The Psychology of your 20s - 306. Are we addicted to chaos?

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Do you feel as though you’re living in a constant whirlwind of deadlines, drama, and endless tasks, yet secretly feel a thrill from the chaos? This episode unpacks the question, ‘are we addicted to chaos?’ and why our brains might actually be drawn to this tumultuous state. We dive into the neurochemical rewards that hook us, how this plays out in our relationships and careers, and the hidden costs of living in perpetual overwhelm. We look at the deeper psychological roots and learn actionable steps to cultivate intentional calm amidst life's inevitable pressures. Things we discuss:• Why dopamine and adrenaline make chaos feel rewarding• The draw of novelty, intensity, and seeking stimulation• How chaos manifests in our lives• The hidden costs of chronic chaos• Psychological roots of our addiction to chaos• Actionable strategies to reclaim calm and redefine productivity in your twenties If your life feels like a constant fire drill, or you suspect you secretly thrive on the last-minute rush, this episode is for you. Listen to my NEW PODCAST, Mantra: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Ckds0BoJDDpODInN9cWcc?si=b6ad5d555c1940e0  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbegFollow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcastFor business: [e-mail]  The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO. percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me.

I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen's, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through. the same thing. Greg Alesspian and Michael Ranjini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces

consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of your 20s. Have you ever looked at your life or maybe the life of other people around you and thought, is it always going to be this busy? Is it always going to be this chaotic? Do we ever get a brick? Or is it just this constant drum in the back of your head

of drama, of overwhelm, of things to do? You're always on the go. You're always reacting. Always just a little bit on. Maybe, just maybe, there is also a part of you that thrives on it, that feels most alive, shall we say, when the stakes are really, really high, when the deadline is tomorrow, when the relationship is on the brink. I know I've definitely had those moments. What we're talking about today is chaos, the nature of chaos, the kind that isn't accidental, but sometimes almost invited, the kind that makes you wonder, am I addicted to this? Am I the problem? Is the reason all my friendships have failed? The jobs didn't work out. I feel behind. I. I feel I feel on edge, is that maybe my tolerance for chaos and the fact that I always feel like

I need to crash out or explode my life for it to be entertaining. Now, I don't mean when I say this that we are all out here actively trying to sabotage our lives and cause drama. Most of us are, I think, consciously striving for peace and stability. But if we're honest, sometimes unconsciously, we do our best in the state. urgency, that hum of drama, that staticness feels normal, even exhilarating. How do we break that habit? How do we break the curse of feeling addicted to chaos and feel comfortable in stillness and comfortable in peace? This is something that I've been thinking about a lot, especially after

receiving a few messages from you all who basically shared the same sentiment. How can I tell if I'm the problem, how can I break out of this pattern? So today we are diving headfirst into the question, are we addicted to chaos? We are going to investigate why we might inadvertently be drawn to situations that are fraught with tension and that have a sense of urgency. We're going to look at how this plays out in our relationships, why we may crave excitement and anxiety over safety in our romantic relationships, our personal lives, our careers, and we're going to get into the often hidden deeper reasons why we might cling to this tumultuous state or might unconsciously sabotage our efforts for peace. And crucially, what do we do about it? What are the small mental shifts

that we need to take to embrace stillness, to embrace the discomfort of standing still, without feeling like our lives aren't moving in the correct direction and so much more. So without further ado, let's explore whether deep down we are addicted to chaos and what to do about it. Okay, let's cut straight to the chase. Why does chaos, or rather the resolution of chaos, sometimes feel so freaking good? What's really happening here is a bit of a neurochemical roller coaster that in subtle ways makes us addicted to urgency, not because of how good it feels in the moment, but because of how good

we feel afterwards. When you're facing a crisis, such as a looming deadline or relationship argument or an unexpected problem, your body kicks into high gear. This is your sympathetic nervous system taking over initiating the very famous fight or flight response. As a response to that, your brain is going to release adrenaline. It's going to release cortisol, the primary stress hormones, your heart rate goes up, your senses sharpened, you have this burst of energy. This is obviously used as a primal survival mechanism. It's meant to be designed. Well, it is designed to help us quickly react to danger. But here's the kicker. When you resolve that crisis when you escape the danger, when you survive, when you meet the deadline, when you clear your inbox,

