🧠 Wired for Crisis

Growing up with addiction didn't just add trauma to your life－it rewired your entire nervous system. Drugs became the invisible family member that dictated everything: schedules, emotions, safety, and love itself. You learned to navigate a world where substances always came first, teaching you that your needs will always be secondary when something else calls louder 📢. This contaminated your template for what relationships might look like－you either seek the familiar chaos of loving someone with a problem, or rigidly avoid anyone who uses or drinks at all 🚫🍷.

There's no middle ground because your calibration was set between crisis and fragile calm, not healthy consistency. You developed incredible crisis management skills and can handle chaos better than most people 💪, but stability feels foreign and suspicious. Your nervous system learned that relationship ＝ unpredictability, that being with someone else always means bracing for the next crisis, lie, disappearance and your eventual mopping up.