Manage Impulsivity & Hyperactivity - Learn To Slow Down & Reduce Impulses
Does any of the following sound familiar?
Binging three meals in one sitting before you need to sleep.
Hastily drop out of university or drop a promising job to follow a new passion.
Feeling ashamed after blurring out insensitive remarks to a friend, family member, or partner.
Spending hundreds of dollars on something you will only use twice and push aside entirely in a week.
I'm sure you can add countless other mistakes, accidents, and total disasters to the list.
Having ADHD is synonymous with being impulsive, hyperactive, and restless. You don't think decisions through but act on an impulse that very often doesn't turn out to be in your favor.
This article will explain why impulsivity is so common with ADHD before offering multiple strategies you can implement to enhance impulse control, alleviate feelings of restlessness, and manage the overwhelm associated with hyperactivity.
Learning to Slow Down
If you are more on the hyperactive part of the spectrum, ADHD can feel like living in a YouTube video that's at 1.75 speed.
You feel a deep and unexplainable desire to always rush through everything. Standing still makes you feel restless, so your legs are bouncing and twitching, or you are biting your fingers until they start bleeding.
It doesn't stop with your body. Your brain is packed with an overwhelming amount of thoughts about random concepts, facts, hypothetical scenarios, ruminations on past problems, and predictions for the future. This likely makes you anxious, mentally exhausted, and constantly feeling on the edge.
However, the chronic restlessness coming from your hyperactive tendencies can contribute to impulsivity as well. There is a natural impulse to match what goes on the inside with what's happening outside.
The contrast between your gigantic inner world and the tiny door toward the real world makes you desperate for an outlet. If the ship is overburdened with weight and you are desperate to throw something away to avoid sinking, you focus on getting anything in close proximity out.
Similarly, hyperactivity requires you to constantly be doing something without stopping to think much about it, no matter what it is.
The impulsive urges with ADHD have often been described as if you are missing the mental security guard who's supposed to inspect every word that's about to slip and every action you are about to commit. But maybe the guard is not missing. The guard just can't keep up with the workload because your hyperactivity creates such a rush that they cease to function properly.
Knowing the close connection between impulsivity and hyperactivity is important because it highlights aspects of ADHD that remain unaddressed by much of the advice you'd hear on impulse control.
Suffer from impulsive decisions that re-ignite old addictions, cripple your finances, and threaten to ruin friendships? Many experts and coaches will ask you if you have considered visualizing how this decision will affect you, reflecting on similar actions in the past, and making a pros and cons list on whether the decision is worth it. This advice has good intentions but misses the point.
If your mind is impaired and not working properly, using cognitive strategies will not work. You can't manage the faulty mind using the faulty mind. So, what are you supposed to do instead?
Slow Down Your Mind Using Your Body
The point of any successful intervention for impulsivity would be to slow you down. If you are not in a chronically frantic and anxious state of mind, you are more likely to have the opportunity to think. For such a strategy to be effective, it must not rely on self-talk drills because when impulsive, you are in a very different headspace that doesn't allow for rational thinking.
Breathing techniques are one of the most effective ways to slow yourself down. I know it doesn't sound flashy, exciting, or innovative, but it's one of the few techniques that fulfill the two criteria that we've set above. One of the most common drills is the breath-focused meditation discussed in the guide on inattention and distractibility.
The point of an effective technique is to slow you down, reduce hyperactivity, and give you a bigger time window to react to impulses. But it must also be highly accessible. Meditation is an excellent habit to practice, but not one you can interrupt your day with and commit 10 minutes towards on multiple occasions. Similarly, you can't wash your face with ice-cold water, get in a cold shower, or quickly work out whenever your mind is racing.
Enter the physiological sigh.
This exercise will take a maximum of one to two minutes, and you can do it anywhere, regardless of the environment.
All you have to do is inhale through your nose until it is almost full. Then, do a second quick inhale until your lungs are absolutely full. Then, do a long exhale until your lungs are empty. Wait 2 to 5 seconds, then repeat ten more times. The second inhalation and the much longer exhalation are key for the success of the exercise.
It works similarly to the firing up of neurons that happens when you subconsciously sigh. This type of long exhale breathing signals to your diaphragm and the phrenic nerve to loosen your muscles, slow your heart rate, and calm you down. The calmer you are physically, the slower and more peaceful your mind becomes (1,2)
It is one of the most accessible ways to practice control of your brain's speed and hyperactivity without significantly interrupting your flow of work.
