Complex Relational Trauma, Empathy, and Why CPTSD Survivers Can Feel “Too Much”

[TheBigBlue]

The thoughts here were inspired by an exchange in NarcKiddo's Recovery Journal. 

I feel like a fool. [...] nobody likes being played. [...] I have not the slightest interest in going out of my way to be helpful in the future.

And Chart's question:

NK, this makes me wonder where Empathy comes from. [...] Why do so many foo seem absolutely oblivious to something I believe is a fundamental aspect of being human?

This made me think deeply about Empathy.

In a video Chart posted a few weeks ago

Dr. Allan N. Schore - Modern attachment theory; the enduring impact of early right-brain development
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0sKY86Qmzo

Prof. Schore mentioned that empathy is largely a right-hemisphere function, and that he was preparing to speak to a large group of lawyers about how trauma affects empathy.

My immediate reaction was almost offended:
"Wait - if anything, I have too much empathy."
If someone starts telling a story - especially one involving animals - I often stop them and say, "If anyone gets hurt or dies, I don't want to hear it."
For them, it's a two-minute anecdote.
For me, it can be a lifetime of pain that I feel in my body.

So I paused Schore's video and asked myself a question:
Do people with CPTSD have less empathy - or more?

Here's how I now understand it.
Complex Relational Trauma, Empathy, and Why CPTSD Survivers Can Feel "Too Much"

1. Trauma does not reduce the capacity for empathy.
In fact, many CPTSD survivors show heightened empathic sensitivity.

But what trauma does impair is something more subtle - but crucial:
The ability to feel others' emotions without losing oneself.

2. Empathy needs a stable self to rest on
In healthy development:
a child develops a cohesive sense of self through safe, consistent co-regulation. Empathy then emerges on top of that self. You can feel with others - and return to yourself.

In CPTSD, especially developmental trauma:
inner safety was never reliably established; the "self" remains fragile or underdeveloped. Empathy develops anyway - but it has nowhere stable to land. So instead of empathy sitting on top of the self ... empathy can end up replacing the self.

What that looks like in real life:
- you don't just observe another's pain, but you become flooded by it
- you lose track of your own needs
- your nervous system reacts as if the pain were your own
=> This isn't kindness gone wrong.
It's a trauma adaptation.

What looks like "too much empathy" is often a combination of:
threat detection ("I must feel what others feel - to anticipate danger, prevent harm, or preserve connection") AND
hyper-attunement without regulation.

3. Right-brain dominance without right-brain safety
Neuroscience helps explain this:
- empathy, emotional resonance, and nonverbal communication are largely right-hemisphere functions;
- trauma, especially early trauma, leads to right-brain dominance
- but without secure attachment, that right brain develops without safety

=> So you get:
- intense emotional resonance
- exquisite sensitivity
- fast detection of distress
- but without the ability to modulate, contain, or step back.

That's why stories hurt. That's why we get pulled into the runarounds of our FOO's. Not because we are weak - but because our nervous systems never learned boundaries for empathy.

4. For completeness: CPTSD does not look the same in everyone
Survivors can also oscillate between two poles:
A. Trauma-based hyper-empathy:
- intense
- involuntary
- exhausting
- boundary-less
=> It feels like: "I feel what you feel because I had to - not because I choose to."

B. Empathy shutdown / dissociation:
- emotional numbing
- withdrawal
- reduced resonance

5. Why this matters in daily life
This helps explain why:
- other people's obliviousness feels shocking or cruel
- we're exhausted by "small" stories others shrug off
- we struggle to know when to put ourselves first
- we feel deeply - but often feel unseen in return

6. Something I found online that made me cry (unknown source)
"When a person grows up feeling unseen, they learn to love by overgiving.
They pour into everyone else, hoping that one day, someone will finally pour back into them.
They become the caretaker, the fixer - the one who shows up even when no one shows up for them.
And the hardest part?
Deep down, they're not trying to be strong.
They're just waiting for someone to do for them what they've spent their whole life doing for everyone else."

So, maybe the 'obliviousness' that Chart mentioned, comes from a collision:
The parents who traumatized us came from different maladaptive directions
— some narcissistic/extractive
— some boundary-collapsing (horizontal enmeshment) and need-driven
— some avoidant or dissociative

Those patterns then crash into a child's survival adaptations
— hyper-attunement and awareness
— fawning
— unregulated co-empathy
— self-erasure

And what emerges is exactly what hurts so deeply: the feeling that something fundamentally human - reciprocal empathy - is missing.

Maybe the work isn't to harden ourselves against people who seem oblivious, but to build enough inner safety that empathy no longer requires us to disappear.
Not less empathy - but regulated empathy.🙂

How? I don't have this fully figured out yet, but it likely involves:
- building a cohesive inner self
- learning that empathy can be chosen, not automatic
- discovering that you can feel with someone without losing yourself.

(If it is ok)

[NarcKiddo]

Thanks for starting this thread.

It was a revelation to me that people could feel one way while holding space and emotions for someone who is feeling quite different. That it is possible to acknowledge and explore someone else's feelings without letting them take over oneself. Of course it makes logical sense that it is possible. This must be a skill therapists have, or they would surely sink under all the weight of their clients' troubles.

[Armee]

Wow. Reciprocal empathy. That feels like the crux of growing up with a parent with a personality disorder.