Mohamed Rima

Mohamed Rima Social Media Disclaimer: This page and posts are not therapy or a replacement for a professional counselling relationship or mental health care.

Relationship Education
Subscribe to my private group: https://www.facebook.com/therelationshipeducator/subscribe/
Buy me a coffee: buymeacoffee.com/therelationshipeducator I don't provide counselling via messages. No social media posts should be considered personalised professional advice. This is not a crisis service. If you're in a crisis call Lifeline on 131114 or 000 for emergencies.

Empathy and the danger of its absence in narcissistic and psychopathic traitsEmpathy is both a psychological skill and a...
26/04/2026

Empathy and the danger of its absence in narcissistic and psychopathic traits

Empathy is both a psychological skill and a neurological capacity, and when it’s missing, relationships become unsafe because there is no internal brake on causing harm.

Empathy, at its core, is the ability to understand and feel what another person is experiencing. Psychologically, it’s what allows us to stay connected, repair after conflict, and recognise the emotional impact of our behaviour and take accountability.

Empathy isn’t one thing, it’s two distinct capacities working together: cognitive empathy and emotional empathy.
Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand someone’s perspective ("that makes sense why you did that").
Emotional empathy is the ability to feel their emotion in your own body (“that must be so difficult, I feel you” and offering them the safe space for them to feel their feelings without shaming, guilting, minimising, or invalidating).

These two systems rely on different neural pathways, the temporoparietal junction and medial prefrontal cortex for cognitive empathy, and the anterior insula for emotional empathy. This distinction matters because some people can intellectually understand emotions without feeling them, while others feel emotions intensely but struggle to interpret them.

When one of these systems is impaired, the person’s ability to relate safely is compromised.

Where narcissistic and psychopathic traits become dangerous:

In individuals with narcissistic or psychopathic personality traits, the deficit is most often in emotional empathy. They can understand your feelings intellectually, they can read you, study you, and decode you, but they don’t feel your pain. And that gap is where the danger lies.

Empathy relies on a coordinated network across the cortex and limbic system. In narcissistic and psychopathic structures, the circuits in the brain responsible for emotional resonance and moral inhibition are underactive and impaired. This doesn’t excuse the behaviour, but it explains why some people can cause deep emotional injury without experiencing internal discomfort, guilt, or remorse.

And because they can possess or learn cognitive empathy, they can recognise your emotional state, not to connect with it, but to use it against you. To fake and perform remorse and accountability when it suits them.

This is why the cruelty in narcissistic and psychopathic abuse often feels calculated, targeted, and intentional. Because it is. It's purposeful, functional, and instrumental.

The behaviour serves a goal: control, dominance, self‑protection, or emotional supply.

The relational danger of no emotional empathy:

When someone has little or no emotional empathy, there is no internal alarm that says, “Stop, you’re hurting them.” There is no guilt, no discomfort, no remorse, no instinct to repair. The harm becomes a tool... an instrument used to maintain power and control. And the only thing that interrupts the behaviour isn’t compassion or remorse, but external factors like protecting their image, regaining control over the victim, or re‑establishing dominance over the narrative.

When narcissistic or psychopathic personalities feel they’re losing control over their partner, the absence of emotional brakes means there is nothing inside them that says “this has gone too far.” Losing control feels like a threat to their identity. That’s why, in the most severe cases, they can escalate to extreme violence or even ending their partner's life without remorse and believing they deserved it. It isn’t “a moment of passion,” it’s the predictable outcome of a system that cannot tolerate loss of power and has no internal mechanism to stop harm once it begins.

Without that internal feedback loop:

- cruelty becomes habitual
- manipulation becomes strategic
- your pain becomes irrelevant
- your boundaries become a challenge
- your emotional reality becomes an inconvenience
- you're at risk of dying at their hands

Over time, the relationship becomes a place where harm is normalised because nothing inside the person pushes back against it.

This is why the absence of empathy, especially emotional empathy, is inherently abusive. The brain systems that generate emotional resonance and moral inhibition aren’t functioning in normal ways that protects the relationship or the partner.

Healthy relationships require both forms of empathy.
- Cognitive empathy to understand your partner’s perspective.
- Emotional empathy to feel the weight of your impact.

When either is missing, especially emotional empathy, the relationship becomes one‑sided, unsafe, and emotionally corrosive. Empathy isn’t a soft skill, or a bonus new age trend. It’s the foundation of relational and societal safety.

Without empathy, love cannot be sustained.
Repair cannot happen.
Accountability cannot happen.
Remorse cannot happen.
Understanding and feeling your feelings cannot happen.
These things can be performed when loss of control occurs to regain control. But never are they genuine or long lived.
Love becomes possessive.
And harm - emotional, mental, and even physical - becomes a repeated pattern rather than an exception.

