You're Addicted To Your Own Toxicity

“At what point do you start chipping away at the chip on your shoulder?”

Growth sounds good… until it’s time to actually change.

In this episode, Knowlo gets real about the uncomfortable side of self-improvement the part nobody glamorizes. The part where you realize the thing holding you back… might be you.

This isn’t a polished, feel-good conversation.

This is about:

Being addicted to your own toxicity

Missing the comfort of ignorance

Knowing better… but not always wanting to do better

The frustration of therapy, growth, and self-awareness

And the internal battle between healing and staying the same

Because sometimes… anger feels good.

Sometimes… chaos feels familiar.

And sometimes… growth feels like giving up the version of you that survived.

This episode breaks down the tension between who you’ve been and who you’re trying to become… and why that fight isn’t clean, pretty, or easy.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your own patterns…

If you’ve ever known what to fix but didn’t feel like fixing it…

If you’re trying to grow but still feel pulled backwards…

This one’s for you.

This is 5ft.philosophy… where we don’t pretend to have it all figured out.

We just tell the truth and figure it out anyway.

This is 5ft.Philosophy

I’m not here to tell you what to think.

I’m here to slow things down long enough so you can think for yourself.

Sit with it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's almost impressive how hard your brain is willing to work just to make you miserable. Like it's in there clocking over time for chaos. It's real dedication, huh? At what point do you start chipping away at the chip on your shoulder? Cause I've been thinking about that lately. I've been thinking about myself, my habits, my mindset, and realizing that there's something that I don't really like. A lot of my growth is being stunted by me. And it's weird because part of me wants to grow. Part of me wants clarity. Part of me wants peace. Part of me wants to be fully formed, disciplined, and solid. But another part of me, on the under, on the tuck, low-key, keep this a secret.

unknown 1:03

Shh.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

A big part of me wants to stay toxic. And I hate to admit that. And I love to admit that, but it's real because anger feels so good to me. Anxiety. Anxiety feels so familiar to me. Self-loathing is my first love. It's so cozy and comfortable. I know it's bad for me, but it fits like a glove. It's like when you go to therapy and you suddenly start thinking, damn, everybody needs therapy. Everybody is messed up, and I might as well quit because everybody is messed up. Then you realize, hey, I guess I'm not ready to be healed yet. Because to be honest, a lot of my behavior I'm just not ready to let go of. Because the fix is too big and the emotions feel too good to let go of. And that's where I'm at. I'm in purgatory. I'm in this weird space. And I've grown a lot. I've grown so much and I've changed exponentially. But I feel that there is another level and another jump and another version of me and more growth. And I'm just like, I don't feel like dealing with that. I drew a line in the sand. I vocalized it. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I'm clear. Crystal. I said, this hurt me. This made me angry. This is who I am now. This is what I want. But instead of working through it, I'ma just be quiet. I'ma just continue to stand there and live in it. Just counterintuitively, ten toes down, standing on business with something that nobody else cares about. And the crazy part about it is life in reality, I'm not really doing that bad. My household is solid, my family is good, and my situation could be a lot worse, but in my mind, it's always war. And I just sit with it. I'm like, why does my brain feel like it's powered by turmoil? Why does peace feel so foreign to me? Chaos feels so natural. And I think it's part survival mode, part entertainment, because it feels masturbatory sitting watching my brain eat itself. But I'm in grind mode. I'm in survival mode. And I think that my brain is bored, so it amplifies every problem and catastrophizes so that it can give itself more problems to solve. I go to therapy once a week, every week, and I do the work and I reflect and I listen and I have people around me that love and support me. But even with all that, the voice in the back of my head says, Hey, homie, cut out all that growth stuff. That's for squares, that's for suckers. You soft. Go back to what you know. We want the old nalo back. Get back in your head. Scary, huh? I bet your brain do it too. And I don't feel like a failure. I feel like comfort is sending me a drunk late-night text. Hey, big head, you up? Ow. I can't hardly accept it, but I did an episode about radical acceptance because it's good and it's beautiful in theory, and it's a very simple concept. Handle what you can't, accept what you can't. And it even talks about it in the Bible. Give me the strength to handle what I can and give me the discernment to know what I can't deal with. Something like that. But it's hard because to me, radical acceptance feels like giving up. This is unfair. This is wrong. This is janky. This is shady. This is corrupt. And my brain be like, so you just gotta live like that? That's the expectation. I just have to accept the way that life is. Yeah, because cool humanity, let's just not change. Let's just continue to destroy each other faster and more efficiently than we've already been doing since the beginning of time. We're the snake eating its own tail. I think the humans should be born with the label like a battery-operated toy. It should be embossed right there on your left butt cheek. It should say brains sold separately. He's glitching, he's glitching out. Do a hard reset. It's like if I take radical acceptance as my personal Lord and Savior, does that mean that the chaotic things that exist in the world will cease to affect me? No. And even though I know that it's necessary, dare I say mando to seek sanity and find a degree of solace in this lifetime, I can't help but wonder am I some street walker being pimped by the purveyor of good times that we call therapy? And when I am quote unquote healed, am I ever truly cured? Or am I a bruised, bandaged surfer riding the wave of capitalism and mental health? Because the more that I attempt to play ball, the more that I feel like I'm losing something. I'm being asked to trade control and common sense for peace. And I don't think that I'm mature enough to accept the terms of that trade right now. So sometimes I'm just sitting realizing that the next level of my growth is not about learning something. It's about learning how to let something go. I have to let go of the chip on my shoulder. I have to let go of the anger. I have to let go of the malice, and I have to let go of the identity that I built of being the messed up guy. And that's hard to do. And I don't want to do it. Because if you've been carrying around something long enough, it stops feeling like weight and starts feeling normal. And I know that the season that I'm in right now will come and go, and eventually I'll look up and it'll all be in my rearview mirror. It'll just be past, it'll be defeated, and I'm not gonna escape unscathed, and it's not gonna look perfect, but it's gonna look like a memory. Because self-awareness sucks, but it's usually the first step on your journey. Self-awareness has not given me the answers. Self-awareness has not solved any of my problems, but self-awareness is akin to honesty, and I can honestly say that this is one of the many problems in my life that I need to tend to, even if I'm not ready to, and even if I don't want to. Because eventually I'm going to have to start chipping at the chip that's on my shoulder.