In this video Aaron Doughty explains why empaths repeatedly attract narcissistic people and offers a roadmap to break the cycle. He defines empaths as highly sensitive individuals who absorb others' emotions and narcissists as people who lack empathy and manipulate to meet their own needs. Drawing on his own childhood with a narcissistic step‑mother and later experiences with controlling managers, Doughty argues that people attract partners who express emotions they have repressed. He proposes a developmental‑trauma theory: narcissists often carry core abandonment wounds formed between ages 2‑4, while empaths tend to develop similar wounds between ages 5‑8, leading both to seek safety outside themselves. The video introduces the “frame technique,” a meditation that visualises the self as a distinct “one” versus the collective “zero,” helping empaths establish boundaries and assertiveness. Doughty stresses that both sides have similar underlying needs—validation and safety—and that recognizing this common root enables healing. He recommends inner‑child work (via a specific meditation at aarondoughty.com/child) and watching his “cure to codependency” video to learn how to stop being needy, set boundaries, and develop a healthy sense of self. Throughout, personal anecdotes illustrate how awareness of these patterns transformed his life.
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So if narcissists are something that you find yourself attracting into your life, then it's very important to understand the reason. Because until you understand the reason you are attracting narcissists, what ends up happening is you keep attracting them into your life. You keep them in that energy dynamic. You find yourself changing the faces, but the energy remains the same. And in this video, I'm gonna show you how to finally finally break the cycle, show you why that actually is happening and how this will absolutely transform your life. If there's one simple statement I could say that explains this dynamic, it is that of obviously the empath being attracted to or attracting into their life the narcissist. Now, an empath is somebody that is very sensitive to other people's emotions, is someone that can feel what other people are thinking and feeling. And somebody that in general is considered a highly sensitive person normally. Then on the other side of that, we have a narcissist. The narcissist is somebody that lacks empathy, somebody that is normally using and manipulating other people to get their needs met. And what ends up happening is we have two sides of this coin. Now I'm somebody that's had personal experience with this because I've always felt like an empath growing up. My ex-stepmom growing up was a, and is still to this day, a hardcore narcissist. Growing up, it was something where my brother and I had like no freedom. We had to kind of sneak to the other side of the house just to get enough food to eat. We had to earn going to school activities. And we just grew up not allowed to have friends, not allowed to watch TV. We had a very interesting childhood, kind of like having an army sergeant as a parent. That was my ex-stepmom. And my dad was with her until I was 15 years old. Then that what happened is my dad broke up with her. We had all this freedom all of a sudden, and in a weird way it felt kind of scary to have all that freedom. Now after 15, I then ended up eventually getting a job at Nordstrom's in women's shoes, and it was like every single, like even though my ex-stepmom left my life, the narcissist, I kept attracting narcissists into my life. It was either an ex-girlfriend that had that kind of energy that was imposing control on me that got very jealous, or it was a manager at Nordstrom's who was also very controlling, very much like my ex-stepmom, and she was protected by upper management, so it was like she never really left, you know, she was in my life for like 4 or 5 years, believe it or not. And basically what I realized is that that energy dynamic from my ex-stepmom was always there because it was something I was used to and something I was familiar with. And it wasn't until I became aware of this that everything in my life began to change. And that's what I wanna share with you. So remember, there's this dynamic. There's the narcissist on one hand, the empath on the other hand. And in the same way, the narcissist was my ex-stepmom, my dad was more the empath. My dad was also like a nice guy, people pleaser. That's sometimes a side effect, like not the most enjoyable characteristic or side effect of being an empath, but it's there. Now, here is the thing that changes everything, and here's the surprising reason that you can begin to realize. We will attract people into our lives that are expressing that which we have repressed. So let me say that again. Whatever emotion we are repressing within ourselves, we then attract somebody that is already expressing it. So look at the dynamic here. This makes a lot of sense when you look at it, and this could completely change your perspective on it. What do empaths need to learn? Empaths need to learn how to have boundaries. Empaths need to learn how to be in their own frame. Empaths can learn how to be grounded and like centered and like leading in their life, able to set boundaries. What do narcissists