there's a drop in those stress hormones. And often, as a response, your brain releases dopamine, it releases DMT and that feeling of relief is what we're actually after is what we actually crave. Your brain being the incredibly efficient learning machine that it is actually starts to associate this crisis resolution dopamine hit cycle with reward rather than with the stress and the anxiety and the panic that came before. So the chaos itself is uncomfortable, but the payoff of getting through it, is so rewarding that that's actually the thing we start to chase. If it feels counterintuitive, it really is. It's not just that we want stress, we get used to the reward.

The same way that people love scary movies, love endurance sports, all those kinds of things. They reason they love them is because of the secondary emotion and the secondary reaction that comes with living through them. This can be explained by principles of operant conditioning, where a behavior, so engaging with or creating chaos is reinforced by a positive outcome, the dopamine rush of resolution, so that we continue to engage in it to get the reward. Of course, in this situation, some of the wires have kind of been crossed, but regardless, this underlying dopinogenic principle is why this practice and these patterns of behavior do feel so addictive. Beyond the pure neurochemistry,

there is also, of course, a psychological draw to novelty and intensity. Our brains are wired, hard wire to pay attention to new, surprising, intense stimuli. In fact, one of my favorite studies ever conducted actually found that having more novel and new experiences actually creates the illusion of more time in our days and therefore our lives. So our brain is really looking for that newness. Calm, consistent, predictable routines, whilst they're healthy, They don't necessarily provide the same kind of immediate sensory and emotional stimulation or sense of expansiveness compared to this constant flux and unpredictability. And this is the deeper problem is that we start to equate chaos to this sense of being alive and truly experiencing things.

It's the opposite of boredom. And for many of us, especially in our 20s, where we are constantly seeking out new experiences, we are pushing boundaries. we don't want to miss out on anything critical and fun and exciting. Avoiding boredom, avoiding plainness can be a powerful motivator. Research on sensation-seeking, which is this trait where we really seek out newness and novelty, shows that individuals with higher needs for varied, novel, and complex sensations might actually unconsciously gravitate towards more chaotic and stimulating environments. So in these studies, they were the ones who ran towards the fire, essentially.

they were the ones who got involved in the drama. And on this point of novelty and intensity, it is also worth touching on ADHD. For individuals with ADHD, there is a known difference in how your brain processes and regulates dopamine. And also, it's counterpart noraphynephrine, which you need dopamine in order to release and for your brain to understand. The brains of people with ADHD have an imbalance of dopamine. Specifically, notably, normally lower levels of dopamine in certain brain regions, but also there is research that's beginning to support that they also have fewer dopamine receptors and more of this protein that actually cleans up dopamine on the synapse,

meaning that dopamine messages will remain available on your brain for less time. So the happiness fades quicker. All of this basically means that they can really struggle with maintaining motivation, because dopamine is not just the happy chemical, it is responsible for motivation. It's responsible for feeling aligned with something, wanting to do something. It also means that their threshold for the positive feelings is a lot higher. So they have to experience more to get to a point of enjoyment or exhilaration compared to someone who doesn't have this a regulation.

So this can lead to the drive for novelty and high stimulation as the brain seeks to achieve optimal arousal and a consistent flow of dopamine because of how the system may not be working. So if you have ADHD, for those of you with ADHD, constant demands, shifting priorities, the rush of last minute deadlines, that actually can feel pretty safe for you. That actually can feel quite normal. It can make you feel focused. It can make you feel engaged, even productive in a way that calmer, more predictable environments don't. And it's not that ADHD causes an addiction to chaos. It's that the underlying

neurological differences can make chaotic environments feel more engaging or even feel more comfortable, feel more right for some individuals, making it harder for them to step away from this intensity. So it's very important to understand this distinction between our addiction to chaos as a learned habit versus as a symptom of a brain that is wired just a little bit differently. However, for those addicted to chaos as a learned habit, many perceive there to be positive side effects of chaos, and that acts as the primary hook for this pattern. People who thrive in these environments, they often are incredibly effective in a crisis. They think quickly on their feet.

