The narcissist leaves, and as they walk out the door, you're left with every single ripple effect of their abuse. You feel so out of body that you don't even know if you're exaggerating what happened or not. You're not. You went through it all, and your body kept score.
Today, I want to talk about how your body keeps all that abuse and trauma locked in, and what that meant for you, the person who had to carry it all even after they went. None of it is your imagination.
Your shoulders knew before your mind did. That jaw clench when their name pops up on your phone? That's not drama. That's a body still on shift.
1 Meeting the narcissist felt quiet
There was nothing to even notice at first, but the narcissist came along and showed you how quiet they could be just to get your attention and make you feel as though you were in a safe space.
Soon enough, every now and then you got a little bit of a knot in your chest, and another night you didn't get your full night's sleep. Your phone rang and their name came up, and your guy flinched.
That's a build up that no victim wants to really remember, but it's there all the same.
Many people excuse it for stress, saying there's a lot going on at work, or life is chaotic at the moment, but let's be honest, these things only cropped up when you met the narcissist.
It was them the whole time; standing in front of you demanding to know why dinner isn't on time, or why you are late home from work again without reason or explanation.
I had a client tell me her shoulders would climb up to her ears the second she heard his car in the driveway. She didn't even notice she was doing it.
I think here, victims are much too concerned by what's going on in the dynamic rather than what it's necessarily doing to your body, so of course, the realization that you're being radically damaged from the inside out due to their abuse goes over your head until those symptoms start displaying themselves.
Over time and if left untreated, it simply becomes who you are.
2 Your nervous system didn't stop watching
The nervous system is responsible for everything you do, think, and feel. Every message it receives, it processes, so if you're receiving abuse, it will receive it as a threat and danger.
Over all that time with a narcissist, those messages it receives will be constant and very consistent, leaving you unable to switch off the fact that you're on edge.
It's a state that is no real laughing matter, and I feel for you because all you want is to move on, but your body can't immediately define that everything is okay, just because the narcissist is absent.
A phone buzzes on the table, and suddenly you're waiting for, "We need to talk," even though the person sending the message is your sister asking about dinner.
Your body went through so much tension that it's left you feeling like this, and it remembers every single time you were told that you weren't good enough. A door slams, and your body knows what that was like the copious amount of times the narcissist stormed out after yelling.
It's a hum of anxiety that you still experience, and I know it's the hardest thing to unlearn, but over time, you can lessen those feelings and gain control back.
3 Everything physical may not have felt real, but it was
I remember somebody telling me, "Alex, I can't tell you how exhausted I felt after an argument. That fatigue would last for days."
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseIt's the same for everything; you can sleep all night and feel like you've been up all night. You wake up to a sore jaw from clenching it for several hours. Your heart races at the mere mention of their name, and not for good reasons! That is standard.
As your body responded to threats, it did so every single day, making your body run over the same procedure over and over again. It didn't know how to run or fight, so it tolerated, and it took all that abuse in, trapping it.
That high alert makes your body feel a certain way. Those palpitations, or the racing heart. Those may just have felt like "Who you were," but they were always a response to what you were going through.
Your body was doing its job, honestly. It kept you alert because staying alert was safer than relaxing around them. That wasn't anxiety for no reason. That was survival.
4 You're hypervigilant, and you don't hear it talked about enough
Why wouldn't you be hypervigilant? It's one of the worst things your body knows to do, and no matter how much you fight it, you still find yourself reading every room you walk into.
You look for a frown or a fake smile, you look for people who seem angry, or who look as though they're hiding something. You watch people as you talk wondering what they're thinking about you and your words. Want to know why? Why are you so quiet?
Why do you always have to raise this issue? You're imagining things yet again. You want to make sure everyone is okay, and so now you scan for signs that people aren't happy with you. Anything to make the day better.
That's down to your body not knowing how to switch off, or when to see people as just interested in you and your day without motive.
A client said to me last month, "I can't just have a coffee with someone. I'm reading their face the whole time." That's what years with a narcissist does.
5 Healing is equally as physical
It's an important part I just can't leave out, how important it is to physically heal and learn that you are safe now the narcissist has gone. It takes some while to play catch up, I fully understand that.
You don't need to flinch when someone raises your voice, or have to deal with anxiety that rears its ugly head on a random Tuesday. There's no drama here; your body isn't being a queen.
It's responding to a trauma you want through that's still trapped in your body, and until you start releasing it, it will remain. Slowly and on repeat, tell your body that it's safe. It needs to hear it from you on loop in order for it to start believing it.
Say it out loud in the shower, whisper it before bed, put a hand on your chest and mean it. Your nervous system is listening, even when you feel silly doing it.
Rest when you can, and live a calm life that doesn't invite any more drama in. I know you can offer your mind and body the environment it deserves.
6 There was nothing wrong with you, there still isn't
When you responded to the narcissist through your tears and sadness, through all the ways you tried to make it better, you kept asking to repeat what was wrong with them because they were in yet again another bad mood…
You were responding exactly how a human should respond to those things. This wasn't your body betraying you. It was making sure you were living an honest life. It was telling you facts, when everything around you (including the narcissist) was designed to make you feel nothing but doubt.
It was keeping score because it remembers everything, even when you think it doesn't. It did what it had to do with the information it was given, and now it's your turn to give it different information.
Your body wasn't broken, it was paying attention. It picked up on every eye roll, every sigh, every, "Why are you crying again?" and stored it for you.
The score it kept was the whole story, and that's a story you want to remember to forget. Once you do, you can learn how to move on, heal, and eventually lessen those side effects of experiencing narcissistic abuse.
In order for your body to start forgetting, you have to show it a level of kindness you've probably never had to think about before.
7 The weird stuff you Google at 2am
You know the searches. "Can trauma cause tingling in my hands." "Why does my chest feel tight when my phone buzzes." "Is it normal to forget entire conversations." "Cortisol belly fat real or fake." "Why do I flinch when someone closes a door too hard."
Three in the morning, blue light on your face, going down a rabbit hole because your body is doing something and no one is here to explain it to you.
And half the time you land on some forum where a total stranger has typed out your exact symptoms, and you feel this strange comfort in knowing you're not the only one lying awake wondering if your nervous system is broken.
It isn't broken. It's overworked. There's a difference.
The Googling itself is a symptom, by the way. You're trying to make sense of what happened using medical language because emotional language wasn't allowed for years. If you can call it a diagnosis, you can talk about it. If it's just feelings, they can be dismissed. Old habit.
Still running.
8 Why your body still doesn't trust good people
Someone lovely walks into your life. They're kind. Patient. They text back quickly and mean what they say.
And your body goes, "Nope."
See also Do These 3 Things And The Narcissist Will Suddenly Respect And Fear YouYour shoulders tense when they compliment you. You wait for the punchline. When they're running late, your stomach knots up in that old, familiar way, and you're already rehearsing what you'll say when they blow up at you.
Only they don't blow up. They apologise. Warmly. And you don't know what to do with that.
Why? Because your nervous system learned that kindness is bait. It learned that soft words come before hard hits. So when someone genuinely safe shows up, your body reads them as the most dangerous thing in the room.
It's not that you don't want love. You do. It's that the part of you keeping you alive has been on shift for years, and it doesn't clock off just because the threat left.
Give it time. Slow, boring, uneventful time with safe people. That's the only thing that teaches your body the war is over.
