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How Modern Life Hijacks Your Nervous System, Leaving You Unfit for Love, Family, and Building Anything That Lasts
The previous generation liked to say that they wanted to have kids so that they would have someone to look after them.
Fast forward a few decades, and a collapsing birth rate, waning fertility and an increasing number of burnt out adults who are opting out of relationships and having kids entirely, is exactly what happens when this goes too far.
Emotional Regression & The Eternal Childhood of The Narcissistic Mother
Emotional regression is not a consequence of neglect or abuse; rather, it can occur onward of adolescence and is an unconscious emotional choice that the narcissist makes.
This happens because while seeking validation and approval, they discover that not only is acting like a child very effective on people to get them what they want, but society also rewards them for it.
When we talk about emotional regression as regards a narcissist, we are more specifically referring to regressing to the emotional state of a non-verbal infant.
This is why you will find yourself being responsible for their emotional state; for example, if they are not happy, then that is not only your fault, but it’s also your responsibility to make them happy again.
It’s the same with the screaming baby and the screaming narcissist; you may have noticed that an emotionally addicted narcissist cannot effectively communicate to you what they want or what their needs are.
Your request will typically be met with a tantrum or a screaming fit.
This is because, in their emotionally regressed state to that of a six-month-old baby, they know that at their mental and emotional age, a child can only scream incoherently for what they want.
They are not at the age where they can put sentences together to talk about what they want or need.
This is why what you get if you ask them something tends to be disjointed ramblings at best, or nonsensical screaming and crying at worst.
Additionally, you will discover quite quickly that they are extremely irresponsible, and while I would agree that this is an interlocking cycle or gear that mirrors a characteristic of addiction, this is also a characteristic of the regressed infantile age that they have assumed.
Essentially, the mind is aware that, as a non-verbal infant, it is not old enough to be independent and must rely on everyone else for all of its needs.
Therefore, everything is the fault of everyone around the emotionally addicted narcissist because a child who can’t yet communicate isn’t old enough to be responsible for anything yet.
This is why you will find yourself playing the responsible adult to a narcissist, even when you are a kid yourself.
Below is a list of non-verbal infant behaviours, and how they translate into regressed human behaviours:
Rage/screaming = Indicating that they have needs
Emotional state = Dependent
Irresponsible = Not old enough to be independent
You didn’t know it, but your narcissistic parents wrecked your nervous system by keeping it in a permanent state of urgency.
This happened because when a grown adult behaves like a baby, the nervous system can’t tell the difference between that and an actual child.
Instead, it steps in and says, “Soothe, make it better, and put your needs last.”
The problem is that this shreds the nervous system and adds childhood trauma, because when you’re forced to take care of someone who won’t look after themselves to the extent that you have to put your own needs aside, it keeps your nervous system in a permanent state of emergency.
It’s like being stuck in a building where someone persistently sets off the fire alarm.
So when you’re finally eighteen and you’ve got the green light to go ahead and meet someone and start a family, you don’t know why, but you just… Can’t.
You didn’t know this way back when, but you’re not out there raising kids because you’re nervous system thinks you’ve already done it, and it was hell.
You feel burnt out because when you’re left to raise a “child” alone without support and the psycho-social tools to do it, and because you were only a kid yourself, it wrecks the nervous system by keeping you in a perpetual state of emergency.
Somewhere deep down, your inner child is asking when they will be enough, and when it will be their turn to chill, have fun, and be loved.
Instead, you had to deal with your parents’ screaming fits in the middle of the night, temper tantrums in the supermarket and their emotional state being your problem all of the time.
They were so busy hogging the emotional floor that you were never permitted to feel anything, let alone enjoy anything.
So by the time you reached adulthood, you were already post-family before you’d even started one.
It’s not surprising that you would feel burned out from intimacy, overexposed to neediness, and allergic to dependency because you never got to depend on anyone.
The damage isn’t just limited to young women and girls who have had to deal with this growing up; it also harms young men and boys who have also been forced to raise their mothers.
So when life finally says:
“It’s your turn now, fall in love, start a family, create a life.”
You go numb because you already did it, and it nearly killed you.
This is the real birth crisis, not low fertility, or too much feminism, and not even the new generation is at fault.
The real crisis is that millions of adults feel like they have already raised their child, and that child was their mother.
You might not know it, but your nervous system still carries the scars:
- How you tense your jaw from clenching through maternal meltdowns
- The insomnia that formed back when love had a curfew
- The disembodiment that comes from never being held, but always being the one doing the holding.
And so you froze.
You don’t want kids, but not because you’re selfish, but because you’ve already been a parent your whole life to people who called themselves adults.
But weren’t.
© Honor Payne