Why You Keep Inviting Chaos Into Your Life (Even If You Don’t Want To)

I like to think that I’m a relatively drama-free person. I guess we probably all do, right? Especially at this stage in my life — a grown-ass woman with a tween and a teen who have the drama thing on lock in our house — I try to be pretty proactive about protecting my peace. And yet, somehow, chaos seems to find me. Or could it be that I’m subconsciously seeking it out? On some level, do we all crave chaos without realizing it? Are some of us more likely than others to find ourselves stuck in a chaos loop?

If this sounds familiar, well, you’re clearly not alone. Many of us claim to crave stability, and yet we can’t seem to stop inviting chaos in. So, why is it that just when life finally starts to feel calm, we wind up courting more drama? Maybe it’s picking a fight with your partner or overpacking your calendar, but it all ends up in the same place: making you feel like life is spinning out of control.

According to therapists, it isn’t that we secretly love stress. In reality, the pull toward chaos is often deeply ingrained in our nervous system and shaped by early experiences. If you grew up in an unpredictable household, or if intensity was tangled up with love and attention, calm may feel strangely unsafe. (Oof, that tracks.) For better or worse, the nervous system learns to interpret chaos as familiar — and what’s familiar often feels like home.

Fortunately, experts say it’s absolutely possible to break the cycle. But first, we need to do a bit of introspection and really unpack why it is that we keep getting reeled back in by chaos.

How Trauma and Upbringing Wire Us for Chaos

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that trauma from the past has a way of wandering into your present, especially when you haven’t healed from it.

“If you grew up in a household where love and conflict were intertwined, your nervous system may unconsciously equate intensity and drama with intimacy and love. This can make you subconsciously recreate or seek out turbulence in adult relationships or work environments because it feels familiar — even though it’s draining,” Alyssa Kushner, LCSW, licensed trauma therapist and owner of AK Psychotherapy, tells Scary Mommy, adding, “There can be something even addictive about it, as unhealthy as it may sound. It may be the very thing you crave because your nervous system is wired for cortisol and stress.”

In other words, familiarity feels safer than calm. So, if your childhood was chaotic (hi, hello, it’s me), your nervous system learns that as “normal.”

Says Kushner, “The nervous system adapts to early experiences, and if someone grew up in unpredictable or chaotic environments, their baseline of ‘normal’ may be rooted in stress and instability. The brain can misinterpret calm as ‘boring’ or even threatening, which is why chaos often feels magnetic and almost safe, even if you think it’s the opposite. Slowing down and being in stillness may even scare you because you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop and ready to brace for more drama.”

“The nervous system adapts to early experiences, and if someone grew up in unpredictable or chaotic environments, their baseline of ‘normal’ may be rooted in stress and instability.” — Alyssa Kushner, trauma therapist

Other Reasons We Gravitate Toward Chaos

Trauma isn’t the only root cause of chaos-seeking. Another major factor? Hustle culture. The grind. Societal expectation to do more and be more, particularly if you’re a mom.

“The pressure to be productive and efficient that so many people, especially in the U.S., feel these days causes them to pack their schedules so that there is no margin for error. That means any downtime, even for eating or travel (which does not, as I explain to many patients, count as downtime), throws your whole day into chaos,” explains Jordan Conrad, founder and clinical director at Lexington Park Psychotherapy.

He continues, “So, at least some of the problem is not that people are looking for chaotic situations, but that their desire to do everything — to go on trips and finish that proposal and apply for that new job and be a good parent and do that self-care regimen everyone is talking about and make food and talk to friends and be there for family and clean up and call your insurance and figure out what is going wrong with your phone plan — is making things chaotic.”

And then there’s the fact that chaos often ultimately results in good feelings. When life feels stagnant, says Conrad, drama and urgency can make us feel important, needed, or alive.

“The urgency of chaotic situations sharpens people’s focus to a single point and gives the moment clear purpose and direction,” says Conrad. And while she says it’s true that, for many, chaotic situations do involve emotional flooding — i.e., feeling overwhelmed and out of control due to stress or trauma — for many others, these extreme experiences are where life’s feel-good moments happen.

“Actually, we are all familiar with that feeling because it happens in movies and TV all the time. Running to the airport to tell someone you love them before they get on a flight? Chaos. Being totally unprepared for the presentation in front of the board of directors and somehow pulling it off? Chaos. Think of Bridesmaids or Love Actually or 10 Things I Hate About You: all chaos. It can be in those moments that people feel really loved.”

Breaking Free From the Chaos Cycle

OK, but if you’ve had enough of the less desirable side effects that can come from chaos, how do you get off this *not-so-merry*-go-round? Kushner and Conrad both agree that the first step is awareness… and it’s often a tricky one.

“It is very difficult to see if you are the chaos-maker in your own life because, for most people, their chaos doesn’t feel elective or abnormal; it feels necessary and important,” Conrad tells us. “People with dysregulated emotions often generate chaotic moments and have no idea how they got that way.”

An excellent example of emotionally dysregulated people who constantly create chaos and don’t know why? Kids! And, obviously, it’s all part of the learning process for kids, but for adults, it can wreak havoc in their lives. This is where both experts point to therapy for helping you to build awareness and start regulating your emotions in real-time.

“People with dysregulated emotions often generate chaotic moments and have no idea how they got that way.” — Jordan Conrad, psychotherapist

Kushner also recommends other means of nervous system regulation, such as grounding or breathwork, redefining safety, connecting with nature, and experimenting with micro moments of stillness: “Allow yourself to sit with quiet moments, even if they feel uncomfortable at first, to retrain your body and mind to accept calm as safe. Don’t try and start at 100 with a huge meditation practice that’ll trigger your nervous system. Do five minutes at a time and build up.”

Sometimes, the simplest tools can be the most effective, says Conrad.

“People sometimes laugh at this, but schedule! People who don’t schedule their tasks don’t realize that they are making each thing that comes up an emergency. If you aren’t scheduling lunch in your day, then you are just hoping that there will be enough time for it,” he explains. “And schedule realistically. Figure out how many things you need to get done in a day, and subtract one or two.”

The Bottom Line

Do you hear that? We’re not broken. Our brains and our bodies have just been doing their best to protect us with the tools they’ve had. The sooner we realize (and accept) that, the sooner we can move past constant turbulence toward the peace we really do crave.