ADHD and Emotional Impulsivity: What You NEED To Know

All by myself. I get to be all by myself. What is this guy doing? Mother king of poop. What are you thinking? Wow. Oh, it's a good thing your car brakes worked back there because your emotional brakes definitely didn't. Yeah, that's going to put a damper on your vacation, huh? At least you don't have to pull over. Oh god, where did I put my registration? I bet you wish this hadn't happened. Obviously. Wait, where are you going with this? What if this never happened? What? Do you have a time machine? Yep. I'm magic then. Yes. Yes, please. Yes.

I am supposed to be on vacation. What is happening? Welcome to the Chill Lane Driving School where we learn how to use our emotional breaks. Oh no, I don't need to be here. I don't usually get road rage. I just haven't had a vacation in forever. I really need it. And that guy cut me off. You can make it like this never happened, right? I can't. But you can. You might even make it so cutting people off and almost crashing is less likely to happen in the future. But not without learning a few things first. While this might be the first time you've almost crashed from road rage, it's not the first time you've been emotionally impulsive. It's not even the first time it's happened in a car in front of a police officer. Charge one, driving across a golf course because you were excited about trivia night. Charge two, excessive and rhythmic use of car horn. Uh, perfectly timed to ice baby. Charge three, getting frustrated with your GPS and deciding to show it that the road does in fact exist by throwing it out the car window. Charge four, aggressive parallel parking, ending in a break dance battle with your ticketing officer. Charge five, wow, it's a really good thing you didn't get another ticket yet. And those are just examples of emotional impulsivity you've gotten tickets for. Then there's the jobs you've been fired from, relationships you've burned, online shopping. Okay, I'm listening. It's not just you. Hello

brains. Emotional impulsivity is something our community struggles with a lot. Emotional impulsivity is the quickness and intensity with which we ADHDers react emotionally to stimuli and events relative to our neurotypical peers. Take a look at this chart. Researchers studied seven symptoms of emotional impulsivity. They compared a general community sample to a clinical sample. Oh, that's a big difference. To a sample of people with ADHD. From the findings, those with ADHD were approximately 15 times more impatient than the general control group, eight times more likely to report being quick to anger, and 10 times more likely to say they lose their temper. I feel like if I say anything, I'll be proving your point. Which brings us to emotion dysregulation. As I explained in this

video, those of us with ADHD have more trouble managing our emotions compared to neurotypical brains. It's harder for us to dial down big emotions, move past them, and think clearly when they hit. Sure, there are strategies to help us calm our emotional glitter. Stress balls, green time, deep breaths, shaking a glitter bottle. But a big reason emotion regulation is hard for us ADHD brains is that we often don't make it to the self soothing part because we've already impulsively reacted with raw emotion. Incidentally, this is also why our emotional reactions can seem more intense than those of our neurotypical peers because we're more likely to react with the primary emotion than they are before we've settled our emotional glitter. Exactly. Well, this explains a lot. Great. Well, if my emotional brakes aren't reliable, what am I supposed to do? Never drive? Glad you asked. Here at the Chill Lane Driving School, we've got some tips that can help keep you safely on the road of life. Tip number one, pay

attention to your driving conditions. You know how rain can make roads more slippery? There are situations that might make our emotional road more slippery as well, which can make it even harder for us to break safely. Just like you might check a weather app before heading out on a long road trip, it's good to check your emotional driving conditions ahead of time. Will talking about finances with your partner change those emotional driving conditions? What about a performance review from your boss? And it's not just about external conditions. There's some internal conditions that can make your breaks less reliable than usual. If you haven't gotten enough sleep, if you haven't taken your meds, if you've just had a baby and your hormones are fluctuating wildly, if you haven't done your workout today, uh working out is one of the best ways to improve your internal uh driving conditions when you have ADHD. Um unfortunately, a lot of us have a lot of trouble working out regularly. I cannot say enough nice things about Train Well in terms of getting me to work out with any sort of consistency um and help improve my internal driving conditions, which is why I asked them to be the sponsor of this video. I would not be able to work out regularly at all if it were not for the personalized training and reminders and troubleshooting that I get from my TrainWell coach. Um, I've been with Train Well for several years at this point. I am still working out every week for the most part um because of the support that I get from Train Well. There's a quiz you can take to get you to match with the perfect trainer for you, which I think is really great. It's really easy to switch trainers at any time if it doesn't seem like it's a good fit, which is really important, especially for those of us in this community. Um, we need somebody who can vibe with us, right? Going through the last couple of years, there's been a lot of transitions in my life, a lot of hormonal changes, and it really helped for me personally to have a coach who understood. They create personalized workouts based on your needs, your goals, what equipment you have available. If you have no equip equipment available, if you're going to be traveling and you don't know if where you're going to go has a single dumbbell, they can do body weight only workouts, which is what I'm doing right now. Um, it's very custom, very personalized to you. And there's a lot of support. That's one of the things that I really love about it. If I miss a workout, my Train Well coach helps me troubleshoot. If I'm having a hard time getting my workouts in for whatever reason, helps me adjust. And if I need a little bit more of an overhaul, a check-in, we can also do video check-ins anytime I want. I can just easily schedule that in the calendar. It's really amazing to get that kind of personalized support. Um, and then when I do go to start my workout, I don't have to think about it. what I need to do next. It's just in the app. It's it hooks up to your um Apple Watch. Uh, but also days that I can't find my Apple Watch or it's not charged or whatever, I can use it with just the phone. Really, really ADHD friendly. Can't say enough good things about Train Well. If that sounds good to you, if that's something you would like to try, you can take the quiz to find your perfect trainer and get 14 days free by clicking my link in the description below. Of course, as many people in this community know very well, exercise is not always enough to get us into a good place. Sometimes we're still going to have a bad day. As I put it in the video, ooh, yeah, there are days I tell people I'm not fit for human consumption, which is a great example of tip number two. Adjust

