| Echoism (psychology) | |
|---|---|
| Other names | self-love deficit disorder |
| Specialty | Psychological trait |
| Causes | long term narcissistic abuse |
Echoism is the opposite of narcissism [1] characterized by substituting self-regard and self-love for a compassionate focus on others, at the expense of one's own needs, typically a symptom of long-term exposure to narcissistic enmeshment or similar exposure to manipulations by cluster B personality types, especially during one's formative years. The difference between a neurotypical empath and an echoistic empath is that for the former their empathy does not veer into self-sacrifice to their own detriment, whilst for the latter it does. [2]
Practically, this psychological condition denotes behaviour rendering themselves vulnerable, such as the habitual refrain from expressing oneself and an erasure or impediment of one's true identity in favor of care and focus on others [3] , at the expense of one's own needs, self-sacrifice and deference to dominant personality types - particularly narcissists, and meekness. Rosenberg describes the phenomenon as SLDD (Self Love Deficiency Disorder), with its agent noun being SLD (Self Love Deficient). [4]
Echoism and narcissism are typically viewed as opposite sides of a single continuum, so to be high in one necessitates being low in the other.
The Toronto Star defines echoists as being "the ultimate people pleaser". [5] Ross Rosenberg describes the phenomenon of echoism as self-love deficit disorder. [6]
In rare instances, the term codependency has been like echoism used to describe the opposite end of narcissists in the echoist-narcissist spectrum, however codependency is a term whose descriptivist usage and scope is wider with varied senses including relationships with alcoholics. Its various coordinate terms and their meanings include independence which denotes self-sufficiency and personal maturity, dependency which denotes reliance upon external support, interdependency which denotes mutual and egalitarian levels of support and cooperation, codependency which denotes disproportionate care for an addict, including substance addicts such as a alcoholic or an emotion addict, such as a narcissist.
Another term related to codependents and echoists, the empath, although more likely to provide narcissistic supply than neurotypicals, technically are simply highly intuitive and emotionally intelligent, whilst the manner they utilize these cognitive aptitudes vary from empath to empath, notwithstanding them being the favored target of attention-seeking by narcissistic people.
The arguable coiner of the term echoism in 1992, Timothy Rivinus, defined echoism as "imitative behavior adopted for survival", whilst the popularizer of the term Craig Malkin defines echoism as both the polar opposite of narcissism and the fear of seeming narcissistic in any way. [7] Rivinus also distinguishes between the agent noun echoist and the adjective echoistic person, regarding the latter as someone possibly in the process of recovering from echoism, or a young person in the echoism-inducing stage of echoism wherein their capacity for agency, identity and volition are being stunted by a narcissist. [8]
The first author to in depth analyst echoism as a complement to narcissism was Dean Davis (2005), whom has also drawn a correlation between the gender of the character Echo in the myth being female, and tween or teenaged boys being targeted by narcissists for an echoistic disposition as constituting a form of emasculation. [9] Since gender roles traditionally assigned the greatest amount of authority or control in one's family to the male, a power dynamic that is central to narcissist relationships, Dean Davis argues that conservative gender roles of male and female serve as a great analogy to the power dynamic of narcissist vis-a-vis the echoist, although maintaining that either gender can play the dominant role, i.e. narcissist or the subordinate role, i.e. the echoist: [10]
Even though echoism is most commonly found in the woman and narcissism in the man, the converse and any variation therein does occur.
— Dean Davis
Author Schaich argues that rather than embracing the inherently damaging, praxeologically atypical and neurodivergent traits such as narcissism or echoism, one should strive for its opposite that filters out the inherent extremes on either side of the echoist and narcissist spectrum, for its median, moderate neurotypicalism, with moderate neurotypical traits viewed as a healthy equilibrium in the continuum of self-importance.
Psychologists, psychiatriasts and sociologists whom have commented on the origins of echoism, universally regard echoism as deriving as an external factor after conception e.g. the product of exposure to megalomanic or narcissistic abuse in their analysis of its nature-nurture dichotomy. Schaich describes echoism as an amalgamation of inferiority complex, learned helplessness and a level of meekness that it has been proposed as a clinical disorder. [11]
A related term, or possible hyponym of the term echoist, the term bleeding heart has been used to refer to those who are overly sympathetic to others.
