April 23, 2025 • 43 mins
Ever found yourself thinking, "Why did I just do that?"
In this episode, Renee breaks down how impulsive behavior is deeply connected to ADHD for many women — and why it’s not just about being "distracted" or "hyperactive"
You’ll learn:
✨ A lesser-known type of ADHD that might sound familiar
🧠 How ADHD shows up differently depending on the situation
🔍 The brain science behind ADHD, explained in simple terms
⚡ 3 types of impulsivity that impact everyday life
💬 Common myths about ADHD and dopamine
🌀 Why some tasks feel nearly impossible (and it’s not just procrastination)
💖 A compassionate, positivie outlook on neurodiversity
Whether you have ADHD or love someone who does, this episode will help you understand the why behind impulsive actions — and how to support yourself with more kindness.
👉 If this episode hits home, subscribe for more ADHD content, leave a 5 star review, and share this video with someone who needs it.
💬 Send me a message and let me know your most “impulsive ADHD moment”
— I’d love to hear from you!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with Renee Allen.
No, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
I think it's easier for me to say when I'm just doing audio.
When I see myself on the camera, it is a little bit
distracting. But. Welcome, welcome to the podcast.
(00:50):
Today my son's coming home. During his break he, I record
in this room where he sleeps. So when he comes home it was never
his room cuz we moved here after he had graduated.
But I'm getting my recording done last second, which
is perfect because I'm talking about impulsivity and
(01:10):
just the irregular ways we may do things if we
have that part of adhd, and I definitely do.
So I feel like people talk more about the
inattentive part of ADHD or the hyperactive part
of ADHD more than the impulsiveness, the
(01:32):
impulsivity, the definitions or the types.
The categories of ADHD are actually four types.
It depends on which website you look at.
I think I was looking at the Cleveland Clinic website, which
is really good, has really good information on adhd, but I was
looking at a few and I think it was saying there
(01:52):
were four types. But there's the attention deficit type,
there is the hyperactive impulsive type, which sometimes people
say hyperactivity type or impulsivity type.
And then there is the combined type that you have
both of those impacting you with your adhd.
(02:16):
There's a fourth type which is basically saying
there aren't enough symptoms to put you in
either of those types or any of the three
types. And so they just say it's. What
do they call it here, an unspecified presentation.
(02:39):
So you do have some severe symptoms of ADHD that
interfere with your daily life, but your symptoms don't meet
the official criteria for, for the three types.
So they call it unspecified adhd. That's the first time
I heard of it. But I thought I'd let you know in
case you think, well, I went to my doctor and he said
(03:02):
I didn't have either of them, but I definitely have these symptoms.
And there could be other reasons you're not diagnosed, but that
could be one of them. So you could always ask about that.
But it's interesting because, you know, in the world of Internet,
the world of TikTok, I don't really watch TikTok.
Do you watch TikTok? Look at TikTok, whatever, whatever the lingo
is these days. I don't really look at TikTok very often
(03:24):
unless my daughter sends me something or when Taylor Swift was
still doing live performances. Sometimes I go in there and watch,
but. And I go back and watch the concert that we
saw, the Tampa second night where we got the lover
Sky. So proud of that. Anyway, back to TikTok.
Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts. I see a
(03:48):
lot of ADHD videos that show, you know, like,
neurotypical person leaving their house, just walking out
the door. This one kind of made me sad because I see.
I see myself way too much in this one.
But the neurotypical person, my husband walking out the door,
or at least the person without ADHD walking out the door.
(04:11):
And then the ADHD person, you know, like, where's my keys?
You know, like, you're. You're tapping every part of your body,
or this was a man in this video, but you're looking through your
person, you know, like, do I have this?
Do I have that? Wait, did I grab my keys?
I got everything else, you know, and they're in your hand or
they're on the table or whatever. Every day of my life, that.
That is me checking. Sometimes I have it all with me,
(04:34):
sometimes I don't. So there's. There are those kind of videos.
They're also the ones that, I mean, I'm just putting them into
categories because I always have my pet peeves of videos I
watch, and that's probably why I don't go to Instagram or TikTok
very often. But the other one is telling us something really
specific about ADHD or having an opinion.