Since it requires little to no mental effort, you can do it as much as you like. I do 20 repetitions when transitioning from one type of work to another or when I get jittery and restless. It's not a cure, but it definitely helps, especially if you do it multiple times a day.
In the beginning, I was still getting used to this technique and experimenting to see whether it worked or not. I wanted to do it frequently enough to see a difference, so I set reminders on my phone, allowing me to see a message to slow down and try it instead of plunging into another social media rabbit hole. Some days, I set myself ten alarms, one for each hour, and did it for one minute after the alarm went off before returning to work.
You will get better results if you practice it more frequently in different contexts - before starting a task, talking to another person, or when you are about to consider and make big decisions. The more you intentionally practice it, the more likely it is to become second nature to a point where you'd automatically remember to do it in most circumstances without the need for an intentional reminder.
This is not a cure for hyperactivity. It can help to slow you down, but nothing will change the structure of your brain and its tendency to be hyperactive.
However, you can make the effect even stronger if you incorporate other physical exercises that calm your nervous system down and provide an outlet for restlessness in your body and mind. Strength training, yoga, various forms of cardio, outside sports, going on long walks, cold or very hot showers, sauna, massages, and many other forms of physical stimulation and relaxation can give you physiological relief followed by a feeling of calmness and reduced impulsivity (3)
Creating Obstacles To Prevent Impulsivity
I'm sure you are not blind to your impulses and urges. The older you grow, the more you begin to see patterns of behavior that repeat themselves over and over. You can speed up this process even further if you do a lot of self-reflection and journaling.
Impulsivity shows up in very different ways depending on who you are. I tend to impulsively buy myself all sorts of foods and snacks and binge whenever I'm bored. I also hoard gym equipment like there's no tomorrow, even if I don't need half the stuff I got myself on a whim. For others, it is clothes shopping, video games, online gambling, hobbies they want to try only to abandon in two weeks, and many other compulsions.
I certainly encourage you to work on yourself so you become less impulsive. Regular meditation, having an active lifestyle, and sleeping enough have all been shown to drive down impulsivity. However, there are moments when the urge is so strong and overwhelming that your thinking shuts off entirely, and you only want to act on it.
This is where the creation of obstacles becomes urgently necessary.
When your mind fails to control urges and impulses, you can prepare in advance by creating an environment that does not allow for impulsive decisions. This way, you can’t act on your impulse. Even if you can act, the additional barriers will require some time before you overcome them, discouraging you from trying. Even getting a few minutes of delay is crucial because that can be enough time for the compulsion to pass and for the cravings to become less severe.
Think of it like being a shape-shifter who turns into a werewolf on a full moon. Knowing you will eventually turn into a monster with uncontrollable cravings and impulses means you lock yourself in the basement and give the key to someone else until your period of madness ends. ADHD impulses are essentially the same, except the transformation into your impulsive self happens more frequently and sporadically, so you must have an obstacle prepared for any moment.
Obstacle Types
Not all types of obstacles are the same. We can separate them into soft and hard obstacles. The one you end up using will depend on the severity of your cravings and how uncontrollable your impulses are for a given action.
Soft obstacles would include inconvenience and additional effort if you give in to your impulses. For example, installing site-blocking software on your laptop to avoid social media. You can technically remove it, but you'd have to go through multiple steps, and that'd either be too much effort in some cases or a long enough process to make you snap out of it halfway through.
Another very common example of soft obstacles is making it more inconvenient for you to binge. This can include putting the food on the highest shelves that are much harder to reach, shopping with someone else to stop yourself from buying snacks and junk food, and keeping your fridge as empty as possible to reduce how much you can go through at once.
Soft barriers can also mean creating a rule of thumb or a principle of behavior you follow.
For instance, many people struggle with impulsive shopping and end up spending almost half of their salary the moment their paycheck arrives.
To prevent this financial disaster from repeating, they can create a cap on how much they can spend in a month in the form of "money for fun." If it is a costly purchase above a certain price, they promise to buy it for themselves in three months. The waiting period is bearable because you are guaranteed to get it in the end, but many find that their impulsive thinking has washed off in a few weeks, and they avoid the purchase altogether.
As you can probably tell, soft obstacles can be broken if you are determined to follow through on your impulses. This is why you can also implement hard obstacles to ensure you can't act on your impulse no matter what.