They can problem solve under immense pressure. they get things done when others might freeze. So it does feel like an asset. You do feel quite competent. You can go where no one else can go. You can do things that other people might not be able to do. And so in a period where we're forming our identity and our self-concept, the fact that we are good at doing this at putting out fires can feel quite validating and powerful. There's a certain thrill in being praised for this last-minute performance or for constantly proving people that you can overcome a challenge. Let's also not forget a crucial element to this, which is perceived control. Humans want to be in control. We want to feel like we

matter. We want to feel like we can create change. We can do things. We can manage our environment that we have a say. Whilst chaos might seem like the opposite of control, sometimes by creating it artificially or deliberately, we reclaim a sense of agency because we create just enough chaos that we can feel in charge. This can be particularly appealing if you feel like you lack control in other areas of your life. So if your career progression is slow or major life decisions feel out of your hands, then the manageable chaos of a relationship or of going out all the time or of crashing out on the weekends or doing like insane stuff can almost feel productive. It can feel exhilarating. It can feel like you have something to do. The problems emerge when controlled care.

chaos becomes uncontrolled, unmanageable, and maladaptive. Hopefully I've made this clear that this isn't about some grand, conscious plan to live in constant turmoil and we like throwing things up in the air and seeing where they land. It's actually our brain's quest for reward. It's our brain's quest for stimulation. It's our brain's quest for competence, self-efficacy, to feel like we can manage the problems thrown to us. Okay, we're going to take a short break, but when we return, let's talk about some of the ways this manifests in our lives,

why you may end up regretting decisions made in the heat of the moment, and most importantly, how to actually crave peace, stillness, stability over the comfort of urgency. So stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts,

and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of, of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's T-W-O-Persent on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick you here. unpack what went down and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line.

We also have AIDS on the table right now, so. Then you're finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black. black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Keer Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a

decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing. We get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it and we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kea,

games is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free Our Heart Radio app, search Learn the Hardway, and listen now. Let's get real about how this plays out in the daily fabric of our lives, especially for us in our 20s. Once you start looking for it, you'll see that chaos isn't just about external events. It's a pattern of thinking and a pattern of behavior that slowly weaves its way into everything. Specifically, the thing that's closest in orbit to us, the thing that often matters more than anything, our relationships, and it manifests in relationship drama. We've all seen it. We've all experienced it. Maybe we've even unconsciously participated

in it. The breaking up, getting back together, the explosive fights, ignoring someone when you know, it's not healthy, the two and throwing, like the back and forth. For some, A relationship feels boring or stale without a certain level of intensity. This can be fueled by that neurochemical roller coaster, of course, that we just discussed. But for other people, it can also be that calm relationships feel uncomfortable and feel boring. If you are used to unhealthy love, sometimes healthy love can be equally, if not more, challenging because you have to adapt to a new way of communicating, a new way of problem solving, and your love isn't constantly being proven through the resolution of conflict. So you have to

create that conflict to feel the same excitement or anxiety that you're used to. Individuals with an insecure attachment style, of course, are more drawn to this, see this happening more often and might unconsciously, unconsciously gravitate towards drama. because it mirrors familiar patterns of attention and connection from earlier life, from your childhood, even if those patterns, you know they are unhealthy. There's another phenomenon attached to this, something that I actually talked about in my book quite a lot. It's called repetition compulsion. Repetition compulsion is a psychological pattern whereby we unconsciously recreate familiar emotional

experiences from our past, often ones that are chaotic or painful, in an attempt to gain control or resolution, in an attempt to gain mastery, to break the internal cycle. In relationships, of course, this looks like gravitating towards partners who bring up drama, who bring up instability, not because we want to suffer, but because it mirrors a very comfortable emotional landscape. And we say to ourselves, if I can make it out this time, if I can fix this, If I can bring this under my control, if we can make it work, well, then that means that in all these other situations it wasn't my fault. In all these other situations, it wasn't me. It can be this unconscious effort to get it right this time to finally receive the love, validation, stability that we were denied before.

