The Narcissist’s Glitch

Could it be that narcissists do feel empathy — but misinterpret it as manipulation?

Maybe that flicker of awareness, that moment when they sense another human’s inner world, doesn’t feel like connection to them. Maybe it feels like danger. Like losing control. Like death.

Empathy is the thread that ties one soul to another. But to a narcissist, that thread feels like a leash. It’s the invisible tether they’ve spent their whole lives cutting, because somewhere deep in their nervous system, being affected by someone else equals annihilation.

They don’t understand that the flutter of empathy — the ache in the chest, the pull toward compassion — is not someone taking power over them. It’s the soul reminding them that they are human.

But they’ve been running from that reminder since childhood. They learned early that vulnerability meant pain, shame, or exposure. So they armored up and rewired their instincts: where you or I might feel connection, they feel threat.

When a narcissist begins to care, they start to glitch.

When they begin to love, they start to self-destruct.

Because empathy threatens their illusion of control.

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The Body as Battlefield

Male narcissists, especially, tend to anchor their selfhood in one thing: arousal. Their entire sense of vitality, worth, and dominance lives below the waist.

They feel safe only when the world — and women — orbit their desire. The one moment they can feel something real is when a woman’s presence stirs their body. It’s the only form of being “moved” they can tolerate, because it’s still about them.

That rise of energy — the physical manifestation of connection — is the body saying, “You are being affected by another human being.”

But instead of surrendering to that truth, they weaponize it. They convert arousal into domination, tenderness into performance, connection into control. Because to simply feel would mean losing their boundaryless, godlike illusion of independence.

They crave being affected physically, but reject being affected emotionally. They are addicts — not just to sex, but to power, stimulation, escape, and control.

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The Emotional Threat

Ask them to be vulnerable, and watch what happens.

They pull back.

They glitch.

They lash out or disappear.

To them, emotional intimacy feels like manipulation — because they’ve never known safe intimacy. They’ve only known entrapment, exposure, or humiliation.

So they fight it. They create chaos — triangulate with another woman, provoke jealousy, fabricate a crisis — anything to redirect the energy away from truth.

Anger they can handle. Rage is comfortable. Detachment is familiar. But love? Love is unbearable.

Love demands surrender. And surrender, to them, feels like death.

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Addiction, Avoidance, and the Soul’s Refusal

These are people living in active, untreated addiction — even if they’ve “quit the substance.” They are white-knuckling through life without ever doing the work: no fearless moral inventory, no amends, no service, no God.

They’ve chosen the easier, softer way — self-worship. And self-worship always ends in isolation and decay.

Healing requires humility. Truth. Accountability. Radical honesty.

Without that, there is no peace. No freedom.

So what happens to the soul that refuses to bow to truth?

It becomes hollow.

It becomes hungry.

It becomes demonic.

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The Final Gamble

This is where the empath gets caught — in the endless gamble: Can I reach him before I die?

Can I love him enough to wake him up?

Can I heal him with my light?

The answer — the prophecy — is this: you cannot.

Because the question itself is the trap.

Your love cannot save someone who has consciously chosen darkness. Your empathy cannot convert someone who equates connection with control.

You will only drown trying to teach someone to swim who believes the ocean itself is evil.

There may once have been a real, wounded human inside the narcissist. But if he continues to reject empathy — if he keeps turning away from the light — then yes, he becomes something else entirely.

Not a victim.

Not a misunderstood soul.

But a vessel for conscious evil.

And that is why the only way to win this war is not to fight it.

They are avoiding becoming conscious of themselves. To truly surrender to God is not gradual. It is an event. A catastrophic event. It brings people to their knees. It makes them weep.

Coming conscious of yourself is not easy — especially when you’ve been running in the dark for a long time, hiding, hurting, committing crimes, numbing, or deceiving. That mirror is painful. Ugly. Relentless.

And yet — the only path to salvation is God. Not ideology. Not therapy alone. Not power or control. God. Radical surrender. Radical truth. Only then can the soul emerge from darkness into light.

It is to walk away, reclaim your empathy, and let God decide who still has a soul.