If you’ve been experiencing narcissistic abuse from a partner, parent, or in a toxic workplace, your body has likely been under intense stress. Even if you’re still trying to understand the emotional manipulation, your body has been reacting strongly to the stress, and it’s becoming impossible to ignore the signs any longer.

Today, I’m going to talk about how narcissistic abuse affects your adrenal glands. These two small but powerful organs sit on top of your kidneys and manage your body’s stress response. They release important hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which help you deal with stressful situations. These hormones trigger the “fight or flight” response, preparing your body to react quickly to threats.

But here’s the catch — your adrenal glands weren’t designed to be constantly overstimulated and drained by the relentless stress of narcissistic abuse. The daily onslaught of devaluation, stonewalling, mind games, and constantly walking on eggshells puts your adrenals in a constant state of emergency, leading to chronic stress and exhaustion.

Over months or years of dealing with a narcissist’s chaos and struggling to survive their games of deceit and manipulation, your adrenal reserves become dangerously depleted. As a result, you may start experiencing:

· Constant fatigue and exhaustion no matter how much you rest

· Irritability, anxiety, and mood swings at the slightest trigger

· Problems falling and staying asleep despite feeling so tired

· Food cravings and wild fluctuations in appetite

· Getting every bug and virus that comes along

· Brain fog, confusion and inability to concentrate

All of these varied symptoms can be traced back to your body being in an advanced state of adrenal fatigue or adrenal insufficiency, caused by the severe stress you’ve become accustomed to in that difficult relationship with the narcissist.

Your glands are essentially worn out from constantly pumping stress hormones into your system day after day, night after night, just trying to help you cope with the psychological warfare. In your body’s primitive wiring, constantly having to invalidate your reality to avoid a narcissistic rage or blowup is like being hunted by a life-threatening predator in the savannah. Your body reacts to this psychological stress as if it were a physical threat, keeping you in a perpetual state of high alert and survival mode.

When your body stays constantly on high alert and stress hormones like cortisol keep flowing without breaks, your adrenal glands can’t keep up. They run out of the resources needed to keep sending emergency signals. This leads to extreme tiredness, getting sick easily, feeling mentally drained, and being emotionally overwhelmed. Your body’s balance gets messed up because your adrenal reserves are worn out, affecting everything.

The good news is, you can recover from adrenal fatigue once you’ve removed yourself from the grip of that person who’s made your life a living hell.

https://biiedwin.gumroad.com/l/BreakingChains

When you leave that relationship, you may still experience a heightened state of ‘fight or flight’ response because your body has become accustomed to living in that traumatic environment, like a savannah.

You’re still carrying the stress with you even though the stressor is gone. Any small trigger can make your body react the same way it did when you were in the relationship. You will keep triggering the same biochemical patterns over and over again as your mind is always watching out for danger or sometimes which has resemblance to some of your past traumas.

That’s why healing involves allowing yourself space to release the accumulated stress from the relationship. This helps your mind understand that you’re no longer in danger, so it can return to its normal ‘fight or flight’ response, and your adrenal glands can finally rest, allowing you to rest too. Your adrenal glands have been fighting for your survival all this while. Now, it’s up to you to give them the peace they deserve, and to give you the peace you deserve.

Healing means your body goes back to its default of protecting you from real danger instead of the fabricated danger your unhealed trauma keeps communicating to you. This is why healing your mind affects your body, one way or another.

So, before you rush to expensive surgeries for physical symptoms or unexplained medical conditions like chronic fatigue, try releasing the stress. It can be less expensive, have fewer complications, and look at you as a whole person.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.

References

1. https://coachingwithdrheidi.com/adrenal-dysfunction-and-stress-test

2. https://www.drlamcoaching.com/blog/adrenal-fatigue-and-narcissism/

3. https://blog.melanietoniaevans.com/how-i-healed-adrenal-malfunction-after-being-told-it-was-incurable/