need to learn? Narcissists need to learn that of empathy, need to learn how to be more considerate to other people's thoughts, needs, and feelings. So what you could see here is that narcissists and empaths attract each other because they actually have something to learn from each other. It is like peanut butter and jelly in a way. Don't taste as good, but you know, the idea is that this dynamic attracts each other because there's something to learn from the expression of each energy. And what the narcissist represses is empathy and compassion and thought, thinking about others. And what the empath represses is that of being in their own frame, leading, being assertive. So this was a game changer for me because I made the transition and the shift into being the empath and to being more balanced. Now, both of these, by the way, are kind of the imbalanced ways of going about it. There's a happy medium in the middle that is healthy. Narcissists are the extreme of the manipulation and like this side of the coin. And then empaths are the other side is sometimes where a lot of empaths feel like they lose their sense of self. It's hard to set boundaries. They feel guilty. And it's almost like your emotions are my emotions. So if I disappoint you, I'm disappointing myself because you are me. There's an identification. And the way my shadow work coach explains it too, this will also maybe transform the whole way of looking at this dynamic. There's something called the frame technique that I've taught in some of my videos. And basically it's that everything in our reality is either subject or object. It's either self or other. So it's almost like zeros and ones. Think of zeros as the connection to everything. We're all one consciousness and think of ones as individual units. Now, during the frame technique, you're like, you're looking at a candle and you're on the in-breath feeling the separation between you and the candle, feeling the space in between you and the walls, feeling the individualness. On the out-breath, ah, you're able to relax and feel that one and unity consciousness. Now, empaths are more likely are too much of the zeros. They feel connected to everything. Everyone's emotions are my emotions. I can't set boundaries because if I disappoint someone, then I disappoint myself. And that's because there's too much zeros. Now, on the one side of it, with narcissists, they only feel separate. They feel separate, and that's why they have to manipulate the environment in a control dynamic in order to get what they want. So this is an interesting thing of the perspective because they're both just trying to get their needs met. Now this is gonna sound a little bit crazy to you. What if I told you that empaths and narcissists have more in common than they think? What if both have their own manipulative ways of trying to manipulate reality? The narcissist just gets the, the narcissist normally is just more harsh and it causes more trauma so they get a badder rep. But empaths are still tuning to other people to get their needs met. And maybe their needs are validation, support, someone's approval, not wanting other people to feel tension. That's just the way they get their needs met. And then the narcissist controls everything and is manipulative and gaslights people, which is also negative, but they're both trying to get the same need met. Now, what will change your life forever is realizing this. They're both rooted in the same core trauma. The core trauma is a feeling of abandonment. The feeling of abandonment when growing up that normally started at a certain age in childhood. Now, here's an interesting theory that I have. This is just a theory. This is something that I've noticed from talking to many people that have similar patterns like this. Narcissists, Typically, from what I've realized or seen in people, many narcissists have their core childhood trauma rooted in that of being 2 to 4 years old. Interesting, right? Because between 2 to 4 years old, all toddlers are typically narcissists. Toddlers are, "Mine, no, yes, I don't want to." Literally toddlers in that age are learning how to be separate from their environment. They're learning and they're becoming these little narcissists. And then from there, they progress into being more thoughtful or, you know, there's different stages they move through through childhood. But the core trauma of many people that are narcissists, I believe happened between 2 to 4 years old. And that's what causes that energy dynamic, that developmental stage to still kind of be active where they're using patterns they use when they're 2 to 4 to still like survive because There was something that happened when they were 2 to 4 that happened there. Now, with people pleasers and empaths, typically, from my theory, is that around 5 to 8 is when maybe the core trauma was there. I think a lot of our parents also divorced between 5, like around 3 to 5 to 8 years old. It's very interesting. Not that we can blame everything on them or anything, I'm just saying. But the empath, it's a different stage of when you start growing up, you start to become sensitive to the family dynamics. You start to wanna please your parents, you want approval and stuff. And then that's the age of when maybe that happened. So really what this is, is it's just, it's