Impulsivity

Here’s the thing, I have a friend, called impulsivity. I met this friend through my relationship with depression, anxiety, and an attention disorder. Me and impulsivity go way back, in fact as far back as I remember we’ve always had a strained relationship.

This friend is always around, especially when I am stressed, overwhelmed, or have strong negative and conflicting emotions. I cannot get rid of this friend, impulsivity and I will probably have a relationship for life. He is not a good friend to have if you already have poor emotional coping skills.
When I am angry sad or scared he tells me to go into action right now, no right now, RIGHT NOW! so I can feel better. As someone who represses emotions this activity creates a problem. If I suppress how I’m feeling then impulsivity comes up with strong tempting suggestions like, go drink, eat a piece of cake, hey! how about a chocolate bar and a big ol bag of Doritos… Because we don’t want to feel like like this do we?.

I come from a long line of addicts, I know I exhibit addictive behavior, so rather than getting hooked on alcohol and drugs, I gave myself permission to eat away my problems, it’s just food right, we need that in order to survive and compared to drugs and alcohol it’s pretty cheap (and plentiful!). I used to exercise, excessively, obsessively, in fact I hit all the criteria for and eating disorder when I was a teen.

I’m working on my relationship with impulsivity, I think that he and I can have a healthy relationship if I can only learn how to stop suppressing my emotions and recognize when this friend is encouraging me to make strong split second decisions. He just wants me to take action and feel better, but perhaps if I connect with him on a deeper level we can come to an understanding that self medicating is not the answer