Everybody experiences stress, but not all stress derives from narcissistic abuse. Yours, if that's the case, is different. It's different because it shows up in ways that you think something is wrong with you, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
That stress you carry is heavy, and it shows up in the quietest ways that nobody really wants to talk about…
…Until now. I've got 10 stress symptoms that come exclusively from narcissistic abuse. I wonder how many you can relate to.
And I want you to read this without that little voice in your head saying you're being dramatic. You're not. You never were. That voice? Not yours originally.
1 Your body reacts before your brain does
The body never forgets, and I think that's something many victims of narcissistic abuse struggle to get their head around. Stress signs pop up sometimes months after you leave the narcissist, and you think "Why is this still happening to me? Why can't I just move on and feel better?"
In the time you were with the narcissist, your body learned what was safe, and what was not. The way they treat you will have given your body messages to say you were in danger and your body will have reacted accordingly.
Those responses don't disappear overnight, so bear in mind it does take time for your nervous system to regulate once more.
I had a client tell me her hands would shake every time her phone buzzed, months after she'd blocked him. Her body was still bracing for the next attack.
2 Scanning the room becomes second nature to you
Every time you walk into a room, you scan it for risks. Who is a threat, who looks safe? Your eyes sweep across, left to right, and you try to take notes on the spot. You're looking for who is annoyed, or showing signs of tension.
The mood, if you can gauge, you can somewhat at least control if you can determine it. This was something you've been long trained to do. It wasn't necessarily something you were born with, but something you learned to pick up and acquire as a way to survive.
Now, wherever you go, you take that skill with you, even when there's nothing really to be actually worried about.
You're at a friend's dinner, everyone laughing, and you're still clocking the host's face, the partner's tone, the tiny shift when someone mentions politics. Exhausting, right?
For you, that risk is always alive.
3 You apologize like it's a reflex
I am so sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sounds like a broken record, doesn't it? That's because you spend your life saying it so much. Even when someone else gets in your way, you feel the need to apologize to try to make it better.
You don't want people to be upset with you. You spent enough time feeling the effects of that stress before, and now you want to do all you can to just make people happy. Your opinions matter, but not at the expense of anyone's anger toward you.
Sorry used to be your shield, and it was spoken as fast as a reflex which helped situations not escalate. You got through all those evenings okay because you kept a step ahead of everything getting worse than it was already.
I had a client tell me she once apologized to the narcissist for crying too loudly after he'd screamed at her. That's how deep the reflex goes.
You kept that habit up through no fault of your own. That's because the threat still feels real.
4 Good news feels like a threat
When something genuinely good happens, life feels amazing, right? I'm sure not all of you know what that's like, and that's because you're used to bracing for impact instead of celebrating. Imagine for instance, getting a compliment at work and having your first thought be, "What's the catch?
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseAre they laughing at me when my back is turned?"
The same goes for a relationship, if you feel it's starting to go well, you wait for the moment it all falls apart. Why is that?
Because life with a narcissist is barely good at all, and when it is good, it will soon, sometimes in the blink of an eye without warning, turn bad.
You started to be able to predict that well, and so you saw happiness as the precursor for bad without even thinking about it.
You also had anything good held against you, like it was a threat in itself, so happiness was not what it was supposed to be at all.
Get a promotion? They sulked. Lose weight? They accused you of dressing for someone else. Any bit of joy became evidence in a case they were quietly building against you.
5 Sleep just doesn't happen
You're exhausted all day, in fact, you wake up feeling extremely tired, whether or not you slept well. As soon as bedtime hits, you're wide awake, thinking and thinking, and overthinking everything from the moment you met to all the times you argued and all in between.
Your brain works that way, at a time where you should be going to bed to chill out, it will keep you awake because it wants to keep you on high alert.
When you sleep, you're at your most vulnerable, and brains don't really like that if they do nothing but sense danger when you're awake.