two different stages of some type of core trauma where there's some type of abandonment, some type of feeling of needing to control the environment from the outside in. So really what this is though, is it's a belief for either the narcissist or the empath, the belief is, Happiness, safety is outside of my body. Safety is in other people's approval over here. Empaths, safety is when everyone's feeling good, there's no tension, there's a lot of approval. That's when I can feel safe. And I kind of lack my own frame or being assertive because I don't wanna make other people feel tension. So let me attract this narcissist over here because they are assertive. Because they are in their own frame and I feel safe in that. And for a long time, me growing up, I would try to attract people like my ex-stepmom into my life because as weird as it sounds, it felt safe for someone to control me, someone to have me in this little box. I at least knew where my boundaries were. They call this Stockholm syndrome. And on the other side of this, for the narcissist, it's being able to feel like they can control, they obviously need to learn empathy And they attract these kind of people because one, also empaths are much more, they'll stick around because they're so sensitive and they wanna help people. So that's also like if somebody had strong boundaries and a strong sense of self-worth and a strong sense of frame, they wouldn't even attract a narcissist to begin with. They'd see a narcissistic red flag, nope. But the empaths normally see the red flags but don't really see them, don't really acknowledge them because of the story that, oh, maybe I can help this person. Maybe there's something I can do that can like help them shift. So the shocking reason that you might be attracting a narcissist in your life is because you have the same core trauma as they do. It's just that your needs, to get your needs met, it's different. You say, or as an empath, it's like, what can I give you to then get the frame, the assertiveness, the validation, the support, whatever? Whereas the narcissist on this side, is like, what can I get? How can I manipulate my environment? How can I emotionally get this or that? And it's more of a control manipulation over here that's a little bit more apparent, but the empath over here still has a version of that, which is very interesting. So they're both rooted in the same core trauma. And if you wanna transform it, what I recommend you do is you get to the core of an abandonment issue or an abandonment thing the abandonment wound, because when we feel abandoned growing up, what ends up happening is we end up to get our needs met, we may have felt emotionally or physically abandoned from our parents. We then say, okay, what I'm gonna do is to get my needs met, I am going to start abandoning myself, sacrifice myself for others. And if I sacrifice myself for others, other people will feel validated, other people will feel good, and then I could feel safe. But by abandoning the self, we're completely losing ourself in the process. That's not self-love. It's noble and everything, but it's actually more so, it's a feeling of unworthiness that is causing the overextension, the lack of boundaries. So as hard as this might be to hear, the narcissist is an unhealthy expression of the overassertion, the overframe, and all of that. But there's something you can learn from it. I used to wonder why did my dad attract this narcissist? And it's because my dad's the empath and my dad actually has stuff to learn from this narcissist who's pushed him to his edge, stressed him out in a lot of his life. But my dad is learning, she's calling for my dad 'cause I have two sisters that that's their real mom, my ex-stepmom. And I can tell it's pushed my dad into like almost being more of a fighter, leading, knowing his worth, setting boundaries with her. Like she's literally forced him to do these things. Because otherwise he just is the nice guy that everyone walks on. You know, there's actually something beneficial there to learn, as crazy as that sounds. And maybe that beneficial thing for you to learn from narcissists is how to say no, how to say no, realize your sense of self-worth, and how to start leading and being assertive in your life so that you don't need somebody like that to manipulate you or make you feel that way. So there is something that also really does help with this process, It's an inner child meditation. It's one of the most powerful meditations I've ever made. You will go to a specific time in your childhood to heal it, to heal that situation, whatever it is. And you will notice that your whole entire energy changes. So if you haven't downloaded this meditation yet, go to aarondoughty.com/child. And then also, if you haven't seen, I have a video on the cure to codependency. That's what narcissism and empathy is. That's why they attract each other. One of my most popular videos on healing codependency. You could check out here. It'll change your life if you watch it, if you identify with either narcissist or empath. So watch it here. In this episode, I'm gonna be showing you the cure to codependency, how to never be needy again. I'm gonna share with you also my journey through this process, what I've learned about the inner child, how you can heal this process,
