Dawn,
I think your comment touches on a critical distinction that often gets overlooked. Empathy involves ACCURATELY assessing and reading the moods, pain, etc. of another. If the read is inaccurate, it is more likely due to hypervigilance, a trait of the HSP.
If I hear a twig snap in the forest and assume that it happens because of a tiger lurking by, I am hypersensitive to the situation but I am not accurately assessing it (at least not in NA ;-).
Many if not most people who are considered to be empathic are usually hypersensitive, but no the former, that is, they inaccurately read the mood or state of the other.
If you are constantly thinking that your SO is angry at you when they are not, you are over triggered, sensitized to something, but your read is inaccurate. They do not need soothing or placation, at least not for that reason..
Too often the terms Empathy, Sympathy and Hypersensitivity are conflated. While these traits may co-occur, it is too easy to misidentify one for the other. In doing so, the therapist cannot competently treat the patient.
If your smoke detector is set too high, it is going off at a dust plume instead of a fire. It needs to be down regulated, like those who experience anxiety over tigers that don't exist.
Hypersensitive people can develop problems for sure but it doesn't mean that they are always victims of Narcissists. One does not imply the other.
Abuse, whether narcissistic or not is an awful thing. But abuse occurs most often by persons who do not fit the criteria for NPD. It does not help to misidentify traits in someone to shoe horn them into a diagnosis.
I would suggest that the examples of Gaslighting statements in the main article are inaccurate. They are a list of opinions and insults but that are not necessarily false statements.
In the namesake movie, the gaslight was actually dimmed but the observer was told that it did not happen. This is true crazymaking. The article list illustrates insults and demeaning comments, not complaints that are necessarily factually inaccurate.
The over diagnosis of Narcissists and Empaths does not advance the science, even if it might provide some comfort to those who indeed suffer.
Creating another Red Scare by over diagnosing a malady - which I suggest is what is happening by throwing around the pop psych diagnoses of NPD and Empathy too often - may heighten awareness to certain traits but at the cost of playing fast and loose with evolving standards in psychiatry..
To the extent that the article stimulates people who suffer to get treatment, to be kinder to themselves, there is value for sure. If it gets them to inaccurately view their affect or traits, maybe not so much.
