Built for Chaos, Terrified of Stability: A Love Story

You ever meet someone who says they want peace, but somehow ends up back in the middle of the same flaming shitshow over and over again?
Yeah... sometimes that’s not stupidity or bad luck.
Sometimes it’s biology.

Let’s talk about your body’s personal stash of drugs... endogenous opioids.
These are chemicals like endorphins, enkephalins, and dynorphins... your brain’s own brand of morphine.

I’m not being poetic.
These suckers bind to the exact same receptors that heroin, fentanyl, and morphine hit.
They reduce pain, regulate stress, and help you dissociate just enough to survive whatever hell you’re walking through.

Bessel van der Kolk, in his early trauma research (The Body Keeps the Score isn’t just a trendy book title... he backed it with decades of lab work), found that trauma survivors often have altered endogenous opioid systems.
People with PTSD, chronic abuse histories, or early developmental trauma?
Their bodies pump out these opioids not just during emergencies, but as a default setting【van der Kolk et al., 1989】.

Translation?

Some folks are chemically numb by design.
Not because they’re tough, but because their nervous system is on a permanent painkiller drip.

And here’s where shit gets twisted...

Over time, the body learns to associate the chemical high of these opioids with the chaos that triggered them.
So when things finally get quiet... when love shows up, when the job stabilizes, when the friend actually texts back...
it doesn’t feel safe.
It feels wrong.

The Addiction to Chaos

This is what Gabor Maté calls “addiction to pain” in The Myth of Normal (2022).
Not in a masochistic, Fifty Shades of Dysfunction kind of way, but in a deeply biological, trauma-soaked way.

“We are attracted to the familiar, not because it is healthy, but because it is what we know. If suffering was what we knew, we will seek suffering.”
— Gabor Maté

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

You’re not addicted to the drama...
You’re addicted to the relief your body gives you when the drama shows up.
That tiny little drip of internal morphine your nervous system releases when it says,
Ah yes, danger... I know what to do with this.

Van der Kolk wasn’t the only one onto this.
Researchers like Koob & Le Moal (2008) laid it out too... early stress and trauma screw with your brain’s reward system, particularly the opioid response.
This doesn’t just set the stage for substance addiction... it sets you up to crave the internal hit that chaos delivers【Koob & Le Moal, 2008】.

Let’s Get Really Fucking Clear...

• The person who can’t sit still in a healthy relationship?
  Not broken. Addicted to the neurochemical storm of dysfunction.

• The client who sabotages every moment of peace in their life?
  Not lazy. Their body doesn’t trust calm.

• The part of you that picks fights, self-isolates, or dives headfirst into old patterns the second things feel “too good”?
  That’s not self-destruction. That’s your brain trying to get high off survival again.

Healing is Withdrawal from Chaos

This is why talk therapy alone isn’t always enough.
Healing trauma means weaning your body off the internal chaos it thinks it needs to survive.
It means retraining your nervous system to stop equating stillness with threat and start letting safety in without needing to manufacture a crisis first.

Let me say that louder for the people in the back...

Your trauma made chaos feel like home.
Your body turned pain into relief.
Your healing will feel wrong before it feels right.

But that discomfort?
That’s not a sign you’re failing.
That’s a sign your nervous system is rebooting.

So if you’ve lived most of your life confusing intensity for love, or panic for presence, or conflict for connection... just know this:

You’re not a drama queen.
You’re not broken.
You’re fucking adapting.

But adaptation isn’t the same as freedom.
Freedom comes when you stop chasing the hit and start learning to feel safe without the storm.

-Matt

References

• van der Kolk, B. A., Greenberg, M. S., Orr, S. P., & Pitman, R. K. (1989). Endogenous opioids, stress-induced analgesia, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychopharmacology Bulletin, 25(3), 417–421.

• Koob, G. F., & Le Moal, M. (2008). Addiction and the brain antireward system. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 29–53. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093548