Impulsivity is on the rise. A lot of us are making impulsive purchases, binge drinking and using other substances, and emotionally exploding at the drop of a hat.
Sound familiar? Well, meditation can help with all that. By increasing self awareness and emotional regulation, mindfulness empowers us to pause and reflect before acting, resulting in less impulsive behavior. And today, I’m going to discuss how you can use meditation to control impulses.
Below, you can find our guided meditation for impulsivity, along with our tutorial. But first let’s look at what impulsivity is and why mindfulness helps.
What Is Impulsivity?
Have you ever grabbed a cookie from the jar without thinking about it, even when you weren’t hungry? Have you momentarily felt annoyed and immediately shouted at someone? Or if you’re me maybe you happened to see a beautiful mala in the yoga store and just had to buy it even though you definitely didn’t need yet another mala. That’s impulsivity. It’s very quickly acting on urges with a lack of forethought and a lack of self awareness. It’s a common problem in mental health conditions like ADHD and BPD (which, incidentally, are on the rise, particularly amongst adolescents). [1] But. Let’s be honest. Even those of us blessed to not have any mental illnesses could still use a little more impulse control. But how do you get it? Well, first you have to understand what causes impulsivity.
What Causes Impulsivity?
A lot of people adopt the attitude that they are “just impulsive people” but there are reasons for impulsivity, and many of them are treatable. Possible causes of impulsivity include:
Environmental influences. For instance, people living in busy urban environments are often barragged with an overload of sensory information. That sensory overload drains them of self awareness, making it harder to control impulses.Genetics and learned behaviors (which can be unlearned)Various mental health conditions such as BPD and ADHDWeak or damaged areas of the brain, specifically those responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and emotional regulation, such as the prefrontal cortex and the limbic systemSubstance abuse
Many of these issues can be addressed, and one of the best ways of doing so is with mindfulness.
Why Mindfulness Helps With Impulsive Behavior
We mostly act impulsively when we are unaware: unaware of the thoughts and feelings that are silently controlling us. Hell, as someone with BPD I spent years of my life at the mercy of my feelings and even as a teen one night impulsively walked twelve miles in the pitch black to be with a girl I’d hopelessly fallen in love with (one of the more comical moments of impulsivity in my life).
But yes, by making us more aware, mindfulness can help. It trains us to be less reactive to our thoughts and feelings, which in turn gives us conscious control of our actions. It also helps us to stay calm, which reduces issues like comfort eating and stress drinking. Plus, it improves our concentration so we can tune out distractions, and makes us more compassionate, which leads to patience.
I remember before I started meditating (twenty years ago) I would often have emotional outbursts (as someone with BPD controlling my emotions is a challenge, one that took me years to master). After a couple of months of meditation I gained much greater self control, which helped me to curb certain emotion-based habits like smoking when I was stressed. Now twenty years since I started meditating I have excellent control of my impulses and my life is all the better for it.
I will say that, from my experience, I’ve learned that some forms of meditation are better for curbing our impulses than others, so let’s take a look at those now.
Best Meditations For Impulse Control
When it comes to choosing meditations for impulse control, we want to focus on ones that are either very calming or that increase mind-body awareness. Try the following:
Mindful Breathing: Your quintessential meditation. Focusing on the breath is simply excellent for general relaxation and will help you to be less influenced by cravings and emotions, ultimately making your impulses less powerful.Body Scan Meditation: Often, our impulses manifest as physical sensations. For instance, when I used to smoke I would experience an itch around my fingers that told me I should be holding a cigarette. And when I experienced anger that might lead to an angry outburst, I would feel my fists clenching. Body Scan Meditation makes us more aware of, and less reactive to, our physical sensations, thereby reducing impulsivity.Somatic: Somatic meditation is another technique in which we focus on the body and become aware of physical sensations. The difference between this and body scan is that Somatic meditation is more body-led. Because of that, many people find it more relaxing, and it is also excellent for releasing traumaMindful movement: Mindful Movement exercises such as tai chi and qigong train us to be more conscious of our actions, and as a result, they make us more aware of our impulsive behaviors.
Other Exercises To Control Impulses
Hold on one second: When you feel an urge coming on, take a step back, pause for a second, and consider whether you’re acting in your best interests.Have goals, be motivated: Set very clear goals that are meaningful to you. When you do this you will create the motivation you need to manage your impulses.Delayed gratification: Let yourself have the thing that you want, but delay it. Start by ten minutes, then increase. This will train you to go for longer without acting on your impulses.Use positive self talk: Use affirmations and encouraging self talk to support yourself, such as by saying “I am in control” and “I can power through this”. Try these positive thinking techniques.
