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Originally Posted by Blue_Bird
Have you ever done any DBT exercises? Is a a good therapy for impulsivity. I use a lot of it myself. Cause I’m very impulsive just like that. I make huge rash decisions suddenly that screw things up. Like I used to randomly stop my meds, randomly impulsively decide to quite going to therapy and my psychiatrist, impulsively drop out of college, quit jobs , randomly apply to jobs I know I can’t handle etc all that impulsive stuff and indecisiveness. What helps me is as soon as I have an urge to do something like that I write it in my journal and then don’t think about it for a few days and distract myself with positive coping skills and wait it out cause eventually the impulsive urge goes away and I’ve saved myself a lot of mental pain by not acting out on those urges.
For example I used to impulsively end relationships all the time. I did this a couple times when my bf and I started dating a year ago but after a few months and 2-3 times of me impulsively breaking up with him then immediately regretting it and getting right back together, I made the conscious effort to act opposite my impulse and not even give it any headway. After the first couple months of us being together I managed to stop breaking up with him. So now we’ve been together a full 12 months on April 8th coming up. And I haven’t tried impulsively breaking up with him in about 7-8 months at least. Don’t get me wrong I still have impulses to do that due to my BPD traits but I’ve managed to stop that particular behavior.
I’m still working on the whole other impulsive stuff like not quitting or applying for jobs impulsively. Etc. and college.
Idk my point I guess is that it is possible to change the tendency to act impulsively. It takes a lot of work and a lot of consciously continually choosing to act opposite your urges over a very long period of time but eventually it gets easier and more natural.
I’d say maybe start with making a rule where if you want to impulsively change therapists or quit therapy try journaling about it it may make the urge less intense
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Thanks for the advice. I always use journaling as like a coping mechanism, but I never had thought of it in that way, as in a strategy to create space between me and the impulse. That's a great way of looking at it, honestly. I think there's a book out there called "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that talks about the type of "slow" thinking that is required for skillful decision making. All I know is I need to slow down when I make decisions. But it's really hard. Anyway...
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