When Your Assessment Skills Betray You

The Hidden Addiction to Chaos in Nursing

Mignon "Coach MT" Thomas

Nurse Consultant

Simply Coach MT

Nurses are celebrated for their assessment skills — the ability to walk into a room and instantly recognize who needs help, what’s deteriorating, and where the next crisis is about to ignite. It is one of the greatest strengths of our profession.

But in my work with nurses, and in my own journey shared in Clarity Over Chaos, I’ve learned something we don’t talk about enough:

Sometimes our assessment skills betray us.

Not at the bedside…

but in our lives.

Because when chaos becomes familiar, constant, and even culturally rewarded, many nurses unconsciously develop what I call an addiction to chaos — a reliance on urgency, pressure, and high alert that shapes how we move through every environment we enter.

This addiction doesn’t always look dramatic.

It looks like being “the reliable one,” the one who can handle anything, the one everyone runs to, the one who never stops moving.

Over time, those sharp, intuitive assessment skills become tools that reinforce the very patterns that drain us.

The Subtle Signs Your Assessment Skills Are Working Against You

You might recognize it in yourself:

• You’re scanning for crises that aren’t yours.
• You’re anticipating needs before they exist.
• You’re rescuing everyone except yourself.
• You’re over-functioning while calling it responsibility.

You can detect a patient’s unspoken decline, but you can’t see the exhaustion settling into your own bones.

You can triage an entire unit…

But never seem to triage yourself.

This is what I mean when I say assessment skills can betray us:

We start using them to serve chaos instead of clarity.

Why Nurses Become Addicted to Chaos

This isn’t a flaw in character.

It’s conditioning.

Clinical Conditioning

• Nursing school trains us to respond to adrenaline.
• Healthcare systems reward us for tolerating dysfunction.

Cultural Conditioning

• The “super nurse” narrative glorifies self-neglect.
• Busy becomes a badge of honor.

Personal Conditioning

• For many nurses, chaos didn’t start in the hospital — it started long before.
• The job simply matched the internal landscape we were already living in.

When chaos feels normal,

calm feels suspicious.

Silence feels unsafe.

Peace feels like failure.

The Internal Conflict No One Talks About

In the book, I share the moment I realized that if chaos disappeared, I wasn’t entirely sure who I was. That realization shook me — and it wakes up many of the nurses I coach today.

Because if your identity is wrapped around being:

• the needed one
• the fixer
• the strong one
• the quiet one holding everything together

Then calm doesn’t feel like relief.

It feels like a threat.

That’s when your assessment skills shift from identifying risk…

to seeking it.

And that is where the betrayal happens.

Reclaiming Your Assessment Skills for You

The turning point comes when you begin assessing yourself with the same clarity and compassion you give your patients.

Ask yourself:

• What am I feeling right now?
• What do I need that I’ve ignored?
• What am I carrying that isn’t mine?
• Why does urgency feel safer than peace?

One question I ask every nurse:

“Do you still feel valuable when nothing is falling apart?”

That’s where the real work begins.

That’s where resilience is rebuilt.

That’s where clarity finally emerges.

Choosing Clarity Over Chaos

Breaking the addiction to chaos doesn’t make you less capable.

It makes you more human.

It teaches you to use your assessment skills not to prove your worth —

But to protect your peace.

As The Resilience Nurse Whisperer™, my mission is to help nurses step out of survival mode and into intentional, sustainable clarity — the kind that transforms your career, your health, and your entire life.

Your assessment skills are powerful.

They were never meant to betray you.

They were meant to guide you.

And with awareness, they will again.

Ready for the full transformation? Join the waitlist.

If this chapter spoke to you — if it felt like someone finally put your internal experience into words — then Clarity Over Chaos is the book you need the moment it drops.

This book is more than a story.

It is a framework.

A mirror.

A roadmap back to yourself.

Join the waitlist to get early access, launch-day bonuses, and exclusive resilience tools for nurses.

Your clarity is calling.

Don’t miss it.