Today, you’re going to learn all about the apath.
Empathy As A Defining Quality For Personality Type
Nuances in the ways people behave can make it difficult to define someone’s personality and give them a specific label.
For this reason, empathy can be defining quality for personality type.
If empathy exists on a continuum, on one end you have empaths – those who are highly sensitive and very in tune to other people’s emotions.
On the other end, you have people who have no empathy like psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists.
In between, there are apaths – people who are capable of emotions, but just don’t care enough to use them.
Related: Top 5 Reasons Why Narcissists Target Empaths – & How to Starve The Narcissist of Supply
Who Is The Apath?
Apaths help people with Dark Tetrad personal traits (psychopaths, narcissists, sadists, etc) to manipulate and control their victims.
Rather than standing up for the victim and supporting them, the apath normalizes the toxic person and their abuse towards others.
They create the illusion that the toxic person has a friend and can get along with everyone except the victim of abuse.
This leaves the victim feeling confused and doubting their own experience, and even their own sanity.
When challenged, the apath claims that they’re minding their own business and that the abuser hasn’t been abusive to them.
Some apaths fear becoming a future target of the narcissist and so they would rather choose joining the abuser in their abuse than risk being abused themselves.
What makes them particularly dangerous is that they would blindly follow orders. In other words, there is no way to tell where their limits are.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Protect Yourself From a Narcissist
The Narcissist Empath Apath Triad (NEAT)
The Narcissist Empath Apath Triad refers to a group of three people involved in the dynamics of abusive relationships, with the narcissist being the abuser, the empath being the victim of abuse and the apath being the abuser’s helper or enabler.
Triangulation
Along with their typical manipulative techniques (gaslighting, hoovering, love bombing, guilt-tripping, etc.) narcissists use another technique called, triangulation.
Triangulation is when the abuser uses other people as a pawn to play off against their target.
Triangulation is the main manipulative technique in a Narcissist Empath Apath Triad.
Related: Top 14 Strategies To Protect Yourself From Narcissistic Abuse
How to Protect Yourself?
If you believe you’re being abused, trust your gut.
Don’t rely on others to stand up for you, as they could be apaths, even if they were your own friends and family members. They could still side with the abuser.
Instead, become aware of warning signs of abuse and take care of yourself.
References
- What an Apath Is and Why They Are Dangerous (businessinsider.com)
- Apathy – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
- Apathy: Neurobiology, Assessment and Treatment – PMC (nih.gov)
- The relationship between apathy and impulsivity in large population samples | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
- Apathy: Why Care? | FOCUS (psychiatryonline.org)
- What is Apathy? Signs, Causes and Treatment (healthline.com)