The irony, of course, being that instead of healing, we end up stuck in cycles that actually repeat and deep in the original wound. So we pick fights, we go hot and cold, we even think about doing things like flirting with someone else or cheating on our partner. It's a way to feel seen. It's a way to get attention because attention feels like love. It's a way to what we think is build intimacy through conflict because we think that intimacy is born from volatility. This really connects to this very interesting concept called the drama triangle.

It's a concept from something called transactional analysis, which is a psychological model essentially developed to describe destructive relationship patterns. And how it goes is that the triangle outlines three roles, three roles that people unconsciously adopt in conflict. The victim, who feels powerless and seeks rescue, the rescuer who tries to fix others and fix their problems, and the persecutor who criticizes or controls to feel superior. These roles are fluid and people often shift between them within the same interaction. A chaos addict, though, might constantly find themselves in one of these roles, perpetuating drama.

The average person hopefully isn't in the triangle at all. But if you're addicted to chaos, you may find yourself creating situations where you need to be rescued. You may find yourself in situations where you are allowed to rescue someone else, where you get to be the problem solver. You may find yourself stirring the problem. hot. It is a way of being constantly engaged, constantly relevant, even if the engagement comes from negative interactions. There is, of course, a cost to this. Conflict resolution might create a big dopamine hit. It might make you feel like you've won and you've pushed

through some issue, but perpetual drama will erode trust in intimacy, 100% of the time. Partners and friends, they love you, they care about you, they also hopefully care about themselves and may get tired of that emotional roller coaster. They might also feel like they're being used as, I guess, props in your personal drama. They're exhausted. They're in a constant state of crisis themselves. Research on relationship dynamics consistently shows that stable, secure relationships, they thrive on predictability, they thrive on emotional safety, not constant upheaval. And genuine connection really does require that we are calm and regulated and that we can co-regulatory. yearly together. So if there's a constant urge to find chaos and to find drama, that's not

going to necessarily compute or fit. That's the consequence for relationships. An addiction to chaos will also obviously impact things like our career. This is massive for our 20s. We are often juggling multiple roles, immense pressure, a glorified need to seem busy. How many of us secretly thrive in that environment where there is a last minute deadline? You procrastinate, you let the pressure build, maybe because of perfectionism, then you pull out an all-nighter and you do something brilliant. This is called an urgency addiction. If you find that you can only really get stuff done at the last minute or under a crunch, it may be because you have become reliant on this adrenaline rush. You've become reliant on stress hormones to motivate you.

It does actually lead to a false sense of productivity because you feel busy. and you feel rushed and you feel exhilarated, even though you're not actually being necessarily efficient or productive. You're not strategically moving forward, but you are fueled by the thrill. This is a classic example of procrastination cycles being reinforced by the relief of completion, even if the overall process is inefficient and stressful. Research by psychologists who are studying chronic procrastination consistently shows that the short-term relief can overshadow the long-term costs.

And let's be real in a world that is praising hustle culture and praising the grind. It is easy to mistake exhaustion for effort and constant, very high level urgency and activity for actual progression. But what are you actually doing to your body? Business is such a status symbol. You're always over-scheduling. You never have downtime. You're jumping from one project to the next.

And so you may conflate being overwhelmed with being important, with being valuable. with being interesting. It's like a badge of honour. And I've done it. I've done it so many times. I was so guilty of this in university. People would want to hang out and I'd be like, oh no, I'm so busy.

