I grew up in a house where calm didn’t mean safety. When I think about it now, I can still picture myself sitting in a corner pretending everything was fine while my body was doing something completely different. I didn’t know what stress felt like back then. I only knew how to stay still, stay helpful, stay quiet.
My mother would praise me in front of people for how composed I was. “She never gets angry,” she’d say, like it was a trophy. I used to stand there wondering if anyone could feel the pressure in my chest or the way my stomach twisted during arguments. They saw calm. I felt chaos. Living with a narcissistic parent teaches you to hide your pain so well that even you forget it’s there.
By sixteen, that mask was basically my identity. My dad died on the day my 10th-grade result came. I remember trying to cry without sound. People were calling me brave, but I wasn’t. I was shocked, confused, and already used to swallowing my emotions. While everyone stared at his body, my brain raced through rent, bills, food, survival. Later, I realised standing there quietly was freeze.
That kind of calm destroys you from the inside long before you realise something is wrong.
The kind of stress that hides inside your body
Everyone recognises loud stress, the pacing, the crying, the visible panic. Hidden stress is different. It’s silent. It’s numb. It feels like you’re fine while your body slowly burns out.
When you grow up in a house where emotions explode without warning, your limbic system learns to protect you by shutting down your own emotions. The amygdala becomes sensitive to every tone change, every movement, every shift in atmosphere. Cortisol stays in your bloodstream even when nothing is happening. Your breathing gets shallow. Your digestion changes. Your heart rate becomes unpredictable.
This doesn’t look like stress. It shows up as maturity, as strength, as the quiet kid who never reacts, but underneath all of it, the nervous system is stuck in survival.
Humans are built to experience short bursts of stress. Every organism resets after a threat. But if the threat never ends, the reset never comes. Your body keeps preparing for danger long after the danger is gone.
Living like this tricks you into thinking you’re calm, but you’re actually disconnected from your emotional world.
The personal cost of pretending you’re okay
I used to get this intense squeezing in my arms, like someone was pressing them hard. One time it got so bad I ended up in the ER getting an ECG. And that wasn’t the only one, I’ve had multiple ECGs in my life. Doctors always told me nothing was wrong.
But something was wrong. My body was talking in a language I didn’t know how to understand.
The outside version of me seemed fine. But inside, every system was overworking. Freeze mode looks peaceful, but the body is working twice as hard to keep you detached from danger.
When you grow up with a narcissistic parent, you learn to adjust. You learn to stay quiet so you don’t become the target. You make your needs small. You make your presence small. You make your voice soft. The body gets used to not expressing anything, so it expresses everything physically.
It’s strange how people admire a child who doesn’t cause trouble. They never realise that child isn’t peaceful, they’re terrified.
Science explains hidden stress better than anything
When emotions are suppressed for too long, the brain adapts. The limbic system fires differently. The autonomic nervous system stops shifting smoothly between alertness and rest.
Your sympathetic system gets stuck in a half-on position. Not enough to panic, not enough to rest. Just a constant, low-level alarm.
This affects:
- your heart rate variability,
- your sleep quality,
- your digestion,
- your ability to feel emotions,
- and your immune system.
Cortisol becomes a background chemical. Your vagus nerve loses its tone. Your muscles remain tight without you noticing.
Chronic freeze is so subtle that you only realise what was happening when the body finally relaxes.
The everyday signs most people ignore
You can see hidden stress in small moments. Like when someone walks into the room and your shoulders tense before your mind even registers it. Or how your breath gets shallow when you hear footsteps behind you even if you’re at home. Or the way you force a smile during conversations you don’t have the energy for. Or that tiny pause your body takes before answering anything, as if checking the danger level first.
Freeze mode makes you feel calm on the outside while your body keeps collecting stress.
I remember laughing at things that weren’t funny because I didn’t know how else to express discomfort. I didn’t see it as stress. I thought I was easygoing. But I wasn’t. I was disconnected.
The turning point: science met surrender
When I started learning neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, and trauma biology, so much made sense. I finally understood my reactions. I learned how long-term stress changes brain waves, how it reshapes neural pathways, how it weakens immunity.
Around this time, I also discovered Dr Joe Dispenza’s work. The deep meditations, the research. I wasn’t doing this work for aesthetics. I was doing it because my life depended on it.
There were nights I felt nothing emotionally, only heaviness. But I kept meditating even when the numbness felt endless. I wasn’t seeking only peace. I was seeking myself.
Slowly, I started noticing changes.
What healing hidden stress looked like in my body
I used to hold so much tension in my shoulders that I thought it was normal. Months into inner work, I suddenly realised my shoulders were actually resting. Not lifted. Not contracted. Resting.
My body wasn’t preparing for danger anymore.
I also went through a grieving period for my dad years later because I couldn’t process anything when he actually died. Feeling that grief was strangely healing.. It freed me.
Healing doesn’t look dramatic. It shows up in tiny ways:
- deeper breaths,
- softer reactions,
- fewer physical symptoms,
- more clarity in the mind,
- and a body that finally feels like home.
How you can start rewiring hidden stress
Every nervous system can learn safety again. Not perfectly, not instantly, but slowly.
Here are gentle steps you can use:
- Notice what your body feels like when you’re “calm.” Many people mistake freeze for calm.
- Watch your micro-reactions. Your stomach, your chest, your shoulders, they tell the truth.
- Give your body tiny doses of safety. A slow breath. A hand on your chest. A quiet moment.
- Label the freeze response when it happens. It helps the brain recognise patterns.
- Create small boundaries. Even saying “Let me check and get back to you” is enough.
- Talk to yourself kindly. Your inner voice needs warmth.
These aren’t spiritual tricks. They are biological resets.
You’re not meant to live like a statue
Growing up in chaos made you think calm meant silence. But real calm is different. It feels warm. It feels steady. It feels like breath moving easily.
You deserve a kind of peace that doesn’t require acting, the kind where your body can relax without checking the room first. You deserve emotional space that feels steady instead of threatening. A life where shrinking yourself isn’t the price of staying safe is the one you were meant to have.
Final thoughts
I want you to know that nothing about your reactions makes you weak. You adapted the only way you could. Hidden stress isn’t something you chose. It was something your body created to help you survive.
If this blog feels like it mirrors parts of your story, and you want to go deeper into this work, you can book a 1:1 session through my homepage. You can join my newsletter for weekly healing notes. And if you use Threads, I’m there every day sharing the pieces of my journey that don’t always make it into long blogs.
We’re learning our bodies again. We’re learning safety again. And you don’t have to learn it alone.