The legend of Echo is derived from the classical mythology of the Augustan Age wherein the mountain nymph Echo is cast into the story of Narcissus, the beautiful male youth who rejected Echo and fell in love with his own reflection. Within roman mythology, Echo was a mountain nymph. Due to the jealousy and suspiciousness of the wife of Zeus named Hera, Echo was persuaded to distract Hera so he could continue undisturbed by Hera. Once Hera figured out what was going on, she in anger cursed Echo so that Echo wouldn't be able to speak against, and rather only repeat what was said by others. The story continues whereupon Echo meets a character named Narcissus, a man with strikingly attractive physical features. As she followed him around, Narcissus caught a glimpse of himself in a lake reflection and mesmerized by his own looks, was transfixed at staring at himself until the point he died in that state. Echo, wathcing from a nearby distance mourned his death until she likewise died. [12]
The prolonged enactment of the grey rock method , the practise of making oneself seem dull as a defense mechanism against narcissism, making become so prolonged that such emotional unresponsiveness eventually becomes a permanent trait. Similar to alexithymia, cherophobia, stoicism and hedonophobia, there is an inherent impassivity inherent within echoism, within the latter, it is far more acute as there is no volition at assuming or asserting one's identity as one's personal identity has been degraded. The reason for the development of echoism is arguably because the echoist has prolonged the pattern of being outwardly inconspicuous and made them become a vessel for dominant personalities to vicariously live through, to the extent that their inward thought pattern has assumed that archetype. [13]
The magnetism between echoists and narcissists differs that that between empaths and codependents and narcissists. Whereas the magnetism in the former is due to their willingness to provide emotional attention, for echoists, it is their innate need to be inconspicuous and invisible in an effort to remain low-maintenance and unburdensome. Thereby, the narcissist fulfills the role of taking up all the social space. Although inconspicuousness can be an effective defense mechanism against a narcissist who wishes to elicit emotional responses, it may also be a double-edged sword, if the narcissist views this as indicative of their targets' social isolation thereby aiding in the stealthiness of narcissistic abuse, particularly if their target is a primary source of narcissistic supply.
Echoism is a spectrum and continuum, however the agent noun echoist is reserved for those whose self-identity, authentic needs and self-love are sacrificed out of moderation to the extent echoism has become their over-arching identity. [7]
As such, the correlation between narcissism and echoism demonstrates that close interaction or proximity to narcissists is a major hindrance to one's self actualization and self realization as well as the inherent harmfulness of narcissism. This correlation also demonstrates that narcissism is contagious although invertedly so, with targets of narcissizing i.e. echoists developing a low self-importance in contrast to the typical narcissist archetype of high self-importance. [14]
The effects of being a narcissizee, i.e, one subjected to narcissistic abuse, intensifies when it occurs in a family of scapegoating and enmeshment, resulting in a sense of identitylessness and desirelessness, key traits of echoism. The echoist is analogous to the archetype found in the ethological dominance hierarchy of the omega animal, or by extension to the human omega, wherein stereotypically feminine traits such as meekness or gentleness are found. However, unlike in the latter, wherein various factors may have contributed to their archetype, in the echoist, it is always a result of narcissistic conditioning.
The effects of being raised in an echoism-inducing manner are especialy acute when raised in parallel with ascetic religious values thereby becoming adept at echoing the needs and feeling of dominant personality types. This is due to religious indoctrination which espouse selfless service and perpetual deference towards others. Thereby, the echoist has a deep fear of being seen as needy, special or selfish, thus by extension has very permeable personal boundaries. Due to a lack of a development of their own identity, setting, forming and maintaining boundaries can be particularly difficult for echoists.
Echoism is an after-effect of the most extreme forms of narcissism, and the recipient of such narcissizing has usually been subjected to the full range of narcissizing tactics, including love-bombing, gaslighting, psychological projection, hoovering, schadenfreude, virtue-signalling. As such, echoists believe from prior experience that it is unsafe to express themselves.
The means for overcoming echoism include cutting ties with one's old echism-inducing environment which practically means an environment wherein narcissizing manipulations, such as induced conversation, virtue-signalling, psychological projection, hoovering, future faking, and gaslighting etc. takes place. This is followed with searching for one's true identity, whilst Ross Rosenberg describes the cure for self-love deficit disorder as self-love abundance. [15]
This tendency for eschewing one's own wants or needs has also been called hedonophobia or cherophobia, and in echoists is derived from the unworthiness that was cultivated within them whilst growing up.
