On empathic merging: "As empaths, we are not here to be sponges or enablers. We are here to be helpers, guides, and supporters."
Narcissists, Soulmates, and Owning Your Energy
In a previous post, The Energy of Boundaries, I explained that empaths merge unconsciously with everyone until they learn how to contain their energy. Then they can choose when and how to merge with someone.
In this post, I will explore two specific merging interactions that empaths experience. These can be confusing and need to be understood so you can make healthy choices for yourself.
Empathic merging with someone you are in a relationship with is lovely and can create intimacy and trust. Personally, I think merging often the baby that is thrown out with the bathwater. When we merge with consciousness, it is a beautiful experience that is hard to express properly in words.
I feel it is important to share that fact and often because empaths are usually shamed for merging, as it creates unhealthy patterns of behavior when done unconsciously.
Let’s look at the two specific merging interactions I mentioned earlier; the narcissist and the soulmate.
The Narcissist
It is unlikely anyone has ever consciously merged with a narcissist. Yet the narcissist in their life merged with them before the empath knew what empathic merging was and that they needed to manage it.
Your narcissist, the one(s) that led you to discover you are an empath, the one you have spent a lot of time healing from—that narcissist, slipped into your energy and merged with you with an agenda.
Their agenda’s primary purpose is to use your energy for themselves. The co-dependency between the narcissist and the empath begins energetically through merging. In many ways that empaths don’t want to know or think about, narcissists have a lot in common with empaths.
They both read energy and they read it well. However, a narcissist’s sole purpose for reading it is to know how to manipulate you into whatever will feed their very broken ego. For an empath, empathic merging is about connection. Seeing someone clearly and being seen by them in return.
At first, the empath feels seen by the narcissist and understood in a way no one has ever understood them. Then, once the narcissist has fallen back to earth after their love-bombing high, they begin to use that connection to undermine the empath’s confidence and self-worth.
After the love-bombing stage has ended, a narcissist will no longer allow the empath into their energy. They will, however, continue to enter the empath’s energy, where they will plant their energy hooks and continue to build the energetic connection that is now and forevermore tainted with their toxicity.
Narcissists will dump their negative emotions and their insecurity into the empath’s field, leaving quite a mess for the unsuspecting empath to heal from once they “wake up” and end the relationship.
Those energetic hooks are something that will linger until the empath has fully healed from the narcissistic abuse and has learned how to spot other narcissists before the narc can hook into them. This will likely take a few toxic relationships of one sort or another—romances, friendships, siblings, or parent relationships—to figure out.
As anyone who has lived through the narcissistic connection knows, the narcissist can slip (merge) into their energy field very quickly. Of course, because other than empaths, narcissists are the only other human energy types that merge unconsciously, and most empaths are not used to someone who uses this tool on them.
I mentioned earlier that narcissists and empaths have more in common than most empaths want to believe. This is one of the big ones. Narcs merge too. I put narcissists on the same spectrum as empaths. They are at either end of that spectrum, because narcissists are also psychic and energetically porous individuals who merge with folks without consciousness.
Unaware and unhealed empaths will use empathic merging to manipulate people, too. For both empaths and narcissists, manipulation is all about maintaining connection with people. The difference between empath and narcissist use of manipulation lies in the effect it has on the person they are manipulating. Both, however, are coming from a place of fear of the loss of connection.
The empath has a limit, and they will not knowingly cause harm to someone. A narcissist isn’t concerned with anyone else’s feelings and will do whatever they believe will maintain connection. They don’t care if that connection becomes toxic because connection is connection—or life-force energy—even destructive energy will feed them. Where empaths worry about causing harm to others because they realize the harm will also hurt them as well.
There is a big difference between a narcissist and a wounded empath, but that is a blog for another day. For now, just know that narcs merge too, and they will create the energetic hooks that empaths then spend a lot of time healing.
The Soulmate
Empathic merging between two conscious people is beautiful. It builds an intimacy, honesty, and trust that I’ve never experienced with other types of people and certainly not from unconscious merging.
First things first, what do I mean by soulmate? A soulmate is someone you are connected to over many lifetimes. The connection is energetic and feels like you have known someone forever. These connections are agreed to prior to birth and soulmates utilize these connections to grow and learn from each other.
Soulmates can be lovers, friends, siblings, parent/child, or mentor/mentee to name a few. When one or both people are empaths the connection takes on a whole different dimension. Particularly when the connection is that of lovers.
For soulmates, empathic merging creates energetic connections that remain in our consciousness regardless of whether you are in each other’s physical proximity. The empath in these relationships will feel the presence of their soulmate from the next room, across town, or across the country.
Examples of how this connection works;
- Waking up when your soulmate wakes up—whether or not they are sharing a bed with you or in another time zone
- Knowing or feeling their mood when not in their physical proximity
- A depth of feeling shared between them that feels like swimming in an ocean
- Communicating telepathically; intentionally or unintentionally
The strength and consciousness of this connection only grows over time and it doesn’t take long to feel deeply and becomes quite difficult to break.
For siblings, parent/child, even some friendships, this connection is comforting, loving, and an extension of the close bond they have created. When the soulmate connection is lovers, the connection can feel supercharged and may throw one or both people off balance.
When it is mutual and the connection is shared by conscious and open people, it feels magical and happy, creating a bond that may last a lifetime. When one of the lovers is underdeveloped emotionally and/or deeply wounded, the connection will feel overwhelming and terrifying.
And in many cases, the lover who hasn’t done their inner work or isn’t willing to do it now, will abandon the relationship despite its potential and the feelings he or she may have for the other. But just because a person chooses to leave this relationship doesn’t end the connection that was built between them.
It will take quite a while for that connection to fade, though it will fade in time. Until then, the empath will feel all the things listed above, often for years after the relationship has ended physically. For this reason, these relationships may rekindle and crash a number of times.
It takes time for both people to figure out that, as it stands, this relationship is not healthy and will only cause them pain. In some rare cases, the one who needs to address their inner wounds may finally decide it is worth it for them to invest the time.
The potential contained within a soulmate connection, as lovers or any other type of relationship, makes being an empath worth all the struggle of figuring out how to feel good day-to-day. The feelings, trust, and intimacy shared between soulmates are deeply fulfilling and satisfying.
And, when one or both people are not ready, this type of connection can wound deeply and affect their desire and ability to fully connect with anyone else unless or until they do their inner work.
The Importance of Owning Your Energy
As you can see, the pitfalls for unconscious empathic merging cause a lot of pain and can limit our desire and ability to seek out new relationships. The rewards, however, are so high that words truly fail to express their bounty adequately.
If you are an empath who has been hurt by either or both of these types of merging, I want to encourage you to do your healing and learn how to be present in your body and in conscious connection with another through merging. The beauty and magic of healthy, conscious merging is what makes being an empath wonderful.
Exploring your healthy connections with people is the stuff of fairytales and fantasy come to life. Seeing people in ways you haven’t before imagined and being truly and fully seen for the first time by another is absolutely worth the hard work of becoming a conscious and aware empath.
Explore the Empath Apprenticeship if you’re ready to own your empath energy, heal, improve your relationships, and feel comfortable in your own skin.