This matters because survivors often believe they can love, support, or sacrifice their way into changing an abuser. But when someone repeatedly harms you and shows consistent patterns of lacking empathy, there is nothing you can do to create empathy in them. You can’t teach it, trigger it, or nurture it into existence. Change requires an internal capacity they simply do not have, and without that capacity, the cycle of harm doesn’t stop.

Not everyone who struggles with empathy is a narcissist or a psychopath. Many people simply never had empathy modelled to them in childhood, or they grew up in environments where emotional attunement wasn’t taught, valued, or safe. In those cases, empathy can be learned and strengthened over time, it functions like a skill that develops with awareness, practice, and emotional maturity. The exception is when someone has a disordered personality structure; in those cases, the capacity for emotional empathy isn’t just undeveloped, it’s fundamentally impaired, and no amount of love or effort from a partner can create what the brain cannot generate.

25/04/2026

I want to give you all a very important reminder, especially for anyone who is unsure whether what they’re experiencing is “normal conflict” or something more harmful.

Please don’t rush into couples counselling with your partner if you suspect abuse, coercive control, or narcissistic patterns.
Not before you understand the risks.
Not before you understand the limitations placed on the therapist.
And not before you understand what you lose the moment you walk into that room together.

I'm not trying to raise fear. It’s about informed safety.

Why this matters: Couples counselling is built on a set of assumptions:

- both partners have equal power
- both partners want change
- both partners can tolerate discomfort
- both partners are safe to be vulnerable
- both partners are collaborative

If even one of these is missing, the entire structure collapses, and in abusive dynamics, all 5 are missing.

When you bring an abusive or narcissistic partner into the room with you, the therapist is forced into a position where they must treat both of you as equal clients.
But your relationship is not equal.
Your safety is not equal.
Your freedom to speak is not equal.

And that inequality follows you into the session.

What you lose when you go to couples counselling with an abuser:

1. You lose safety
Anything you say in that room can be punished later.
Abusers don’t forget.
They don’t “take feedback.”
They retaliate.

2. You lose your voice
You cannot tell the truth in front of someone who controls you.
You end up minimising, softening, or protecting them, because you’re protecting yourself.

3. You lose the therapist’s ability to advocate for you
The therapist must remain neutral.
Neutrality in an abusive dynamic is not neutral, it protects the abuser.

4. You lose accurate assessment
The therapist only sees what the abuser allows them to see.
Charm, victim‑playing, selective storytelling, it all distorts the picture especially with a therapist who isn't highly experienced in abusive dynamics.

5. You lose access to individual support
A therapist who sees both of you cannot see you individually parallel to couples counselling. They cannot ethically give you private, trauma‑informed care.
Your healing becomes limited by the abuser’s presence.

6. The abuser gains new tools
Therapeutic language becomes weaponised:
“You’re projecting.”
"You're gaslighting."
"You're criticising."
"You're being defensive."
“You need to regulate better.”
“Even the therapist said you’re the problem.”

Couples therapy can unintentionally hand them new ammunition.

7. You lose the ability to get a letter of support
If the therapist is treating both of you, they cannot write a letter supporting you in court, responding to allegations, or clarifying the abuse.
Both partners are considered clients.
That means the therapist cannot ethically take a position that could be seen as “siding” with one client against the other, even if one partner is the victim.
This leaves you without a crucial form of professional support when you may need it most.

Why going alone first is safer and more effective

When you attend alone:

- you can speak freely
- you can explore the truth without fear
- the therapist can advocate for you
- you can understand the dynamics clearly
- you can plan safely
- you can rebuild your sense of self without being monitored
- you can identify if your relationship is safe enough for couples counselling.

And most importantly:

You get a space where your reality is not up for debate.

This is not about telling you to leave
It’s about making sure you don’t walk into a therapeutic setting that was never designed to hold the weight of abuse.

If you’re unsure whether what you’re experiencing is abuse, start with individual support.
Start with education.
Start with understanding the dynamics.
Start with someone who can hold your wellbeing as the priority.

Couples counselling cannot do that when abuse is present.

Note: Not all therapists are trained or experienced in domestic violence or narcissistic abuse dynamics. Due diligence is required before choosing a therapist for your specific needs.
If a therapist becomes aware that domestic violence is present during couples counselling and continues the joint work instead of ending it and redirecting to individual support, that is a breach of ethical practice.
Couples therapy is not an appropriate or safe modality when abuse is occurring, and continuing it places the victim at further risk.

23/04/2026

Let me know if I missed anything.