When the self-love deficient empath or narcissizee, i.e. a victim of narcissistic manipulation, has been habitualized into the inherent social stratification of a relationship with a narcissist, the continuation of such a compulsive pattern is deemed echoism. [16]
Echoism has been described as one of the negative side-effects of long-term grey-rocking as a defense mechanism against narcissistic abuse. The author Reynahas described echoism, when a by-product of long-term narcissizing as akin to an anesthesia to one's emotions, wants and needs, and producing an effect akin to anhedonia. Since the narcissistic supply offered by men and women can differ with women more likely to offer feminine forms such as attentiveness, while men give more social , the pathway into the condition of echoism sometimes differs too for each sex. [17]
Most psychotherapists and psychologists discussing the topic of recovery from narcissistic abuse promote the no contact method. [18]
Narcissists are more grounded in the SANS nervous system, i.e. the fight or flight physiological process, which may contrast with the parasympathetic nervous system (PANS) process the narcissist notices in their echoistic supply source. When the narcissist contrasts their own survival mode psychology with the apparent tranquility of the PANS nervous system in the echoist supply, through which narcissists may react via narcissistic abuse and narcissistic one upmanship, epitomizing how there's always an inverse relationship between the wellness and validation echoists feel and the wellness and validation that narcissists feel. This inherent lopsidedness in the echoist-narcissist self-worth dichotomy is analogized in the seesaw playground equipment; this means that as the echoist ascends one side of the plank, as a metaphor for their self-worth and echoist condition healing, the narcissists in turn descends on their side of the plank, as a metaphor for their self-worth and narcissistic false self (also called the narcissist Pseudo self or narcissist Fake self) regressing, and vice versa a similar pattern. [19]
Some of the weapons narcissists use against the echoist, such as controlling information and isolation serves the narcissists' scheme of keeping their echoist target disempowered and dependent, wherein the narcissist benefits via the validation they get from subsequent notoriety and perceived powerfulness, called negative narcissistic supply.
The echoist is often juggling the frame of mind of several distinctive characters, including their own, that of the narcissist and if the narcissizing involves triangulation, also their enablers, alternately called flying monkeys, narcissistic agents, narcissistants, a level a mental exertion that may lead to disorientation in the echoist, or ego depletion, described as low mental bandwidth by Doctor Ramani, of whom the average adult human brain capacity according to Csikszentmihályi lies at about "110 bits of information per second." [20]
Thereby interaction with a narcissist and those in their triangulation circle by extension sidetracks the echoist from serene, optimal and problem solving-favorable mental states such as being in the zone, also called Flow (psychology). Echoism and the trait of introspectiveness may often overlap. Narcissists often view personality traits such as introspectiveness with suspicion and antagonism since introspectiveness stands in the way of the narcissists need for attention and narcissistic supply, and with vulnerable narcissists, quintessential narcissistic supply endeavours such as fawning. This incrimination of introspectiveness by the narcissist can be sidestepped if the narcissist has alternative forms of narcissistic supply sources through a wide social network, or if the introspective echoist isn't their primary narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply, also called ego boosters, life energy or positive and negative attention or positive and negative validation or vitality or emotional neediness as a bost to the ego of the narcissist. Since echoists typically have had so much of their energy drained by a narcissist, to sustain their energy they often becomes socially withdrawn, even abstaining from romantic relationships. [21] [22]
Once the needs and wants that the echoist has supressed for so long become too pressing, the echoist may self-diagnose their echoist trait as unconstructive, and thereby realize the impracticality of maintaining their echoist lifestyle. As such, the echoist proceeds to attempt to free themselves from the indentured ties binding them to the will of dominating personalities such as those with dark triad traits, such as narcissists and machiavellians.
Since echoism is a non-expressive personality type, in multiple facets of life, an echoist will be ambivalent about their stance, such as having a tentative religious identity, being unsure of which career path to take, or in their romantic relationships, echoists thereby may assume a non-expressive sexual/romantic orientation, such as allosexual aromanticism . [23]