You’re overwhelmed.
Again.
Sure, it’s because you took on three assignments this week, but you had to; no one else was going to step up.
And you’re drained from managing your kid’s classroom outburst, but of course you’ll also be the one to soothe them about their exclusion from their friend group later, and to help your significant other with their problems, and your friend is calling about their latest breakup…
Overwhelmed, emotionally drained, constantly putting out everyone else’s fires…if this sounds like you, you may feel like a magnet for chaos. But, cold or harsh as it may sound, you may actually be making yourself available to chaos.
Before you resist the idea, pause and consider: Are you partly responsible for attracting and allowing chaos in your life? It’s not a problem if you’re partly responsible for this. What it means is that you have the power to lessen, or even eliminate it.
So together, let’s explore what it really means to protect your peace, why so many of us are drawn to chaos in the first place, and how to create a boundary-based life that’s rooted in secure attachment, rather than survival mode. For a deeper dive, you can listen to the latest episode of Mental Health Bites here on Substack or on Apple Podcasts. You can also find more short clips and helpful tips at my YouTube channel.
But now, let’s start with a tough but honest question.
Why You Attract Chaos and Where It Comes From
You swear you want more calm in your life, more peace in your relationships, a routine, a solid career. Yet you find yourself again and again in perpetual crises, romantic crash outs, and missing out on opportunities for advancement that you should have been prepared for.
Are you simply cursed by the universe?
Unlikely.
More likely, despite avowedly hating chaos, you are subtly inviting it in.
Our popular culture doesn’t necessarily help in modeling non-chaotic lives of stability and ease. In addition to a work culture that places a priority on a go-go-go pace, our music and TV thrive on conflict. This is to a degree unavoidable, as drama is inherently interesting. The difficulty lies in how prevalent and inevitable interpersonal drama is made to seem.
Consider Rue from HBO’s Euphoria, played by Zendaya. Rue is a teenager with a traumatic past and ongoing addiction. She’s drawn to a newcomer to her high school, Jules, played by Hunter Schaefer, not just for romantic reasons, but because Jules represents emotional intensity. The unpredictability of their relationship—the highs and lows, the volatility—all mirrors Rue’s internal state. Instead of calming her nervous system, the relationship heightens it.
It’s familiar chaos dressed up as love.
So then, perhaps the solution is to avoid chaos like this at all costs? Not quite. Take the character Beth Harmon from The Queen’s Gambit. Her hyper-independence initially looks like strength, but it’s actually emotional self-protection. She doesn’t trust others to regulate or support her, so she avoids intimacy altogether. She distances herself from chaos at the cost of connection. It’s only when she begins setting healthy boundaries and allowing safe relationships into her life that she finally starts to heal.
The difficulty in finding popular examples of non-chaotic lives and relationships is that we repeat what seems normal as if it is healthy. If we expect love to be painful and volatile, and for the only solution to extreme relationships to be no relationships, we aren’t given models of how not to inadvertently draw it towards us.
The Real Life Rollercoaster
In our own day-to-day lives, things may not be so extreme as they are for Rue and Beth. Chaos might not show up as you shut everyone out, or engage in shouting matches. Often they show up more subtly.
For example, you’re always the one people vent to, even when you’re overwhelmed. You can’t relax until everyone around you is okay. You replay conversations in your head, wondering if you said the right thing. You feel guilty when you say no, or you even silently wish people would stop leaning on you but you never say anything.
If this sounds familiar, don’t just chalk it up to burnout. That’s your nervous system reenacting old attachment wounds and your brain trying to earn safety through emotional labor.
The reason why lies deep in our attachment systems and early childhood experiences. For many of us, the habit of over-involving ourselves in other people’s messes didn’t come from nowhere; it was learned.
If you grew up in a home where love felt inconsistent, where emotions were unpredictable, or where your needs were often overlooked in favor of keeping the peace, you may have become hyper-attuned to other people’s emotional states. This is especially common in those with anxious-preoccupied or disorganized attachment styles.
In these environments, children often take on what researchers call pseudo-adult roles. They become the fixer, the soother, the peacemaker.
Why?