22/04/2026

Marrying a single mother

21/04/2026

"It's not cheating, there were no emotions." I hear this excuse often.

If a narcissist claims that going to brothels “isn’t cheating” because it’s a paid transaction with no emotions involved, then by their own logic none of their relationships are real relationships because they’re not emotionally available to begin with.

You can’t dismiss betrayal by saying “there were no feelings” when you also refuse to bring feelings, empathy, or emotional presence into the relationship you do have. You can’t use emotional detachment as both a shield and an excuse.

If anything, their argument exposes the core issue:
They reduce intimacy to transactions, control, and entitlement, not connection, responsibility, or care.

18/04/2026

My partner is very emotionally immature and always says he will be there for me but never is.

18/04/2026

If someone I'm getting to know lies about his job, education, age etc does this make them a narcissist?

"The grass isn’t greener on the other side.”Sometimes it is.A lot of relationship advice is written for normal, healthy ...
16/04/2026

"The grass isn’t greener on the other side.”

Sometimes it is.

A lot of relationship advice is written for normal, healthy or repairable relationships, not for relationships marked by narcissistic abuse or domestic violence. When you mix those categories together, victims end up blaming themselves, doing emotional gymnastics, and believing that if they could just find the right advice, the abuse will stop.

Let’s separate the two.

1. In normal relationships:
- The grass isn’t greener on the other side.
- Couples are encouraged to water their side ie; self‑reflect, communicate, and work on their marriage.
- Conflict is normal, repair is possible, and both people take responsibility.

This advice makes sense when both people are capable of accountability, empathy, collaboration, and growth.

2. In narcissistic or abusive relationships:
The rules are completely different.

- Narcissists do not self‑reflect.
- They do not take responsibility.
- They are non‑collaborative and highly disagreeable — partnership feels like opposition.
- They are tyrants of perspective — their viewpoint must dominate and overpower everyone else’s.
- They operate from a grandiose false self and pull others into their delusions to maintain it.
- They look outward, not inward — the finger is always pointed at you.
- They outsource emotional responsibility. They believe it is your job to regulate their emotions, so by default the abuse becomes “your fault” for not managing their feelings well enough.

If they hit you, it becomes your fault for “provoking” them.
If they cheat, it becomes your fault for “invading their privacy.”
If they lie, manipulate, or explode, it becomes your fault for “overreacting.”

You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to be perfect, it will never be enough. Not because you are not enough, but because their excessive need for admiration is bottomless. Their “love bucket” is cracked, leaking, and incapable of holding what you pour in. They believe they are entitled for you to centre your entire life around pouring into their busted love bucket, without any gratitude on their end. And they will manipulate your environment and perspective to gain this control.

This is why the grass is greener on the other side of abuse.

Not because another relationship will magically fix everything. But because leaving gives you the chance to heal. It has nothing to do with another relationship and everything to do with your safety.

Greener grass really means = safety, clarity, recovery, and the ability to rebuild your sense of self and prevent chronic illness.

3. Leaving doesn’t guarantee the abuse stops, but it gives you space to minimise it

Some narcissists continue their abuse after you leave. Some escalate. Some shift tactics.
But you are no longer trapped in the same environment that was breaking you down.

You cannot heal in the same environment that is hurting you. You cannot grow in soil that is poisoned. You cannot fix someone whose entire identity depends on never being wrong and taking accountability feels worse than death.

4. Why this distinction matters

When people say “the grass isn’t greener on the other side,” they are talking about normal relationships, not DV, not narcissistic abuse, not coercive control.

Victims need to hear the difference so they stop internalising the wrong message and stop believing they can “perform” their way into being treated with basic humanity.

Have you felt this before, that sense of outgrowing an old version of yourself? What masks did you once need for surviva...
16/04/2026

Have you felt this before, that sense of outgrowing an old version of yourself? What masks did you once need for survival that you can finally put down now?

When you fall in love with a narcissist, you’re not actually falling in love with them. You’re falling in love with the ...
15/04/2026

When you fall in love with a narcissist, you’re not actually falling in love with them. You’re falling in love with the sales pitch. The version of themselves they curate, perform, and present with precision. The version designed to meet your hopes, your values, your longing for connection. And once you’re hooked, you spend years trying to get them to honour what they sold you in the beginning.

This isn’t because you’re naive or “should’ve known better.” It’s because narcissistic relating is built on intentionality. The charm, the intensity, the mirroring it is all proactive. It’s designed to secure admiration, loyalty, and emotional supply. You responded like any human would respond to someone who seemed to understand you so deeply.

You fall in love with who you thought they were. With who they promised to be. With who they acted like in the beginning.