You long for an off switch that doesn't seem to exist, and you wish you could just get one, full restful night's sleep, but it doesn't happen. Stress and lack of sleep are best friends.
Without that time to recover and recharge, you're going to wake up if you slept at all, feeling miserable and like you don't know if you can handle the day ahead or not.
And then you drag yourself through the day running on caffeine and adrenaline, only to lie down that night and hear their voice in your head all over again.
6 Being calm makes you feel guilty
Odd one, I know. When things are fine and nobody is telling, you sit there feeling guilty, as if something passed you by that you should be reacting to. Did you miss a cue? Should you be fixing something?
Peace starts to feel suspicious, like the quiet before something ugly. Your body doesn't trust stillness because stillness was usually the setup, the pause right before the next explosion landed.
Does someone need your help? It's hard to know, and you feel bad for perhaps letting something pass you by.
Living in chaos for the length of time you did is enough to make anyone look out for anything and everything they feel responsible for fixing, and that can be a constant stress for some people. You are not broken.
7 You dread any type of quiet
Quiet always seems like the calm before the storm, and that's because it's how you lived with the narcissist.
Initially, you loved the peace, but you learned quickly that it never lasted, and so you spent all your time worrying when the drama died down because it was only a matter of time before they kicked off again.
Narcissists are infamous for starting arguments when they're bored or when nothing else is going on, and so that peace has become a warning sign to you, and it hasn't gone away. It takes time to realize that post-abuse, peace is safe, and so are you.
It's okay to relax into it without anticipating another emotional war that you're too exhausted to be dragged into.
Your nervous system has been on standby for so long that stillness feels wrong. Give it time. The silence isn't hiding anything now. It's just silence.
8 You hate conflict of any kind
It won't matter if you're in the street, or watching your favorite TV show; if you are around any kind of conflict, you're bound to feel on edge, and it will set your stressors off like nobody's business.
You have to remember that you've been used to being dragged into so much drama, but conflict has always started at the smallest push of a button. It's no wonder someone's sharp words or aggressive nature makes you feel like all those memories are coming flooding back to you.
That panic kicks in, and your heart starts to thump out of your chest. You get flashbacks of all the conflict you've gotten stuck in. There's nothing wrong with you. Your body is reacting to what it rightly perceives as danger.
Even a raised voice at the next table in a cafe can send you into a spin. Your nervous system learned to brace, and it hasn't forgotten yet.
9 Your appetite has a mind of its own
One day you can't eat a thing. The thought of food makes your stomach turn. You're standing in the kitchen holding a piece of toast wondering why it feels like cardboard.
The next day, you're inhaling everything in sight. Sugar, carbs, whatever's closest. You don't even taste it, you just want to feel something other than what you're feeling.
This is what living under constant stress does to your body. Your nervous system is fried. It can't tell if you're in danger or safe, hungry or full, so hunger cues go completely out the window.
And you start to feel guilty about it. Like you've lost control of yet another part of yourself. You look in the fridge at 11pm and think, "What is wrong with me?"
Nothing is wrong with you. Your body has been in survival mode for so long that it doesn't know how to do normal things anymore. Eating included. It's not greed, it's not weakness. It's the aftermath.
10 Making a decision feels impossible
Choosing what to have for dinner shouldn't feel like defusing a bomb, and yet here you are, staring at the fridge for twenty minutes.
This is what living with a narcissist does to your decision making. Every choice you ever made was picked apart, questioned, mocked, or overridden. So your brain learned to freeze. Better to make no decision than the "wrong" one and pay for it later.
And why is it so bad? Because you weren't just deciding, you were bracing. Every yes or no was run through a filter of "how will they react?" That filter doesn't switch off the moment they leave your life. It hangs around, whispering.
Small things become huge. What to wear. What to reply to a text. Whether to say yes to a coffee with a friend. You sit there weighing options that don't even need weighing, and end up exhausted before you've moved an inch.
The good news is this softens. Your instincts do come back. They were just buried under years of being told they were wrong.
