Do you ever wonder if you're addicted to chaos? The thrill of the game. The adrenaline rush. You crave feelings of the unknown. You wonder what's going to happen next. You're addicted to chasing the high. Your mind doesn't know this yet but you're addicted to chaos or at least the idea of chaos.
Imagine this for a minute, you're running late for work, you're anxious, sweating, and hoping no one notices you when you walk into work with a Starbucks in your hand after being 15 minutes late. You rush to check your emails, heart racing, only to find out that you're late for another meeting. You grab a snack from the break room and head into your first meeting to find out that you're assigned to more work. You find yourself with the impulse to yell. You find yourself frantically pacing back and forth in your office trying to figure out how you're going to manage everything. Your personal life is up in flames. You find yourself stressed out and disengaged with life. You wonder what to do next and here you are reading this blog. Addicted to chaos can be tricky to navigate so here we go...
When trauma is not properly addressed it is left to drive our narratives and shape our behaviors. Your brain learns to crave the feelings associated with the trauma response. This is the loop of emotional addiction. When our nervous system is dysregulated, our fight, flight, or freeze response becomes automatically triggered. You may want to fight back and argue with your boss. You may want to isolate and flee from the situation. Or, you may freeze and say nothing. Either way you go, you are trapped in a cycle of emotions. After experiencing trauma, you maybe more sensitive to your environment, which will then activate the body's stress response. When you are always triggered or living in the past with trauma, your mind and body become reliant on the strong physical response that comes with it. In other words, the brain learns to crave the feelings associated with the trauma response. You spend your day in this constant loop of emotional addiction. You may get a spike of emotions when you get to vent to a co-worker about your day. Your emotional activation continues when you watch a thrilling show that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Our body learns to engage in patterns like these to feel like your familiar self. This familiar self is dysregulated.
To get out of this loop of emotional addiction, it may feel daunting to do because the rush feels so good. You are used to operating from a highly charged baseline. You maybe addicted to the cycle of unpredictability and the powerful biochemical response you get from it. It might be the only time you actually feel anything at all. You now need to seek out the emotional hit but in a healthier way. It's time to regulate your nervous system.
There are a variety of grounding techniques that you can do. I recommend that you try a form of yoga or meditation first. There will be more information on grounding techniques in the upcoming blogs so hang on. If you don't know where to being or how to use these practices, please reach out and we can find a coping strategy that works best for you. I would be happy to customize a right coping method for you.
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