatter and worships narcissists to get their primal dependency needs met and deflect from the pain of a tenuous sense of identity.
Eager to please the narcissist, so as to symbiotically feed off the narcissist’s perceived specialness, the echoist wards off pervasive fears of abandonment and self-loathing by conforming and upholding whatever agenda the lauded narcissist demands.
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For the codependent echoist, the vicarious thrill and sense of ‘value’ obtained through being a narcissistic extension is compelling and addictive. As expected, their obsequious compliance and blind obedience make them stellar enablers (aka flying monkeys) in the narcissist’s arsenal, as they live to promote the narcissist’s delusional sense of omnipotence and omniscience.
Those who are magnetically drawn to narcissistic abusers typically grew up with a narcissistic parent or caregiver. As children they were taught that their self-worth is either dangerous or must be defined by others. Moreover, they had to become the caretaker of the parent’s emotions, while suppressing their own so as to avoid conflict or guilt. The child is trained to expect that any act of self-expression will be met with ridicule or accusations of being ‘selfish,’ ‘attention-seeking,’ or ‘too much.’
Consequently, the child’s worth becomes predicated on serving or idealizing another’s ego or needs. Under these conditions of power-submission, the child views the narcissist as powerful and craves proximity to that power. Accordingly, they cling to the hope that they can earn love through loyalty, submission, or admiration.
As the child accepts that expressing their needs, emotions, or individuality triggers rejection, criticism, or punishment, they succumb to internalizing the narcissist’s needs, values, and even worldview, thus losing their own sense of self. Love and pain are intertwined and the child becomes addicted to the highs and lows of conditional affection. They anticipate that they will only receive praise or attention when they are quiet, compliant, helpful, or self-sacrificing.
Furthermore, if the child is the designated enabler in the family, they are embroiled in creating distress primarily through triangulation, a tactic in which acrimonious conflict between the chosen target and others is manufactured to divide and conquer. This might translate into alienating the scapegoated sibling or vilifying the non-narcissist parent.
The child enabler is enmeshed with the narcissistic parent and is deluded by the belief that by pleasing their parent they can manage the chaos and pain. They are brainwashed to provide the narcissist with supply by spying on family members and participating in the abuse, so as to be loved.
To survive these traumatic relational dynamics, the child must adapt and conform. Consequently, they seek validation through attachment to dominant personalities and may even unconsciously provoke narcissistic behavior in others to fulfill an old relational script.
All these exploitive dynamics incurred throughout childhood result in an insidious trauma bond in which the codependent echoist is enchanted by narcissists, often without realizing why. Hyper-aware of others’ needs but disconnected from their own, codependent echoists are terrified of being a burden, struggle to ask for help and survive by incessantly pleasing others and making themselves small.
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Comparable to the codependent echoist is the highly sensitive, deeply caring empath who is also hyper-attuned to others’ needs, moods and preferences, often to the point of self-erasure. Although similar, an empath is driven by emotional attunement, whereas an echoist is driven by debilitating fears of taking up space. One feels too much, the other tries to feel or express as little as possible.
Like echoists, empaths are drawn to narcissists. Their need to overextend and please others pulls them towards those who are takers, craving admiration and attention.
Presenting as willing emotional supply, empaths believe that love and compassion are the panacea to all ails. This makes them malleable for exploitation. Additionally, their denouncing of darkness and scoffing at notions of human evil, along with intractable devotion to the narcissist, predisposes the empath to believe that those who fail the narcissist are simply not measuring up to a criterion of unconditional loving-kindness. This mindset is their hubris and downfall.
Convinced that they can heal, understand, and help the wounded child behind the narcissist’s mask, the empath gets entangled in a quest to ‘fix’ or ‘rescue.’ Misconstruing the narcissists’ behavior for woundedness rather than manipulation, the empath tolerates demeaning, abusive behavior and mistakes intermittent validation for affection.
Last, but not least the love addict is also captivated by the toxic dance with narcissists. Consumed by a trauma-driven compulsion to seek identity and safety in others, often at the cost of self-worth, boundaries, and emotional health, love addicts become emotionally dependent on love, romance, or relationships in an attempt to fill a deep internal void, usually rooted in early attachment wounds, neglect, abandonment, or trauma. Love addiction is not just about ‘loving too much,’ it’s about using love or another person like a drug to regulate self-worth, soothe pain, or feel alive.
