Thriving in the Storm

The Comfort of Chaos

What was it about chaos that brought me into focus rather than breaking me? I never meant to fall in love with it. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I needed the adrenaline rush of running full speed into someone else’s worst moment. But somehow, the ER became my home, the place where I felt most alive. I was addicted. 

Most people crave stability. Calm mornings, predictable routines, the comfort of knowing what comes next. For me, chaos wasn’t just something I navigated. I controlled it. It was where I became the most “me”. In the frenzy of the ER, in the urgency of split-second decisions, in the middle of someone’s worst day, I didn’t just survive. I thrived. The madness wasn’t overwhelming; it sharpened me and made me feel alive.

But why? And what happened when that storm wasn’t just a moment, but became the only place I truly felt at home?

There was something intoxicating about it. Exhilarating. Comforting. The implacable monitor alarms, the incessant ringing of phones, the constant blur of movement. The weight of it all. The seconds that made the difference between life and death. The staff, my family, who looked to me for answers, who felt safer just knowing I was there, leading the charge. I wasn’t just another nurse in the storm; I was their anchor, their steady hand when everything else was unraveling. I leaned hard into that: controlling my surroundings. Being needed. Looked up to. Loved. It wasn’t just about science or the medicine. It was the rush of making the impossible happen, of finding order in the mess, of knowing that in a world full of uncertainty, I mattered.

But any addiction has its price. Sleepless nights, emotional and physical battering, exhaustion, ghosts of patients we couldn’t save. The high came with a crash, leaving me hollow. I started to feel I had given too much of myself to this life. But if I walked away, who would I even be without it?

The Balance Between Feeling and Functioning

Ask my wife, my therapist, my family, my closest friends. I have always been the sensitive one. The shy one. The one who feels deeply, cries at the slightest hint of suffering, absorbs emotions like a sponge. The kind of person who, by all logic, should have been crushed under the weight of emergency nursing.

How then, for years, did I thrive in the ER? A world built on chaos, trauma, and unrelenting pressure. A place where feeling too much can drown you and feeling nothing at all makes you dangerous.

It is difficult to understand how I could be these two starkly different versions of myself: the deeply feeling empath and the ER nurse who could stand over a dying patient and calmly pass instruments as if I were handing someone a pen. At work, something inside me would switch. On or off? I don’t know. There was a mile-thick brick wall around my heart. The emotions, the fear, the grief just went somewhere else. I became sharp, precise, almost mechanical. My body moved before my brain had time to process the weight of what was happening.

I learned early on that emotions in stressful situations like those experienced in the ER must be rationed like oxygen in a fire. If you let yourself feel too much, you can’t do the job. Tears won’t get the task done. I mastered the art of compartmentalization. You build walls to keep yourself functional. You tuck away the pain, the sorrow, the weight and hold it at arm’s length because the moment you let it in, you struggle to keep going. If you don’t feel at all, you burn out. I didn’t learn the balance between feeling and not feeling in enough time.

It’s a strange paradox, to be both the softest and hardest person in the room. To have a heart of glass but hands of steel. To be the kind of person who absorbs the world’s pain, yet somehow thrives in the epicenter of suffering. It’s a large part of why ER nurses are often misunderstood: people think we’re cold, detached, unfeeling. But the truth is, we care more than we should. We just don’t always have the luxury of showing it.

The Double-Edged Sword of Crisis Mode

We humans activate the stress response for reasons of psychological factors, and that’s simply not what the system evolved for. If you do that chronically, you’re going to get sick. Robert Sapolsky

At first, stress was my survival mechanism. It gave me structure when everything else fell apart. But the longer I lived in it, the more it became a cage. High-pressure situations trigger the fight-or-flight response, flooding the body with adrenaline and cortisol. In the short term, this sharpens reflexes and narrows focus, turning stress into an almost exhilarating state. But as research from Dr. Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University suggests, prolonged exposure to this heightened state rewires the brain, making chaos feel like control and stillness feel like suffocation.

Neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sapolsky warns that chronic stress keeps the amygdala in a state of hyperactivity while dulling the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for logic and emotional regulation. This explains why for so long I feel most “myself” when under pressure but restless and irritable in calm moments. The addiction to urgency becomes ingrained.

The body doesn’t differentiate between types of stress. Whether it’s a failing marriage or a work deadline, it reacts the same way. Chaos wasn’t just in my work, it was in my relationships, spanning pretty much my entire life. Highs and lows were my norm. It wasn’t until I met my current (and forever) wife, someone who thrived in peace rather than turmoil, that I could even begin to see how deeply wired I was for instability. I ignored the signs until I physically and mentally couldn’t anymore. Years of overdrive took their toll: exhaustion, tension, an immune system worn thin.

The Adrenaline Trap: When Chaos Becomes Home

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Viktor Frankl

For over a decade, I thrived in chaos, working 60+ hour weeks, filling gaps left by a toxic marriage, escaping from what should have been my home, surrounding myself instead with my work family. The stress distracted me from the end of that first marriage, fueled my drive, and ultimately helped me climb out of massive debt. But what I once saw as control was really just survival.

Chaos gave me purpose, but it also kept me from confronting what lay beneath it. When I finally stepped away, I realized the hardest challenge wasn’t handling stress, it was going to be learning to live without it.

Escaping the Cycle Without Losing the Fire

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. – Henry David Thoreau

I refuse to be one of them. The goal isn’t to kill the fire that made me thrive. It’s to learn to let it burn without turning everything to ash. I once believed my ability to handle chaos was my greatest strength. But true resilience isn’t just surviving the storm, it’s knowing when to step out of it.

I must learn to feel without fear of drowning, reconnecting with the part of me buried under years of trauma and adrenaline. It’s a slow process, peeling back layers of armor I didn’t fully realize I was wearing. I’m learning to replace destructive urgency with rekindling favorite hobbies, writing, mastering new skills, and creating a structured routine of exercise, meals, and sleep. The rush can remain, but in a sustainable way. This requires intense rewiring, and for that, I’m most thankful for the support of my family and friends. The stillness feels foreign. I will adapt: thriving doesn’t have to mean burning at both ends. It can mean excelling under pressure and finding purpose in moments of calm.

Chaos may have shaped me, but it will not define me.