Have you ever noticed that you are the one suffering from chronic migraines, skin rashes, and constant exhaustion, while that narcissist seems to have the energy of a marathon runner? You are the one paying the biological price for the environment they created. While you are busy walking on eggshells, your body is living in a house that has been on fire for years. Your brain is pumping out smoke signals, cortisol, and adrenaline non-stop. When these hormones stay in your system 24/7, they cease to protect you and start to corrode you. Cortisol acts like an acid that eats away at your gut lining, leading to leaky gut and sudden food sensitivities. It keeps your muscles in a state of permanent micro-tension, which eventually manifests as the widespread burning pain of fibromyalgia. Most dangerously, this chemical overload confuses your immune system until it loses its GPS and can no longer distinguish between a foreign virus and your own healthy thyroid or joint tissue. Your organs and joints are tired of inhaling the smoke. Your body is trying to save you by making it physically impossible for you to stay in that house.
In a healthy life, your stress response is like a light switch. You see a threat, the switch goes on, you deal with it, and then the switch goes off so your body can repair itself. But in narcissistic abuse, that switch is taped down. You are marinating in cortisol and adrenaline for years. Eventually, your cells get tired of the alarm. They stop responding to the signals that are supposed to keep you safe. This is when inflammation goes rogue. I see this all the time with survivors: mystery pains that travel through the body. One week it’s your lower back; the next week it’s your neck. Then it is a sudden, unexplained skin rash or a flare-up of hives. You go to the doctor, get the blood work done, and they tell you everything looks fine, but you know it’s not fine because you don’t feel fine. Your body is under siege.
There is a deep or almost eerie biological reason for this. In these relationships, your boundaries are systematically erased by the narcissist. The narcissist does not want you to have a self. They want you to be an extension of them because every person and everything in their life is nothing but an extension of their false self. You are forced to adopt their needs, their distorted reality, and their moods just to survive.
Now, think about what your immune system actually is. It is your biological boundary, is it not? Its only job is to recognize what is you and what is not you. When you lose your psychological sense of self, your immune system mirrors that confusion. But at a cellular level, it loses its GPS. It can no longer distinguish between your healthy tissue and a foreign invader. It starts attacking your thyroid, your joints, or your nervous system because it is desperately trying to purge a threat it can feel but cannot see. Your body is literally attempting to burn the house down because it feels a predator is in the room. This confusion is at the root of Hashimoto’s, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis in many survivors.
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