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The opposite of a Narcissist, the Echoist suppresses needs and wants to please someone else,
– Sarah Laing, The Kit, April 29, 2024.
The term Echoist is not listed in the DSM-5, the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals. However, it has become a popular therapy term on social media. When The Kit contacted us for an interview about this topic. Laura Devlin, Clinical Psychologist and co-owner of Beaches Therapy Group, had not heard the term before. However, she was very familiar with the traits of an Echoist and likened it to one of the ways a person responds to trauma.
Trauma is how the human body responds to a highly stressful event or a series of stressful events. All of these mechanisms are largely unconscious and animals show very similar responses in the wild. We are hard-wired to respond with “fight, flight, or freeze” to threats, otherwise known as the sympathetic nervous system activation. The fight response occurs when we perceive that the best option for dealing with a threat is to retaliate. The flight response occurs when it seems prudent to flee. The freeze response is just that. When a person becomes shell-shocked, they simply cannot mobilize a viable response.
More recently, clinicians acknowledge a fourth associated response to interpersonal trauma, referred to as the “fawn/appease” response. It occurs when an individual pacifies an attacker by “agreeably” going along with them. Echoism appears to be a new way to describe the constellation of traits typical of a person who copes with trauma by avoiding conflict in this manner, often at a great cost to themselves. People in long-term relationships with narcissists often succumb to this coping mechanism, simply to survive or protect their children.
