Usually, acting impulsively can negatively impact many areas of a person’s daily life, affecting the person themselves or the people around them. Do you tend to act impulsively? Don’t you know what to do to stop acting like this? Then continue reading this Psychology-Online article: how to control impulsivity.
Definition of impulsivity
The term impulsivity refers to a predisposition to act quickly, without prior planning and without considering the possible negative consequences derived, whether affecting the same individual or other people. At a behavioral level, when a person acts impulsively, it is normally due to a relationship between a situation that causes a certain feeling (such as anger, sadness…) and problematic impulsive behavior (for example, aggressive behavior). That is, if an impulsive person finds himself in a context or situation that provokes a feeling of anger, he will react impulsively to this situation by acting aggressively without thinking about its negative consequences.
How to control impulsivity
The most common treatment aimed at impulsivity focuses on working on the relationship between the private and internal situation and the impulsive behavior that derives from this situation. The objective of emphasizing this relationship is that when the patient is in a situation that causes a certain feeling, he is able to being able to avoid carrying out behaviors that are unfavorable due to not taking into account its negative consequences.
Therefore, it is not about controlling, modifying or reducing the intensity with which the situation or private sensation appears (anger, sadness…), but rather about ensuring that the patient learns to be able to modify and control, to the extent of possible, their actions in the presence of private situations and sensations. In short, and in other words, the patient, through the treatment received by a specialist professional, must learn to react in different and appropriate ways in relation to certain thoughts, emotions and feelings, that is, everything related to private elements that we have mentioned above.
The general idea of all possible treatments for impulsivity is to help the patient have a wide range of alternative behaviors that are more effective than the impulsive behaviors they used to perform.
Techniques to control impulsivity
In order to learn to control impulsivity, a series of strategies are recommended that can help the person be able to control their actions. Next, we list different techniques to control impulsivity
- Take responsibility: the person must take responsibility for their actions and be aware of the difficulties they have in controlling their impulsive behaviors.
- Detect the stimuliboth internal and external, that make the person act with said impulsiveness.
- To procure stop impulsive behaviors, that is, avoid acting without thinking about the consequences. In order to control the actions, it is important that the person has previously been able to detect the stimuli that cause them to act impulsively, in this way it is possible that the person is already able to prevent when they may or may not react impulsively.
- If the person is already very clear in which situations they usually act impulsively, it is important that they try to detect the situation before acting, so that it allows them to think about your answer to the stimuli that the situation provokes.
- In many cases it is useful use self-instructions. For example, marking some points before acting, such as thinking before acting, thinking if the situation justifies your action, thinking about whether or not what you plan to do is too hasty, among others.
- Relaxation exercises. There are different very beneficial ones.
- Learn to control stress through .
In addition to the recommendations that we propose, if you consider that you should be treated due to your impulsivity, at Psychology-Online, we recommend that you contact a specialist, so that they can assess and treat your particular situation. since each person is different and, therefore, each person must be treated based on the characteristics of their individual case.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- López, M. (2013). Psychological treatment of impulsivity from the perspective of third generation behavioral therapies. About a case. Yearbook of Psychology/The UB Journal of Psychology, 43(1), 117-124