Sign 3: Memory Loss
The third sign is that you forget things easily and struggle to remember conversations clearly. Someone tells you something important, and 5 minutes later you cannot recall it. You lose your keys, phone, and wallet constantly. You have conversations and later have no memory of what was said. Your hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for forming memories, has physically shrunk due to prolonged cortisol exposure. Why? Because when your brain is focused on survival, it does not have the resources to form clear memories. Memory formation requires safety. But when you are living with a narcissist, your brain is using all its resources to scan for danger and keep you alive. There is no bandwidth left for memory. This is why the narcissist could gaslight you so easily. They would say, “I never said that,” and you would doubt yourself because your memory was already compromised. This is really about survival mode; your brain prioritized keeping you alive over keeping a clear record of events.
Sign 4: Difficulty Focusing and Decision Making
Fourth, you find it hard to focus or make decisions. You read the same paragraph a gazillion times without absorbing it. You cannot decide what to eat for dinner and feel paralyzed by the choices. Simple choices that bring other people joy bring you pain and misery. Your brain feels scattered. This is damage to your prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for focus, planning, and decision-making. Chronic stress weakens the prefrontal cortex because when you are in survival mode, you cannot afford to analyze options; you need to react fast. So, your brain shuts down the thoughtful prefrontal cortex and heavily relies on the reactive amygdala. And now that you are trying to live normally, you notice you cannot focus or make decisions the way you used to. This is really about your brain relearning how to think instead of just react. For years, thinking was a luxury you could not afford; the narcissist punished you for thinking too much. So, your brain learned to shut down that part and just survive.
Sign 5: Mental Exhaustion
The fifth sign is that you feel mentally exhausted even when you have done nothing physically demanding. You wake up tired. You feel like you are moving through fog. You sit doing nothing and feel more exhausted than if you had run a marathon. This is nervous system exhaustion and dysregulation. For years, your nervous system was running the survival program 24/7, scanning for threats and keeping you hypervigilant. Even when you were sleeping, it was on high alert. Your body never got rest. And now, even though the danger is gone, your nervous system does not know how to turn off. Why? Because your nervous system learned that rest equals danger. Simple. With a narcissist, letting your guard down meant getting hurt. So, your body learned to never relax fully. This is really about safety; your exhaustion is your body finally admitting how hard it has been working to keep you alive.
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