Having Complex PTSD from growing up with a narcissistic mother means your nervous system never truly learnt what safety feels like. Your body carries an alarm system that was calibrated in childhood chaos, where love came with conditions, where peace was temporary and where your mother's mood could shift the entire atmosphere of the house in seconds. Now, even in genuinely safe spaces, that internal warning system continues to sound, scanning every interaction for signs of danger that might not even exist.

You interpret neutral expressions as disapproval because your mother's face so often held contempt. You read silence as rejection because in your childhood home, the quiet often preceded an explosion or the cold shoulder treatment. You brace for conflict in calm moments because tranquillity was usually the eye of the storm; never lasting, always followed by something worse. Your body learnt that relaxation was dangerous, that letting your guard down invited attack.

The hypervigilance isn't a choice or a character flaw, it's a survival mechanism that saved you. When your primary caregiver was also your primary source of threat, your nervous system had to become exquisitely sensitive to any shifts in energy, tone or atmosphere. That child's radar was brilliant at detecting danger, but now it struggles to differentiate between past threats and present safety.

What makes this particularly isolating is how invisible the struggle is to others. People see you tense up and tell you to "just relax," not understanding that your body is responding to decades of stored trauma. They don't see the exhaustion of being perpetually on alert, the mental energy spent analysing every conversation for hidden meanings or the way your chest tightens when someone's tone shifts even slightly.

For survivors of narcissistic mothers, this constant state of activation is compounded by the gaslighting you endured. You were told you were "too sensitive" or "overreacting" so often that you doubt your own perceptions, yet your body continues to signal danger. Learning to trust your instincts whilst also teaching your nervous system to recognise actual safety is one of the most complex parts of healing.

Recovery means slowly, patiently showing your body that not every raised voice is your mother's rage, not every moment of quiet is loaded with threat, not every neutral expression carries criticism. It's learning to breathe through the false alarms whilst honouring the wisdom of a system that kept you alive when you needed it most.

Your hypervigilance isn't broken, it's a testament to your resilience. Now it's learning that the war is over, even if it takes time to believe peace can last. 

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