When you have been abused by a narcissist, it’s not just your heart and mind that carry the scars—your body learns to mirror the trauma, bending under the weight of abuse until it becomes part of who you are, whether you realize it or not. Your posture and body become an extension of your survival mode, and this is often the most overlooked part of the healing journey from narcissistic abuse.
1. You shrink your presence
One of the most noticeable impacts of narcissistic abuse trauma is how it makes you shrink physically, not just emotionally. You carry yourself in ways that suggest you’re trying to hide, to make yourself invisible. You hunch over, close in on yourself, and make your body as small as possible, trying to take up little space. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to believe that the less noticeable you are, the less likely you’ll be attacked, criticized, humiliated, or abused. It’s a way of avoiding punishment, a survival instinct.
The narcissist made you feel that attention always led to confrontation, so your body adjusts by staying small. Unfortunately, the truth is that this shrinking posture sends signals to others that you are diminished, that you’ve lost power. It’s the first step in physically losing touch with your confidence. I stayed hidden all the time; I didn’t want to be seen because, for me, attention meant pain. I would turn into something small, almost ghost-like in the room, hoping nobody would pay attention to me. I would say nothing, and people assumed I was shy, but it wasn’t shyness—it was fear. Whenever I said something in front of my parent or another narcissist, I was punished for a crime I didn’t commit.
2. The loss of open expression
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