I'm so busy. Like I've never been busier. I've just constantly got all these things on my plate. And it was this weird thing where eventually I had to ask myself, what do I have to prove? What do I have to prove to these people by allowing them to assume that I am, you know, I don't know, by allowing them to assume that I've constantly got things on, by letting them assume or believe that I am the busiest person in any room,

what am I trying to prove? I'm trying to prove that I'm important. I'm trying to prove that I can work hard. That's really what this is. The most obvious cost of this all is, of course, burnout. Constantly operating in a high stress, high adrenaline mode is unsustainable. Your body is designed for short bursts of stress. Not a stress marathon. Chronic stress of this kind will elevate cortisol levels that will create sleep

problems, a weakened immune system, you will get sick more easily, digestive issues, increased anxiety, even an increased risk of depression. You feel perpetually exhausted, you feel irritable, you feel disconnected. Even if you think you're okay, even if you think you haven't really had enough, you don't deserve to be burnt out, your body doesn't care if you feel like you deserve to be burnt out. If you're burnt out, you're burnt out. And you're going to feel terrible. There's no ignoring that. Your body will adapt for as long as possible and then it will collapse.

And as soon as you feel a little bit better, you might feel the instinct to push again and then you'll collapse. And can you see what kind of toll this takes on you? You're not a machine where we can go out and buy another part. I can't go out and buy a new battery for my body. I can't go out and buy a new system of. of organs that are going to sustain me if I keep putting them under such immense pressure that they collapse. You have to ask yourself, what is your love for chaos costing you in the long run? If you're in your 20s right now, it can feel like you could keep going forever. You can't.

One day, you will feel the toll and you'll look back and be like, why was I so busy? What was that all for? We also have to consider, my lovely listeners, whether it might, this whole thing might actually be a sophisticated form of avoidance and looking away from something deeper. Let's have that conversation for a second. The avoidance of stillness and introspection is massive for people in their 20s. We are often grappling with very big questions. Who am I? What do I want? Am I good enough? What is the meaning of all this? What is my future going to be like? These questions really do require quiet reflection and sometimes sitting with really uncomfortable existential feelings because that's how we figure out what we believe in and that's how we integrate hard thoughts,

hard things, hard truths into our life. If you're asking big questions like, what is the meaning of all this and you really don't have even a single answer and it's getting louder and louder and you don't know where to start? Chaos provides a brilliant, noisy distraction. Research on avoidance highlights how people often engage in these kinds of excessive harmful behaviours to escape unwanted internal experiences. Even if those behaviors are, of course, ultimately unhelpful, the negative consequence of living in chaos feels less significant than the negative consequence of internal chaos that is probably taking over. Because once we stop spinning and rushing, you might look around and be like, oh my God, look at this big pile of crap that I have to

deal with. This anxiety, this self-doubt, this loneliness, this unresolved trauma. This is so uncomfortable. What if I just run back into the fire? What if I just find another problem that takes priority? Then I won't have to think about it. Recognizing those deeper roots is the first step towards breaking free. Congratulations if you have done it. You're not a bad person for thriving in chaos. You're not a bad person for the things that you have done previously to avoid hard thoughts. But it is time that we shift away from this deeply ingrained pattern. Because you are meant to be present for life.

You are meant to want to strive towards things. You will realize that life does feel easier at a lower frequency. With that in mind, we are going to take a short break. But when we return, I have five tips, just five tips for you to master chaos in your life and turn your pursuit of irregularity and chaos into the pursuit of a regulated nervous system, internal harmony, inner peace, whatever you want to call it. Stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness,

fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%. That's T-W-O-Persent on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends,

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking.

What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack.

I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really?

Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Keer Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark.

Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it and we don't know when we've done enough because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross because you find it important to be a good person

while you hear on earth or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and

purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free Our Heart Radio app, search learn the hard way and listen now. Our goal here is not to become a Zen master suddenly overnight. Change never works that way. Our brains don't work that way. It takes time to build a habit, even longer to undo an impulse, like our attraction to chaos that has probably been around for some time. It is a worthwhile investment. What we're going to talk about is cultivating awareness, making some really conscious small choices and just gently, persistently rewiring those ingrained patterns. Here are a few actionable thoughts, things I really want you to consider and maybe even try this week, drawing on all the psychology that we've already talked about today.

