There are things that trigger me and it's taken me a long time to slowly identify them and figure out where they came from. And what I discovered is how it started when I was just a baby, same for my older brother. And often it's something we unknowingly learn to accept and work around in our environment.

My older sister is a malignant narcissist. I did not even know what that was as a child and did my best to work around it. Ever since I can remember my sister was bossy and controlling and whenever I played with her it was understood that she was in control and I had to do things HER way. From the beginning for both me and my older brother, my sister did not want either of us to exist and wanted our parents all to herself.

I have talked about ways to exit confrontation, and the best way to do that is to let this kind of person think they won. They have to have THEIR EGO victorious otherwise they want to punish and they don't care how they punish and they can be obsessed with their need to punish for their OWN EGO. This means, they are the victim in the picture, they are the victor, and they have special powers and they do better than everyone else and they are right and you are wrong. They always need to control their own narriative and feel like they deserve the attention and are right. They take pleasure in getting a chance to pick apart your opinion because they need to have their opinion as being the right opinion. And they need perfection or their idea of perfection to be happy. They really believe THEY deserve the power and they crave an audience. And they tend to make everything about them.

I watched a man talk about the difference between average and a bell curve and explain the difference between narcissists and empaths. He explained how the top of the bell is average and how each side represents the degree of narcissism on one side and empaths on the other. There are degrees of narcissism that as you go further down the curve the closer one gets to NPD. And what he described was lack of empathy the further down the bell curve. And same for empaths with increasing sensitivity. And often what attracts the narcissist is how the empath is more likely to cater to them as they are good listeners and are so caring and more apt to set aside their own needs for that of the narcissist.

What is hard is that the more narcissistic someone is, the less capable they are of actually caring which is hard on the empath who IS caring. They can only ACT like they care but it's all superficial. Whereas, for the empath it's genuine caring. Narcissists tend to make the same problems over and over again as they are not capable of actually engaging and a deeper caring relationship. They tend to go from one person to the next for their needs and ego fix hense they fail to have genuine lasting relationships (unless their partner gives them the control they want constantly). They are possessive in a sense of ownership and it's not about love. It's more about needing an audience for their OWN EGO and having control over in possessive ways. They convince themselves and others "it's always someone else's fault" when things don't go their way.