'Calm and peace are so uncomfortable'

How to protect your peace and some challenging truths.

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Last week I shared in detail what it means to grow up in a chaotic family/household. I shared about the differences between emotional vs physical chaos and how cultural and identity can inform chaos in your immigrant family/household.

After that post, and sharing it on social media, I heard from many of you on how much it resonated:

If you grew up in chaos, it makes sense that you struggle with stability and feelings of calm.

The impact of growing up in chaos

• You are constantly on edge or hypervigilant in current relationships/friendships — almost like you are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

• When there is peace and quiet, you struggle with not filling the silence or needing validation/affirmation that all is okay

• You tend to make contingency plans just “in case” something goes wrong — because you are used to things going wrong and needing to fix them in a cinch

• You might find that you feel like you have to be of use to prove you are worthy to your relationships in order to feel good about yourself

• You need stimulation and struggle to sit in silence or calm (an example of this can look like needing background noise on at all times), or you generally struggle to relax.

• You are constantly overwhelmed — either at your own volition (because you struggle to relax or slow down) or because of what is happening around you/in your relationships.

‘Calm and stable feels boring’

A really common consequence of growing up in a chaotic family and that being your norm, is that anything otherwise is equated with “boring.” You might worry that you will have to sacrifice passion, attraction, and excitement in a relationship in order to be in a safe or secure relationship.

Keep reading for:

• More on how growing up in chaos can impact your feelings in relationships (with a personal story from me about my relationship)

• 6 tips and 7 reflection questions to work through chaos