accordingly. If the driving conditions are bad enough, that could mean staying home. Sometimes I've canceled on friends because I knew it would do less damage to the friendship than trying to hang out when I'm in a mood. If a difficult conversation can't wait, maybe do it through text or email so you can think through your response. If a conversation needs to be live or in person, ask for talking points in advance so you can prepare emotionally. Struggle with impulse purchases and about to go online shopping. Many shops have a wish list feature that you can add items to rather than your cart. Review it every so often to see if you still really want to buy the thing. Or when I go to a rent fair, I can take cash and leave my credit card at home. So once the cash is gone, it'll be harder for me to overspend. Yep. Okay, that makes sense. But how exactly am I supposed to know I'm going to get cut off? You don't. Which brings me to

tip number three. Strengthen your brakes. Because we don't always know what the road of life will throw our way, it helps to strengthen our breaks. For some, that's through ADHD medication. ADHD meds that help with focus can also have a positive impact on managing our emotions. Medication can help create more space between that initial emotional surge and an impulsive reaction. But what if you don't take meds or that is not how it works for you? Another way to reinforce your emotional breaks is through practicing mindfulness or meditation. So just sitting there doing nothing. It might look like nothing, but what's happening beneath the surface is powerful. Research shows that consistent mindfulness practice can lead to changes in the brain because you're practicing noticing thoughts and emotions without acting on them. That can help build up your breaks. If you want to dig deeper into mindfulness and meditation for ADHD, check out this video. So, meditation builds a bigger gap between feeling like yelling and actually yelling. Oh, yeah. And that gap, even if it's just a fraction of a second, can make a huge difference. True, but I've meditated regularly before and I still react impulsively sometimes. That's where the next strategy comes in. Tip number four

choose the response you'd like to have. Automatic reactions are going to happen sometimes, but if we pre-program the reactions we'd like to have, we're way more likely to respond in a way we won't regret. A great way to do this is to use the formula if this, then that. If I get cut off, then I will take a deep breath, give the unthoughtful driver some space, and remind myself I am about to get a massage. Exactly. Great. Let's do this. Take me back in time and let me get back to my vacation. Okay. But no butts. Just vacation struts. Okay. — All by myself. — What are you thinking? — Wow, that did not go any better. ADHD is not a disorder of not knowing what to do. It's that we have trouble doing what we know. Which brings us to the final tip. Practice the response you would

like to have. Cool. Yeah, sure. And how do we practice the reaction we want to have in a situation if we're too busy reacting impulsively? We practice outside the situation when our emotions are calm enough to remember the reaction we want to have. That way, when the heat of the moment happens, our brains are more likely to access and initiate that response without us having to think about it. It's going to take a lot of practice to uh respond in a way that is different from my go-to if I've had the same reaction for a decade. I thought you said road rage wasn't your usual thing. Okay, so let's practice making a different choice when we're not actually driving. Okay, so pretend you're on your way to this blissful weekend retreat. You have a massage scheduled. Someone cuts you off. Yep. Okay, we're not ready for this. Toy cars it is. Ooh, I'm yellow. a massage scheduled. Someone cuts you off and I take a deep breath, give the unthoughtful driver some space, and remind myself I'm about to get a massage. Whoa, this break lesson would

have been so helpful when I was a kid. Maybe. But it's important to know that kids' brains are still developing. So, their emotional breaks are weaker than in adults. They can't always hit the brakes on those big feelings by themselves. So, sometimes caregivers actually need to be the break. What do you mean? — In the book, Good Inside, Dr. Becky Kennedy gives the example that simply saying don't hit your sister isn't effective in the moment where they're hitting their sister. Kids might know they shouldn't hit, but they may not be able to stop. In that case, what's more helpful than asking them to stop is to help them stop. Stand between the kids and say, "I'm not going to allow hitting. " That way, the child's internal breaks can catch up and eventually strengthen over

time. But you, you're ready. I'm ready. Let's do this. I am getting a massage. massage. — Enjoy your vacation. Although it's important to note that even with these tips, sometimes accidents are going to happen. And when they do, what matters is the repair work. We'll talk about that another time when you are not on vacation. For now, I'll just leave these here. Although, do they have my ties where you're going? Bye. Thank you to our

brain advocates and all our Patreon brains for making it so that we can do fun content like this and also occasionally take an actual vacation. If you'd like to see some behind the scenes from this shoot. It will be over on Patreon as well. And again, if you'd like to take the quiz from Train Well and find the perfect trainer for you and get 14 days free, check out my link in the description below. Like, subscribe, click all the things, and we will see you next video. Bye, brains.