I thought my brain stopped working.
There’s something people don’t talk about enough when it comes to narcissistic abuse.
Nobody prepares you for what happens to your body after living in survival mode for so long.
I remember during my recovery, if I got the opportunity to go spend time with friends or family, I was never fully there.
I could not relax.
I could not settle into the moment.
I could not enjoy myself the way everybody else seemed to.
Even if I was physically safe, my body did not believe I was safe.
Because when you live inside narcissistic abuse long enough, your nervous system becomes conditioned to stay prepared at all times.
Prepared for the next mood shift.
The next escalation.
The next accusation.
The next emotionally punishing conversation.
The next change in tone that suddenly changes the entire atmosphere of the evening.
You start calculating everything.
Every second of the day becomes emotional risk management.
And I remember after I left, things actually intensified emotionally because I had the audacity to leave.
At the time, I did not understand that what I was experiencing was emotional warfare.
I just knew I felt like I was disappearing.
I remember standing there watching my kids play in the backyard and feeling completely numb.
Not sad.
Not happy.
Not relieved.
Nothing.
I remember genuinely thinking my brain had stopped working altogether.
That is how emotionally debilitating prolonged narcissistic abuse can become.
And the hardest part was that nobody around me could fully see it because from the outside, it just looked like I was quiet or distant.
But internally, my nervous system was completely overloaded.
I remember going over to my parents’ house for celebrations and barely being able to tolerate being there for more than two hours.
Not because I didn’t love them.
Not because I didn’t want connection.
But because their emotional normalcy could not match the intensity my nervous system had adapted to.
The calm almost felt foreign to me.
And I think this is important to talk about because when people are in the middle of narcissistic abuse, they often don’t understand why so much of their personality seems to disappear.
They think:
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why am I so exhausted?”
“Why can’t I relax anymore?”
“Why do I feel emotionally numb?”
“Why do I feel like I’m constantly bracing for something?”
But what many survivors do not realize is that their personality slowly started shrinking because it had to.
The slightest pattern change could change the entire emotional tone of the evening.
The slightest emotional reaction could trigger escalation.
The slightest independence could become conflict.
So eventually, your nervous system starts minimizing you before the abuser even has the chance to.
You become quieter.
Smaller.
More careful.
More emotionally calculated.
Not because that is who you are.
But because your body learned that survival depended on anticipating someone else’s instability before it arrived.
And after enough time, you stop recognizing yourself altogether.
— Tawnia Lives.