Firstly, I need you to figure out your personal chaos triggers and what you're actually getting out of it. You might ask yourself the following questions. When do I feel most alive? During calm moments or in a crisis? Where did that come from? What situations or people consistently create drama or stress in my life? Does that stress actually leave me feeling good? Do I ever feel uncomfortable when things are going smoothly?

What do I do in those moments? or don't do in those moments that I should be doing. What role do I usually play in conflict? Am I the fixer, the victim, the instigator? Where do I sit in the triangle? What reward do I get from chaos? Is it attention, adrenaline control, distraction? What emotion do I avoid by staying busy, overwhelmed or in a crisis mode?

If peace felt like, felt safe and felt rewarding, what would my life actually look like? What would I be able to avoid? What do I need to change to get there? All of this is about mapping your specific chaos cycle and style. And once you do that, you will have a much clearer idea of what you're actually battling against. Next, and this is probably the toughest one, especially if you are wide for intensity, is that you have to try stillness as an alternative. I'm going to challenge you to ignore constant noise, constant stimulation. Don't just immediately put on music when you feel overwhelmed.

Don't just watch TV as you make dinner. Don't just go on your phone immediately after you have a bad thought. Don't try and find things that are chaotic to be interested in. Just give yourself tiny moments where you are allowed to just hold heavy emotion. in your hands almost when you're allowed to just experience them for a tiny pocket and then move on sit breathe your brain is going to scream at you for stimulation you will feel restless you maybe will feel anxious this is just your nervous system which is used to being on high alert reacting to an unfamiliar calm but persist even if it's just for five minutes because

that is training your brain it is endurance training for your mind five minutes might feel impossible do one minute today two minutes tomorrow 10 minutes 20 minutes you'll start to build a tolerance for stillness you might even dare i say it start to find that those profound insights that you have been avoiding actually are helpful you might actually like feeling peaceful it's basically like trying to teach your inner alarm system that not every quiet moment is a sign of impending doom and that actually a calm, peaceful, still, easygoing, low frequency life is incredibly fulfilling and fun. You know, going to the library and having a cup of tea and going to bed at 9pm, it's not all that bad. It's actually very, very fun. There's still room

for you to do like the high energy, high frequency things. But if you're finding that you're using them as a distraction, how can you bring in the alternatives every now and again? How can you provide evidence to yourself that the alternative isn't really as bad as you're thinking that it is? If you feel addicted to chaos as well, chances are that you might not have the strongest boundaries, either with others or with yourself. Chaos thrives where boundaries are permeable. So another element to this is about drawing clear lines in the sand and honouring your know. When someone asks you to do something, before just making space or before just permitting them to do it or getting you involved, ask yourself, do I actually want this? Is this actually going to make my day, my week, my life better?

When you go to gossip, when you go to engage in drama, when you go to start a fight, when you go to fill up your calendar, remember, you are what you consume, including the conversations, the social media content, the energy of others. You are what you choose to engage in and what is around you. Is that what you want to be? Is that a healthy energy source? If you constantly feel like your energy is off, if you constantly feel irritated, agitated, what are you saying yes to in life that is creating this, that is having a domino effect on your everyday mood and sense of self? What are you engaging in? What chaos are you allowing because you want to stay friends with people you shouldn't because you can't set boundaries with yourself because you can't turn away from what is taking from you.

Think of boundaries as your personal firewall against the constant influx of external chaos. They're not walls to push people away. They're basically like property lines that protect your precious energy, your time, your mental peace. It's a proactive step. Really getting to know what you do and don't enjoy and why you feel called to do the things you don't enjoy is incredibly important because you're sending a message to yourself that says,

My piece is my priority, even if sometimes peaceful, feels boring. As we've spoken about, a huge part of why chaos is so addictive as the amazing feeling, we get after the chaotic or stressful period is over. So we also need to create new pathways for dopamine hits, from proactive, preventative wins instead of waiting for a fire to put out to try and anticipate and address potential problems and feel relief then. So we're going to be breaking down our task into small and manageable steps. We're going to be celebrating each small completion. We are going to be planning our weeks. We are going to be feeling a sense of pride when we meal prep. When we do

things that make our life easier when you call yourself out, when you schedule your downtime first, then fill in the tasks. This shifts you from being a reactive, chaos-driven individual to a proactive, intentional one. It also allows us to tap into delayed gratification, which is probably the most useful concept in this episode. It's also probably something that you are missing. When we're chasing urgency, we often live in a short-term gratification loop. There is an issue, resolution is delayed till the last moment, meaning we get a. instant gratification.