Narcissists mirror the cycles of relational inconsistency, hot and cold attention, idealization and devaluation that the love addict experienced with inconsistent, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable caregivers. In the hopes of magically mastering early victimization by finally gaining the love and validation they didn’t get in childhood, the love addict unwittingly selects narcissistic mates who replicate the traits and dynamics of caregivers who perpetrated traumatic abuse. This ignites a push-pull dance.
The more the love addict clings, the more the narcissist withdraws, triggering deeper longing and dependency.The subconscious mind reads this emotional rollercoaster as familiar, not necessarily safe, but known. This association feels addictive and intoxicating.
Narcissists sniff out the unhealed and sense your scars. Your pain becomes their supply. By leading with intense charm, charisma, and love-bombing, the narcissist seduces and validates potential supply, to create a fantasy relationship. Echoists, empaths and love addicts crave being seen and adored and are drawn to deep, idealized love. Hence, they willingly fall for the illusion before the devaluation phase begins.
Groomed to accommodate the unquenchable needs of their caregivers, to over-function, to endure abuse and neglect and disown dependency needs, limits and intelligent guardedness, makes one especially ripe for narcissistic victimization. Accordingly, the subconscious patterns and conditioning of the echoist, empath and love addict will perpetuate roles that enable toxic relationships.
Each in their own way will over-extend themselves, become enablers, take on a savior role and neglect their own boundaries. They will lose their sense of self, be passive followers, accept poor treatment and feel guilt for asserting needs. Entangled in a futile quest to ‘fix’ the narcissist, they will succumb to chasing love down.
Healing and recovery for those who are drawn to disordered narcissists requires a comprehensive process of curtailing codependent behaviors and healing the wounds that comprise the psychological underpinnings of complex trauma. The self that was lost must be recovered and nurtured so that the authority, instinctual discernment and self-respect buried beneath self loathing and core injuries, can organically emerge.
Although complex trauma recovery is a challenging and lengthy journey, it is a viable trajectory to no longer being reduced to supply. It was through this prolonged healing process that I unearthed and assimilated my instinctual aggression, so that narcissists could be thwarted and most importantly I could cease being obsessed with the destructive lure of trying to win approval from someone who withholds it.
Also crucial to recovery is the task of dismantling culturally lauded notions of romantic mythology.Truth is, culturally sanctioned ideas about love and romance often set people up for relational abuse.
For instance, early intensity, over-the-top gestures and fast attachment are often conceptualized as signs of fated love and a ‘soulmate’ connection, when in actuality they can be early signs of seductive manipulative cycles that lead into abuse. Swayed by these fantasies of destined love, potential victims are encouraged to excuse red flags and abusive behavior.
For this reason, it’s imperative to understand that seduction is about power, not love. While love is based on mutual respect, trust, and emotional connection, seduction frequently involves tactics that create emotional tension and imbalance. Seduction revolves around control, influence, and manipulation, not genuine intimacy.
Compounding these romantic tropes is the cultural script that jealousy, surveillance, or controlling behavior are signs of passion rather than warning signals. Worse, the popular motif that love alone can heal or change someone who is damaged or emotionally unavailable partner, sets people up to tolerate mistreatment in hopes that their love will transform the abuser.
Along these lines, a lot of romantic narratives (especially in movies, books, and music) depict love as something that must be fought for and endured through pain, hardship, and sacrifice. This encourages people to normalize mistreatment as a test of commitment rather than a boundary violation.
Moreover, the equating of closeness with enmeshment obfuscates concerns with seeking another to feel whole by merging identities or relying on them for self-worth. It blurs healthy boundaries and promotes unhealthy attachment styles.
While cultivating discernment, discrimination, and formidable authority may not seem ‘sexy’ or ‘amorous’ it is integral to dismantling dangerous beliefs that suggest that abuse or exploitation are acceptable in the name of love. Reclaiming your voice to speak your truth, desires, and boundaries and learning to take up space emotionally, creatively, relationally are invaluable steps toward recognizing that your needs matter as much as anyone else’s, not less.
Finally, as the writer W. Somerset Maugham imparted, “There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.”
Our instinctual aggression reminds us of our basic humanity and responsibility to ourselves. It imparts that there is cruelty in the world. Even evil. As Maugham states, to deny this is childish. It is also dangerous. It is up to us to assimilate and uphold this truth if we are to eradicate the malevolent schemes carried out by malignant narcissists. If we don’t critically question others’ motives, heal ourselves and become intelligently guarded, we will continue to remain at risk for being targeted or recruited as enablers of narcissistic abuse.
Attracted to Narcissists was originally published in Invisible Illness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.