Narcissists use chaos like a weapon—yelling out of nowhere, slamming doors, flipping moods like light switches. Now, even harmless chaos, like kids playing loudly or a heated office debate, feels dangerous. Your body remembers what chaos used to mean: attack, blame, humiliation. That’s why your heart races at a toddler tantrum or a loud movie. It’s not overreacting; it’s reacting exactly the way it was trained to when survival was on the line. Even after the abuse, your nervous system doesn’t know the threat is gone; it only knows the pattern. The healing work involves gently showing your body that not all noise means chaos or war.
3. Lack of a Safe Baseline
How do you relax when you’ve never really felt safe? If you grew up or lived in narcissistic chaos, your body never got the memo on what calm truly feels like. Your nervous system has been running a marathon with no finish line. So when life throws in a little noise or mess, your whole system panics. If peace was never your norm, your body treats even normal noise—like laughter, a slammed cabinet, or a busy store—as a threat. Without that baseline of safety, every little disruption feels like a big deal because your brain never learned the difference between harmless noise and dangerous loudness.
4. Emotional Flashbacks
Have you ever been hit with a wave of fear for no obvious reason? That’s what emotional flashbacks are—those sudden overwhelming feelings of terror or helplessness that seem to come out of nowhere. They’re like mini PTSD moments, and even if you’re in a safe place, things like a loud noise or sudden movement can still set them off. Your brain can’t always tell the difference between real-time danger and the echoes of past trauma. So when a door slams or someone raises their voice, it sends your system into fight or flight mode, even though there’s no actual threat. It’s like your body is stuck replaying old movies of chaos, and you’re helplessly watching it all over again.
5. Overstimulated Amygdala
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