(04:56):
And the one that I saw yesterday was, ADHD is not awesome.
Because there are people who say that ADHD is awesome.
Or there might be a website that's like, ADHD is awesome to help
kids not feel bad about themselves, or maybe
help us feel more positive that there are some perks.
(05:17):
There are some positives. For me, there's a lot of
things that are comical about it. Just the crazy things.
Every day I think, oh, I should write these down and talk about
them, because. But there's so many. I can't even keep track of
them, of the things that I spill, the things that drop out of
my hands, the things that I trip over.
The. The moments, you know, like, where you think, okay,
(05:40):
I'm so on top of it. I have my water bottle.
I have so many water bottles. I have handles.
Okay, hydro flask. If you can see this handle, so
it's not so big, it doesn't hurt your hand and you don't drop
it as much. Or that if you don't put the lid
on all the way all the time I get to yoga and
my bag is soaking wet. And I don't know how many times
(06:01):
I brought my bag home and had to open up my wallet and dry
everything out and. Yeah, okay, so all those things are frustrating
but comical. But, you know, the ADHD is
hard. And I agree. I've had hard moments
today with adhd, but I still feel positive about
(06:21):
it because knowing what I'm dealing with helps me when
it's hard, helps me understand, it helps me see what's
happening. And I am surprised that each
week I am still learning things that I think I didn't realize
I did that and. Or I thought maybe I did
it a few times. I didn't know. I do it so often.
(06:44):
You know, the things that other people see about adhd, the other
videos that I see are the ones that say things like.
And I know they. They say things that will catch your attention.
They call them the hook. You say something that makes somebody
stop the scroll and watch. Yeah, you say when
(07:05):
you see that. And one of them is, why do they
call it a disorder? You know, like, that is awful to tell
us that we have a disorder. Or why is it.
Why do they say it's. We don't have attention, you know, attention
deficit. We pay attention to a lot of things.
So they're taking a little bit of that ADHD title, group
(07:30):
name, whatever you want to call it. However, the psychiatrists,
whoever it was that came, came up with this.
This catar. Categorization. Categorization.
And they. It's. It's the DSM Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual. So that would be a DSM
(07:51):
of mental disorders. So that is a big book.
Or if it's an actual book, it probably is it where
the psychiatrists at some point have defined all.
All these mental disorders, personality disorders, neurodiver,
neuro. Now I can't even think of it.
(08:14):
Neurodivergent. Is that what this is?
Yeah, Neurodevelopmental. That's what ADHD is.
It's in the category of neurodevelopmental.
It wasn't something that developed after you were born.
It was something that developed as your brain was forming.
And one of the things that they look for when they
(08:36):
are doing a diagnosis or when you're seeking
to get diagnosed is the psychiatrist, whoever your doctor
is, or. I don't know if therapists diagnose.
I know there are many people who do.
They look for how it showed up in childhood.
(08:58):
They say that to have it be a neurodevelopmental disorder,
ADHD. You see symptoms before the age of
12, and most commonly they start between the ages
of 3 and 6, which I find is super interesting because I
just read that today. So now I want to sit and think,
(09:18):
okay, what do I remember from ages 3 to 6?
I remember nothing from age 3. So this is an ADHD
thing where once. So, you know, we go down the rabbit hole
of, you know, being curious about something and then spending
a lot of time looking into it or deciding you want
to buy a present for your cousin and spending three days
(09:39):
researching which one should be the best, or going to different
stores and tracking things down. Who knows?
Whatever it is that you go down the rabbit hole in, I do
that with my curiosity. And so age three, don't
remember. No memories of age three? Age four.
I have memories. I started kindergarten when I was four,
(09:59):
almost five. And I do remember the
first day of school. And I do remember that my kindergarten teacher
told me I asked to go to the bathroom all the time because I
didn't like to sit still. I didn't know that then.
And, yeah, I do have to go to the bathroom a lot, but that could
be a pattern I developed because I didn't want to stay in my
(10:19):
room. And maybe that's it. My mom
told me I was wiggly when my kids were super wiggly.
