How do you deal with someone who mistakes projection for empathy?
Self-proclaimed empaths who constantly project onto others make me so angryyyy ahhh 😭
Like, how do you deal with someone who genuinely believes they are deeply empathetic and highly sensitive to other people’s emotions, but in reality seems really bad at distinguishing between their own emotions/projections and other people’s actual feelings?
They pick up a “vibe” from someone, feel a strong reaction in their body, and instantly assume they know exactly what the other person is truly feeling — often even better than the person themselves. But most of the time they’re just… wrong. And when the other person tries to explain their actual feelings or perspective, the “empath” kind of steamrolls over it because they’re so convinced in their own intuition.
It feels horrible to be on the receiving end of this because you end up feeling judged, misunderstood, and not really listened to. And the weirdest part is that these people often seem completely incapable of considering that they might be projecting or misunderstanding someone. They seem very emotionally reactive, but not actually very good at perspective-taking or understanding others outside of themselves.
At this point I honestly have a difficult relationship with the term “empath” in general because so many self-proclaimed empaths I’ve met were actually not very good listeners at all. Genuinely empathetic people usually don’t constantly need to tell everyone how empathetic they are.
And no, I don’t think this person is narcissistic or malicious. But I genuinely don’t know how to deal with someone like this without constantly feeling emotionally overwritten or misread.
Has anyone else experienced this dynamic?