While youngsters and adults severely strive to regulate their emotions and responses, they might presumably be suffering from an impulsive behaviour disorder.
An impulsive person is someone who experiences constant difficulties in a sense to manage discipline, which eventually occurs in the onset of severe confusions and dysfunctions in personal, familial, communicative, and academic prospects of their lives. Notwithstanding, if you can relate to this, you ought to discover it’s characteristics and how it might be impacting your mental health.
What is Impulsive Behaviour
Impulsive behaviour meaning is executing actions without the anticipation and further swiftly communicated, carelessly risky, and inapplicable to the situation.
Even in situations where people experiencing these conditions have a want to gain power over their emotions and behaviours, they find it challenging and almost unlikely to do so due to the event that the urges to engage in the responses are undeniably overwhelming and all-compulsive.
People with impulsive behaviour disorders often involve monotonous, disruptive behaviours despite the unfavourable outcomes of their engagement in those behaviours. These individuals do not possess particular abilities to regulate actions and spontaneous response rightly.
What is Being Impulsive
If you ought to have a borderline personality disorder (BPD), you might find yourself striving to control impulsive behaviours. From making quick decisions to getting into conflicts, impulsivity can induce outrage to yourself, including your loved ones. In addition to ruining relations and your overall feeling of well-being, impulsive behaviours could also head to monetary and legal harm if neglected.
Impulsivity and compulsion are two different terms; in compulsion, an individual perceives the behaviour is unusual but cannot stop it. With impulsivity, the person will respond without innately acknowledging that their response is extreme.
Luckily, some strategies could further bring impulsivity under control, including psychotherapy, mindfulness practice, and pharmaceutical medications.
Impulsive BehaviourImpulsive Behaviour Symptoms
There are a few signs and traits that might lead to an impulsive behaviour disorder in some people. It is not perpetually clear to distinguish a disorder.
However, here are the following examples of impulsive actions that might be cause for caution.
- Behavioural traits: For instance, theft, lying, initiating attacks, risky or confused behaviour, and competitive or unpredictable reactions.
- Cognitive traits: You are likely to experience obsessive behaviour, feeling agitated or disturbed, flying into a rage, and lower concentration skills.
- Social and emotional traits: That frequently show up as low self-confidence, being socially eliminated or isolated, appearing aloof and anxious, undergoing drastic alterations in feelings and moods, and having beliefs of guilt or grief.
When mental illness causes Impulsive Behaviour
Typically, the question arises when you wonder-“what does being impulsive feel like?” Emotions such as blame or regret might arise, and repeated spontaneous acts might head to a number of adverse outcomes, such as more considerable emotional discomfort or grief, in the long-term.
Risk Factors
Both internal and external factors are triggers for weakened control. Impulsive behaviour disorder is responsible for underlying neurological vulnerabilities linked to external pressures. Some risk factors involve:
- Being a man (Males are more likely to possess impulsive behaviour disorder than females)
- Genetic inclination
- Habitual drug or alcohol use
- Being subjected to trauma, exploitation, or neglect
- Vulnerability to violence or aggression
Specific types of “chemical imbalances” might add to an impulsive behaviour disorder in some people. Further mental health concerns, such as depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), usually accompany people with impulsive behaviour.
Impulsive Behaviour Treatment
While impulsive behaviours can be critical and pervasive, these traits are manageable with therapy.
Psychotherapy
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) directs on developing skills that lessen your impulsive behaviours and enhance your capability to evaluate and reflect before behaving. By applying coping mechanisms to manage strong emotions, a person can handle circumstances without dispute.
Mindfulness, a skill formed in DBT, assists you to stay in the moment. This could encourage you to remain more conscious of your activities, so you take a moment to judge consequences.
Practicing this routine can support you to take a moment required to reflect on your possibilities, enabling you to make more thoughtful judgments about how to react to situations around you. Mindfulness meditation is a modality frequently applied to support the practice.
Medication
Medications like a particular serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) mixed with a moderate dose of an antipsychotic might also benefit. This is particularly true if your behaviour is violent and poses a danger to your safety or your loved ones around you.
There are a few medications that particularly tackle impulsivity:
- Atypical antipsychotics: Abilify (aripiprazole) helps to overcome interpersonal difficulties and impulsivity
- Mood stabilizers: Lamictal (lamotrigine) might help decrease impulsivity and rage, while Topamax (topiramate) might ameliorate impulsivity, agitation, and anxiety
Coping
In addition to complying with your therapy strategy and consulting a therapist, there are a few steps you can take to cope with impulsivity. You can attempt one of these approaches if you notice an urge to engage in one of those behaviours:
- Be a part of the support group: If you need sources like supportive colleagues and a family, participating in a support group can help regulate your impulsive behaviours. It will likewise enable you to talk to others concerning what has worked for them as far as dealing with impulsive behaviours.
- Reestablish impulsive behaviours with healthy ones: While impulsivity might generate a short-term positive impact, there are healthy alternatives to cope, including going for a trek, journaling, reading, talking to your loved ones, or engaging with a support group.
- Practice deep breathing: Deep breathing is one technique to help control anxiety, which can help you manage your attitude and decrease impulsive behaviour. Concentrating on your breaths can further help occupy you as you move past the need to respond impulsively.
To prevent making risky, impulsive decisions, you should make a conscious attempt to improve your actions and take help. Also, there’s no better opportunity to turn things around than now.
Impulsive behaviours can have prolonged effects on both physical and mental health. If you’re hesitant if you have severe difficulty with these behaviours, consult a doctor or mental health expert to get feedback.
Also Read: Behaviour Therapy And Psychoanalysis
