There’s been periods in my life that appeared chaotic. During those times, I would ask, how come I attract all this drama in my life?!
Because it was feeding my addiction.
What?
Took me a while to figure it out, but let me explain.
As you probably already know, we as human beings and all animals innately have a flight or fight response built in to our systems, This works great, especially for animals who gets out of whatever life threatening situation happen to find themselves at and then get on with their lives.
Us humans, however, have the additional ability to initiate this response through thought alone, and therefore can drag it on way beyond the actual event plus also bring it back through memory at any given moment. The fight or flight response perhaps serves its purpose while we are dealing with actual life threats which where more common thousands of years ago than they are today.
In our common daily lives we live now, being late for work may be an uncomfortable situation, but it is usually not a life threatening situation. Yet we tend to emotionally respond to those situations as if they were indeed going to kill and eat us.
Think of it this way, if flight or fight response puts us in stress mode,
and if stress produces the ‘cuddle’ hormone oxytocin,
then getting addicted to stress can appear more likely to happen.
Many people are just that, addicted to their every day stresses, their stressful jobs, their chaotic and drama filled relationships etc.
There are two reasons suggesting why this is common.
The one reason of why you will repeatedly go back to stressful situations, versus avoiding them altogether, is because it have now become how you perceive yourself. Your body and your environment expect that of you, plus you constantly feel it all have to fit in to your time. It is part of the ‘somebody’ you are, even on a genetic level, and part of who you have become from your experiences up until now.
It’s what is familiar to us and there is a part of us who will do quite a bit to stop changes from happening. This unwillingness is the second reason why we can become so attached to stress.
Why are we so adverse to change?
Perhaps I mentioned it before, but think of the two wolves inside of you. One who wants to grow and expand and the other who wants to remain the same.
Only one of them gets to leave the fight their in, only one gets out of the boxing ring.
It’s a battle, but YOU get to decide who will win.
This knowledge changed how I saw it and gave me insight and clarity. It gave me the opportunity to do confront change, knowing what to keep my focus on. The knowledge itself doesn’t make it easier to do, but challenging myself over and over, makes it easier.
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