Ah, yes. Impulse control. One of the functions that I can rely on worst in my neurodivergence.

There are a lot of issues where this is a severe obstacle in my daily life and routines. And most of it is due to the lack of dopamine and noradrenaline when you mist need it. Then overwhelm and anxiety, feelings of ineptitude and depressions take their way and the way to procrastination and bad habits is opened up.

I have dealt with this topic a lot before and after I have been diagnosed with ADHD or my decision to quit drinking. Today I know that alcohol is not the trigger of most of the bad developments, but rather a cumulation of all the overwhelming aspects of an undiagnosed ADHD.

Yes, I have come a long way, and, yes, I have made a lot of progress regarding my self efficacy, self worth and identity.

Yet there are some things that still haunt me and disturb me a lot, up to the point of catastrophising and questioning the very fabric of my being.

Luckily, I have been very successful in building up resilience and resources.

But this one thing evades my resources and resilience more than once in a while:

Impulse control.

I will not go too deep into when and where I lack impulse control, let’s just say it is especially in stressful times and in moments I tend to overestimate my resilience only to take a nose dive into the deep, dark abyss, and then it takes me a lot of effort to come back to the emotional balance I have been and still am establishing and sustaining as of today.

I think the easiest and most straightforward solution is to finally have a word with my therapist about medication. Despite all the prophets of doom claiming that medication is bad and will only make the Pharma-industry richer, I have made up my mind about it.

There are, of course, a lot of other possibilities that I am familiar with, but also which I have to dig deeper into:

I guess one thing very important is to recognize situations and the build up of lacking dopamine and the urge to procrastinate. I think, in combination with emotion surfing, which gives me a clear orientation of my actual state of being as well as the breath to let the feeling of ineptitude pass. To recognize the threshold or tipping point it is worthwhile to sense not only the exact point where it actually tips, but also the process. There is some literature of emotional activation levels that helps a lot in this regard. Dr. Dutschmann, a German psychiatrist, has a lot of interesting reads about this.

Next, visualizing the problem and drawing in certain stops will be helpful, of which I am still not quite sure what will work. Certainly a timer, visualization, breathing techniques and meditation will help.

I think the read of Atomic Habits by James Clear will be helpful again, with a different focus. The first time I focused on “abstinence”. Now it’s time to focus on “impulse control”.

This should be an interesting trip.

I’ll let you know about the progress.

Until then, take one step at a time and keep up the faith in yourself.