Not because you’re delusional, but because the early version of them was engineered to be irresistible.

It’s impossible to build real love with someone who feels threatened by your happiness, who becomes resentful when you shine, and who uses your vulnerabilities as leverage, who can't share space, whether it's physical, emotional, or mental space, their perspective is the only one in the room. Not because you didn’t love “hard enough,” but because genuine intimacy requires goodwill and goodwill is the one thing a narcissistic system cannot sustain.

You weren’t in love with cruelty. You were in love with the idea of partnership, the hope of “the one,” the dream of building a life with someone who would grow with you. You kept trying to make the story work, hoping that if they could just soften, just self-reflect, just stop the manipulation, the relationship could become what it was supposed to be. You hold on to hope when they show small moments of "kindness" amongst the cruelty and abuse.

You were trying to create a healthy love story with someone whose nature, patterns, and worldview don’t fit the script, no matter how much you tried, no matter how hard you loved them, no matter how much you wished they would.

There’s no shame in that. There’s only learning, clarity, and the slow reclaiming of your heart from a promise that was never real in the first place.

We hear a lot about choosing someone with good character, but what does that actually mean? Most people confuse good cha...
14/04/2026

We hear a lot about choosing someone with good character, but what does that actually mean? Most people confuse good character with being passive, quiet, agreeable, not talking back, or having the right outer appearance. But good character isn’t about outer performance. Good character is inner work.

It's super important to choose the right person, and it’s equally important to become the kind of person who can hold a healthy, stable, and safe love.

A good partner isn’t perfect. A good partner has good character.

They work on their character because they know marriage exposes whatever they refuse to face.

One character trait to build within yourself and to look for in a partner is self-regulation.

Your reactions shape the emotional climate of the home.

A partner that practices self-regulation creates safety in the relationship and in the home.

An chronically unregulated partner creates instability in the relationship and an unsafe home.

Self regulation is your responsibility, not your partner’s, and not your kid’s. It is no one else’s primary job to manage your emotions for you. Expecting everyone around you to tiptoe, predict, or absorb your moods is emotional immaturity, and it can be emotionally abusive, and it’s bad character. It creates emotional unsafety in the relationship.

Unsafe, unregulated people flip the script.
They expect others to manage their emotions for them.
It sounds like:

• “You made me angry.”

• “You pushed me to this.”

• "Look what you made me do."

• “If you didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have reacted like this.”

• “You know how I get, why would you trigger me?”

• “Fix your behaviour so I don’t lose control.”

• "It's your fault I'm aggressive, you should know me by now."

This is how unregulated people avoid accountability. They outsource their emotional responsibility to everyone else.

Healthy self‑regulation sounds different.
It sounds like:

- “I felt triggered by what happened, but my reaction is on me.”

- “I need a moment to calm down before I respond.”

- “I’m responsible for how I speak, even when I’m upset.”

- “I need to soothe myself, not punish you.”

- “My emotions are mine to manage.”

One mindset creates fear.
The other creates safety.

Self‑regulation is not about perfection, it’s about ownership. And ownership is the foundation of good character.

Important question and answer. I know many Muslim women who are struggling with their faith due to toxic men pushing the...
11/04/2026

Important question and answer. I know many Muslim women who are struggling with their faith due to toxic men pushing them away from the religion as if it's their dad's religion. Stay strong. Don't walk away from Islam, walk away from the scammers.

Address

Liverpool, NSW
2170

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Mohamed Rima posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

About Me

I have been actively involved in community work for over 15 years focusing on grassroots work in the Muslim community. I am also a co-founder and General Manager of MIA - Markaz Imam Ahmad, a very active Islamic community centre in the heart of Liverpool CBD. My focal work in MIA is the development of youth in the light of Islamic teachings and building them to be productive in our community. MIA also serves as giving the youth a place to belong and feel accepted.

I have a passion for seeking knowledge and have been for many years under some of Sydney’s well known and respected Imams and teachers. I am currently on my 4th year and final semester in completing a Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Studies through the International Open University (IOU).

I am a qualified and insured counsellor and registered with the ACA - Australian Counselling Association. I have a dedicated private practice in Liverpool, NSW and my focus as a counsellor is to help my clients reach their potential and support them to transform personal challenges into life enhancing opportunities. This is achieved by providing a neutral, confidential, non-judgemental safe space, listening to their concerns and customising a therapeutic plan that suits their situation.

I am trained in the Gottman Method Couples Therapy (level 2) and have a passion in working with couples improve their relationship. I blend my methods to tailor for my client’s needs, whether it be one maintenance session you require or an in-depth therapy catered for your needs, marriage is something worth investing in.