You think your home is a safe space, and one that will protect you. If you’re living with a narcissist, or you have brought your trauma to a new place to live, expect it to feel anything but warm.
Expect it to be anything from smooth sailing.
Trauma hides everywhere, and it’s easy to not spot it even though it’s glaring you in the face. You need to be able to notice it in the ordinary, so these 5 strange signs of narcissistic abuse trauma is hiding in your home is the best place to start.
1Sitting with your back to the door is impossible
It feels completely wrong to leave yourself so vulnerable, doesn’t it? You try to rearrange the couch so that you are sitting at a different angle. You need that slight view, even if it means you are a little uncomfortable sitting like it.
I totally get why you’d want to make it so that your back wasn’t against the door. It screams of a weakness that you probably wish you could control in some way, and that’s how people usually do that.
Your nervous system is asking you to look after it, and making sure you give it a little bit of kindness is how it feels it’s coping living with a narcissist.
This is you learning to watch. You should never have had to learn it, but there you are, learning all the ways to take care of and protect yourself.
So you take the corner seat. You take the spot that feels safest because it’s all you can do to just be secure in those moments.
Knowing full well how much a mood can change, this was your way of trying to keep on top of that inconsistency.
2You never fully unpack
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Unpacking anything, whether it’s how you feel or things, means what happens next feels more permanent. You have feelings, you say what’s on your mind and unpack them, and they’re suddenly all out there, with no way of taking them back.
Unpacking in your house is the same kind of thing: You don’t want it to seem as though there’s no way out, and so you always leave everything slightly ready for you to bolt if you need to.
But why would you need to bolt? What made it so that you would feel the need to get out at a moment’s notice?
You leave your clothes all on a chair instead of fitting them into a wardrobe. You make sure there are boxes at arm’s length in case everything needs to be thrown back in there.
You never feel settled. You never feel home. You never feel as though you’re finished worrying.
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When unpacking feels dangerous, it can make the permanence of it feel just as risky, too.
So you think to yourself, “If I let myself relax and it all goes wrong, I will only have to pack it all up again anyway, so it may as well all stay in the case it came in.”
I promise you that as much as you think these thoughts, you won’t want to think, or believe, them. However, these are the cards you’re dealt with when you have the trauma of narcissistic abuse hanging over you.
You were never lazy for half packing and half unpacking; you were simply ready to run whenever you needed to.
That’s the saddest part of all, isn’t it? The idea that you never really quite know home.
3Cleaning is either extreme or non-existent
You're vile. Look at the state of this place. You disgust me. How can you live like this?
You frantically tidy, ashamed that you let the place get as messy as the narcissist says it is.
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I can't even leave a towel in the wrong place without you biting my head off for it. Why are you so obsessed with having the perfect home? Just let the house be lived in.
You can't do anything right, and even if you do have the energy after all their abuse to tidy the house, you get ratted out for that, too.
Your energy is always noted as a problem, whether you give your all or have nothing.
It's the same response though, isn't it? It doesn't matter what you do or how you react, you're going to be criticized for it.
That’s exactly why the narcissist does this; to make you feel like whatever you do is wrong. The enemy is made out to be your inefficiency rather than the fact that they just love to make sure that no matter what you do, it’ll never be right in their eyes.
You try to meet them so you can be validated. You either clean, or hold back because you’re told you’re obsessed with perfection; and neither pleases the narcissist.
They know right there that they’ve got you.
You shouldn’t have to carry that weight or trauma with you, and nobody should be making you feel that emotionally heavy in your own home.
4Certain sounds make you flinch
I know you’ll feel this one deeply if you’ve ever been stuck in the throes of narcissistic abuse.
Sounds that remind you of being right there will understandably trigger you, and that can be anything from:
A car pulling up in the driveway. Keys going into the lock. The phone ringing. Cupboards opening and closing. A door slamming. Footsteps.
You listen to each one, trying to gauge whether or not there is anger behind each one. Did the door slam a little heavier than usual? Is the car on the drive pulling in with a screech?
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You don’t want this to be your life, but it is. You are always on the lookout for an incoming storm, and you constantly brace yourself for what comes next.
You want to be prepared, but preparing yourself feels as though you’re never really living for the good moments, because the bad ones are always in the forefront of your mind.
If it means being prepared, you’re willing to make that happen, as the alternative is to live with knots in your chest as the narcissist’s mood takes you by unwelcome surprise yet again.
This is called survival.
Nobody should be living that way.
5Some rooms in particular feel like they’re off limits
Doesn’t that seem strange to you? If it doesn’t, that’s because you know what it’s like to live with a narcissist.
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The bedroom feels full of dread, where you should be resting in it. The kitchen feels as though it carries so much pain of the past because it’d be where the narcissist liked to throw cups and plates around to intimidate you.
There may be a single spot in the house that holds a very bad memory that you just avoid going to a lot of the time, and I wouldn’t blame you.
What are you doing in here? Don’t mess my stuff up. Leave it as you found it. I know what you’re like; going through everything.
You learned to make sure that space was given, even though you didn’t really need to do it in the first place.
Noticing that after abuse means that you are still living with that trauma, and finding it a heavy part of everyday life.
