I read a good answer on Quora to the question 'Why does an
Alice narcissist act like nothing has happened?'
Why does a narcissist act like nothing happened? - Quora
'It all boils down to piss-poor emotional memory. The parts of their brains that are responsible for emotional memory are damaged. This damage shows up very clearly in a brain scan:
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See those empty circles in the mesotemporal lobes? That’s where emotional memory is stored, and people who suffer from Cluster B personality disorders just can’t do it. They are impaired in their ability to remember what previous experiences felt like. This is why they have trouble learning from their mistakes, and it’s also why each and every time they fall in love, they think that they have found “the one” who will save them. They haven’t, of course, but they just can’t remember being so-in-love before in their lives, so they tend to act on that feeling, and their maladaptive relationship pattern continues.
The advantage that this weakness in emotional memory gives them is that they can “get over” emotional pain quickly and easily—certainly much faster and easier than a neurotypical person can. Like all of us, they project. They assume that their victims can and do “get over” emotional pain as quickly and as easily as they do. So … they act like nothing happened. They assume that you just “got over it,” whatever it was, just like they did. They can not grasp the idea that emotional injury can have long-lasting or permanent effects on a neurotypical person. They assume that, like them, you can get over anything. To them, nothing happened, and that’s because they struggle to recall what it felt like.
If you object to their belief that everything is copacetic between you, you will hear the chorus of, “Why can’t you just forget about that?,” and “Why are you always bringing up the past?,” and “You’re too sensitive.,” and all the other unempathetic and unsympathetic attacks that are bound to come your way when you are dealing with a person who lacks both empathy and sympathy. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You are simply dealing with a person whose emotional memory is severely impaired.