Hard obstacles are barriers you put in, requiring a significant amount of effort to remove or talk with a trusted person.
In the shopping example, you can design your bank account to automatically allocate money towards monthly expenses and savings, leaving you with some additional cash to spend in whatever way you want, but there is a hard cap on how wasteful you can be. You can also make a pact with a friend to check up on you every two weeks and promise to shop only when you are with your partner; otherwise, you owe them a hundred bucks.
The hard barriers you create will be completely different depending on the situation. If you struggle to study, hand over your phone to your partner or a friend and instruct them not to give it back, no matter what. If your scrolling time is more than 6 hours a day, no matter what you try, you can switch your alarm app with a real alarm clock and buy an old flip phone.
To what extremes you go with the barriers depends on the severity of the case and how serious you are about making a change.
It may be too much to give your credit card to your partner if you aren't addicted to gambling or spending thousands a month. However, if you can't help but go over budget whenever you shop, you can forbid yourself to go without your partner or trusted friend. You can also install an app to block sites like Amazon and give the password to someone you trust.
Impulse Control and Hyperactivity Management in Social Settings
The slowing down breathing technique we just talked about can be an excellent way to give your brain more time to formulate your thoughts. For example, if you are in a serious conversation and want to give the best reply possible, you can practice breathing techniques in the beginning and throughout the conversation.
For conversations in particular, you can paraphrase what the other person said to make sure you understood, give room for silence so they can finish their thought and speak some more, and use phrases like "Let me think about it for a moment" to give yourself more time to formulate your thoughts instead of blurring out the first thing that comes to mind.
Creating barriers and distance can be more tricky. Having serious conversations through texting would somehow be preferable in many cases because you have to type it out, see what you have written, delete parts, edit others, and then send it. However, it doesn't feel as authentic and direct, so many people would not be okay with having their most important conversations over the phone.
A more reliable strategy for creating barriers is to pull out of a conversation and go to another room if it gets very heated and emotional.
I know that if you were in an intense argument with your partner, telling them you need to disengage for 5 minutes may anger them. However, the more emotional, hurt, and attacked you feel, the more likely you are to say things you don't mean. Creating physical distance is not ideal, but it's better than intensifying an already dangerous exchange.
For more casual and non-confrontational settings, focusing on remaining silent for most of the time sounds ideal in theory. The less time you have to speak, the more you want to stay on topic and share the most important instead of going in random directions. However, I know that saying you focus on listening and keeping silent while the other person talks is easier said than done.
What helped me the most in conversations was focusing on being an active listener for at least half the time rather than just shutting my mouth and trying not to say anything. I could channel my impulse to speak in a more productive direction by asking questions instead of going on about my own thoughts on the topic. This way, even if I wanted to interrupt, it would be for the sake of clarifying, diving deeper into a topic, and throwing the ball back at the other person.
Finally, inattention sometimes combines with impulsivity and hyperactivity. For example, if you are experiencing many racing thoughts, it can feel hard to resist zoning out of the conversation and entering your inner world. The same goes for any noises or conversations you hear in the background that your attention latches toward due to issues with impulse control. Here are a few quick strategies to better navigate such situations:
Try to look into the person’s eyes or mouth from time to time. You don’t need to glue your eyes on them, but periodic glances keep you more engaged and less likely to zone out.
When you feel yourself about to zone out, slow down your breathing with a prolonged exhale, shift your body position, or even stand up to walk a bit if the situation allows it. Don’t be ashamed to keep yourself stimulated by tapping with your feet, playing with something in your hands, or toying with something nearby to keep you engaged.
Zoning out and losing focus will inevitably happen, so you should learn to apologize by saying you were sorry, sharing why it happened, promising to pay more attention, and returning the ball back to the other person by saying, “And you were saying?”
Key Takeaways
Impulsivity and hyperactivity begin in the brain. It's very hard to stop them using the same organ they have hijacked. This is why you should pay more attention to the connection between your mind and body.
Exercise, meditation, cold showers, sauna, massages, and many other practices have amazing health benefits. Yet, you can't do them everywhere, so you should have options prepared for emergencies. Techniques, like the physiological sigh and other breathing methods, are one of the most easy-to-use and accessible ways to calm down.
Unfortunately, calming your body and relaxing your nervous system won't always be enough. This is why you want to plan ahead and create barriers that prevent you from acting on your worst impulses and cravings. Impulse control systems are most effective when they are very hard or impossible to dismantle.