But turning your sights to something that will take you longer, like an assignment or a project that you start early and work on slowly, or like rewiring your communication approach to foster a healthy relationship gives you a stronger, more powerful sense of accomplishment after the fact than if you are just tapping into these short wins. It's so, so, so much more rewarding. It's like choosing the healthy option over the junk food. Instant gratification, junk food, not always. that bad, but not going to make you feel great if you consume it all the time. Long-term gratification

is something that nourishes you. It's more rewarding because it taps into intrinsic satisfaction rather than just a dopamine hit. When you engage in something over time, whether it is building a healthy relationship or healing a pattern or showing up consistently for a project, the payoff isn't just the outcome, it's the identity shift that happened along the way, because you start to see yourself as someone who is capable, intentional, grounded. That builds self-trust. You are not just good in a crisis. You are good all the time.

Finally, something that really occurred to me just then and when talking about this and even when I was writing about it is that chaos is everywhere. Life will never be short of chaotic, stressful, pressurized moments. Your life can change at any moment. You don't need to be looking out for it or creating it yourself. It will find you, I promise. It will find you in changing circumstances and unexpected challenges in just the unpredictable nature of being alive.

The external world will always present you with a dose of inevitable turmoil. You don't need to worry about life not being exciting. Trust me, you don't need to create the exciting moments. And if that's really what's going on, if you're exploding your life because you're bored, crashing out isn't going to solve a deeper internal dissatisfaction. You need to be having more planned novel experiences, planning things that are intentionally fun, getting out of your suburb or your town, challenging yourself instead of waiting to blow up your life every three months when you feel unsettled.

What we're really changing here is the reliance on dopamine from the resolution of an avoidable crisis to a desire for a deeper, soulful state of enjoyment, long-term reward. a calm, emotional environment that's going to mean that when exciting things happen, we can appreciate them rather than feeling like they are going to destroy our sense of self and just set us in a tizzy. It's hard work. It's worth it. So as we wrap up today, I want to leave you with this thought. The chaos in your life, the rush, the constant doing, it might feel like living, but sometimes true living is found in stillness. It is found in intentional moments. in the quiet progress in just a sense of peace, the more mature you get, the more you will realize

how desirable that is. Your 20s are a time of immense building and immense excitement. There's always going to be some fire to put out. Don't create more fires for yourself. The pursuit of peace, if you start it now, will create such a better long-term mental state and environment for you so that you're not 30, 40 doing the same things. I really hope that you did enjoy this episode. I hope you know that I'm coming from a place of acceptance. I was once this person, I probably still am. And also just an understanding that if you love chaos,

if you love drama, excitement, sometimes that's just how you're wired. That doesn't always mean that it's an excuse. And it doesn't always mean that you can't do anything about it. Hopefully these tips have inspired you to just take small little steps. I'm not saying you need to. submit yourself to a regular, routine life. From now until you die, I'm just saying, leave space for stillness. Hopefully these tips, and just this conversation has encouraged you

to see what the alternative might be. Thank you so much for listening if you have made it this far. Thank you for being such a solid listener. Leave a little pastor emoji down below if you have made it this far. Just for whatever reason, leave one down below so I know that you have made it to the end of the episode and thank you for sticking around. Make sure you are following me. on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast and that you are also following us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you are listening. Leave a five-star review, share this episode with a friend,

maybe even share it on Instagram. If you want it to reach other people or you think that other people in their 20s or beyond would get something out of it, make sure as well that you listen to my new podcast mantra. It will be linked in the episode description. And until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. Embrace, peace and stillness, please.

we will talk very, very soon. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships,

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