Thread by @chasing_ling

I told you all recently I was researching into impulsivity for #ADHD and that I'd share anything useful that I find. Let me tell you what I discovered about impulsive behaviours, hot processing, and one thing you can do to help... 🧵🧵🧵👇👇👇

First of all, let's be clear what impulsivity is. In impulse is just a subconscious "idea" or desire to do something - at least, at first, it's subconscious. (And because it is, that's why impulsivity is hard!) #ADHD

Behaviours aren't impulsive in and of themselves - they're only really impulsive after the fact. In other words, jumping out of a plane attached to a parachute is only impulsive if you didn't plan to do it, and didn't want to do it - it sort of just happened...

A planned charity parachute jump that you wanted to do and intended fully to do is not impulsive - you were thinking with awareness and intention at all times. (This kind of thinking is called reflective thinking, and it's the slow and thoughtful opposite to impulsivity.)

Anyway, we now know what impulsivity is, and that it's the desire being responded to without thinking and unintentionally that makes something impulsive. Let me ask...when are you most impulsive? For me, it's when I'm stressed, tired, upset or some fun combo of all three! #ADHD

Rapid, impulsive action-taking that happens when you're stressed, tired or upset (for example) is clearly driven by emotions. Brain stuff that is driven by emotions is called "hot" (guess it's a metaphor) - as in hot-headed. It's quick, it's emotional, you don't know it's...

happening before it's too late, and you may not be aware in the moment you're deciding to do anything at all (inattentiveness makes this worse). You may feel there is little to nothing you can do in the moment to change your impulsivity. #ADHD

In a sense, you are right. The problem for ADHDers with impulsive traits is that everything happens so fast, it's down to habit, you're not aware of it, and our emotions are involved...before you know it, you've eaten the whole pizza and bought 17 books that you don't need. #ADHD

What will help you is developing something called TRAIT IMPULSIVITY. That's working on your general health, general emotions, and dialling up your self-regulation skills and self-awareness over time. It works but it is SLOW and it's god tier skills. #ADHD

You can work towards that with a journal, a buddy, a coach or a therapist, but it'll take several moments. Therefore, you need HELP in the moment to shape circumstances and guide you to either stop the impulses arising or prevent you from acting on them #ADHD

This is where engineering you and your environment IN ADVANCE is brilliant. I confess that I spend a lot of money on online shopping because of boredom (a kind of emotion) and get things that I don't need. This money getting spent is slowing me down on buying a house.

I did two things yesterday. I deleted Amazon off my phone, and I installed an internet blocker to stop me spending a lot of my brain power on mindlessly scrolling online. Both of these actions will contribute to me being less likely to make impulsive buying decisions,

no matter how emotional or dysregulated I am feeling. However, I took these actions after journalling, and first thing in the morning. I was reflective, I was calm, and I was using cold (cool-headed) processing. I was in a good space to make decisions to help future Becci #ADHD

The moral of the story is this: if you're trying to get to grips with #ADHD impulsivity, you will eventually be able to notice this and make better choices in the moment but almost certainly not right away. Working with journal, buddy and/or coach develops this.

As you are regulating yourself generally (reducing trait impulsivity) and learning to calm and understand the old brain, you need to help yourself out by making it harder to do the impulsive actions that you don't want to do. #ADHD

I've talked about FRICTION before when it comes to creating and stopping habits. Habits with a lot of friction (barriers to completing a behaviour) die off pretty fast. If you don't want to impulse shop, the first step is making it super impossible to do so. Add friction! #ADHD

This thread is just a smattering of what I've learned over the last few days. There's more coming in the next few weeks. I'll let you know how spending less money is working out for me in the interests of integrity and transparency, also. #ADHD

Give me a shout if you would like to work with me as your coach starting in May. I have two slots for 8-12 week coaching blocks. We can be flexible on days of the week from mid-May. DM me if you'd like a free and no obligation coaching consult and scoping session! #ADHD

PS - This stuff works! I didn't buy anthing on Amazon yesterday or even look at the site, and I cut my time spent online on my phone by over 80%. How frighteningly effective and frighteningly simple is that??? #ADHD