Because if everyone else is okay, maybe they’ll feel safe too.
And this becomes deeply wired into the brain. Neuroimaging studies show that children raised in chaotic or emotionally volatile homes develop heightened activation in the amygdala (the brain’s fear center) and reduced connectivity in the prefrontal cortex, which helps us regulate emotions and make rational decisions.
The result?
A nervous system that constantly scans for threat and overreacts to emotional intensity, whether it's yours or someone else’s.
So as adults, we may say we want calm, stability, and peace, on a subconscious level, we’re drawn to the familiar. And for many of us the familiar equals chaotic.
But the truth is: Being constantly available to chaos doesn’t make you a better friend, partner, parent, or colleague. It just makes you exhausted. And ultimately, resentful.
The good news? You can unlearn this.
The Power of the “Chaos Filter”
The primary way we make ourselves available to chaos is by not having firm boundaries in place. We may believe we’re helping everyone and being our best self by constantly giving and reacting, but in reality, we are contributing to a continual frenzy wherein no one is able to manage their own emotions,
The Chaos Filter exercise helps you decide—in the moment—whether to get involved, step back, or set a boundary.
Step 1: Pause and Label
When someone brings you chaos—a crisis, a dramatic text, a problem to fix—don’t jump in. Pause. Take a breath. Then say to yourself: “This feels urgent, but is it truly mine?”
This tiny pause is essential. It activates the prefrontal cortex, the decision-making part of your brain, and reduces amygdala reactivity. You’re creating space between stimulus and response—a hallmark of emotional regulation.
Step 2: Check Your Inner Child
Ask yourself: Is this reminding me of something from my past?
Maybe you’re feeling that old panic: If I don’t help, I’ll be rejected.
Maybe your nervous system is lighting up like it did when your parents were in a bad mood, and you had to make everything better. This moment of awareness is gold. Because once you name it, you can unhook yourself from it. Say to yourself: This is old wiring. I don’t have to play that role anymore.
Step 3: Filter the Chaos
Here’s where the “Chaos Filter” comes in. Ask yourself three questions:
* Is this urgent?
* Is this mine?
* Can I help without over-involving myself emotionally?
Let’s break these down:
* If it’s not urgent, you don’t need to respond immediately.
* If it’s not yours, you can hold space without taking it on.
* If you can’t help without absorbing it, you need a boundary.
Let’s try a real-life example:
Your friend calls you in a panic about a breakup. You just finished work, you’re exhausted, and your instinct is to go into full therapist mode.
Here’s what the Chaos Filter might help you say instead:
“I hear how hard this is. I care about you so much. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to fully support you right now, but I’m thinking of you. Can we talk tomorrow when I can really listen?”
Boom. Boundary set. Relationship preserved. Nervous system protected.
This is what it means to be unavailable to chaos. Not unkind. Not avoidant. Just clear.
When you use the Chaos Filter regularly, you’ll begin to notice something incredible:People stop expecting you to fix their problems. You then discover how many fewer problems you have, and you now have the resources to deal with them.
The Subtle Art of Sustainable Emotions
You can love deeply and still set boundaries. You can care without carrying. In fact, the less weight you carry that isn’t yours, the more you have to give when you care.
You don’t have to be the emotional sponge in every room. You can be the anchor. The calm center. And that starts by protecting your peace, one boundary at a time.
How do you set boundaries for yourself? Please share in the comments. You never know who your experiences might help.
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About me:
Dr. Judy Ho, Ph. D., ABPP, ABPdN is a triple board certified and licensed Clinical and Forensic Neuropsychologist, a tenured Associate Professor at Pepperdine University, television and podcast host, and author of Stop Self-Sabotage. An avid researcher and a two-time recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health Services Research Award, Dr. Judy maintains a private practice where she specializes in comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations and expert witness work. She is often called on by the media as an expert psychologist and is also a sought after public speaker for universities, businesses, and organizations.
Dr. Judy received her bachelor's degrees in Psychology and Business Administration from UC Berkeley, and her masters and doctorate from SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology. She completed a National Institute of Mental Health sponsored fellowship at UCLA's Semel Institute.