She goes, you were wiggly? And I thought, I never knew I was
wiggly as a child. You don't know if you're wiggly unless people
tell you to stop wiggling. And I mostly remember my grandma
telling me not to, you know, jump on the bed and plop down
on the couch. But, you know, so that would be a more impulsive
(10:41):
way of doing, a more active way of doing it.
My one brother, who was. Everyone said he was hyperactive.
No one said he had adhd, but we all know now
he did for sure. But he was always jumping off the couch.
And he and I, I always knew we were the most alike
in so many ways. I did cartwheels, back bends, back
(11:05):
walkovers, randomly, without announcing through the house.
Once I learned how to do that kind of stuff, I did it at PE
Not PE Just like out on the playground with my friends.
We'd run and jump and do diving somersaults, and, you know, no
gymnastics training at all, just on the hard grass in the playground.
And then, yeah, I kicked my mom in the
(11:25):
head once with. With an impulsive cartwheel in the house
because I just thought, I'll do a cartwheel.
You know, I wasn't thinking about it.
And it didn't seem strange to me. My.
Do you know where the salt flats are?
I don't know if you've ever been in.
I don't know if it's in Nevada or Utah.
It's probably in Utah, but we would drive i80 from Nevada to
(11:46):
Utah. And I guess it's in Utah. And there are salt
flats and they're. And they're white and they're beautiful.
Any picture you take out there is so pretty and so pretty.
Everyone looks good when they take pictures in the snow.
But it's not snow. But it's salt. But anyway, of course, I
had to try. This is like, as a mom of six, we were out
there with our kids on a road trip and my husband took a video
(12:07):
of me doing a carpet. Well, because I had to see what it was
like. I do cartwheels at the beach. I had to see what
it was like to do cartwheel on the salt flats.
And it kind of hurts your hands. It's crackly and hard.
It hurts. But so anyway, he took a video.
My husband doesn't talk nearly as much as I do, but he
narrated and said something like, this is
(12:31):
what it's like being married to Renee.
Which I thought was funny. Yeah, because, you know, I.
To me, that's not weird to do cartwheels impulsively.
But, you know, that's because I'm hyperactive.
So. Do you have any of the hyperactive, impulsive parts?
You might not think you have the hyperactive.
Maybe you weren't wiggly when you were little.
(12:53):
Maybe you knew how to sit still. When my kids were
little, I was in awe and shocked, you know, all
of the above with families at church whose children sat
still. Because my children were not that.
My grandchildren are not that depending on the grandchild,
(13:13):
but. And I do have at least three grandchildren.
Three grandchildren with adhd. Well, two diagnosed, but three
for sure. So anyway, we can all. We're
not supposed to diagnose other people, but we can observe.
So, okay, so the hyperactive, impulsive type.
I have the combined. I have the attention deficit type and the
(13:35):
hyperactive impulsive type. And, yeah, people get, like, up
in the arms about. I keep doing this to my hair.
I'm sorry, I gotta apologize to all you audio people because
my hair looks so flat, like, in real life.
I don't feel like it is. Maybe it really is.
Did I see it in a picture or, you know, like, I'll
go get my hair cut and I'll go, oh, it's so cute.
(13:57):
And they straighten it and everything.
And it looks like it has body. And then I'll go home
and say, someone take picture. And it looks like this looks like
she just painted on. So anyway, so, okay, I'm going
to try not to look at myself. Okay, back to the hyperactive,
impulsive type. So let's talk about some of these things, because
(14:17):
even if you're not diagnosed with this type, you're only diagnosed
with attention deficit type. You may have some of these symptoms,
but not enough of them to have a diagnosis with
them. You might have some of them, but not enough because there
are a certain number that they want you to have.
Mine was very. And they'll give you like a severe
(14:37):
moderate. I need to go back and look at the notes.
I do know that my doctor in the first visit said I was hyperverbal,
which made me laugh. See, ADHD can be fun.
Like, it may not be awesome, but it can be funny that your doctor
calls you hyperverbal. And I decided because I could,
you know. Okay, I'm going to talk about this a little bit too,
because there are different kinds of impulsivity.
(14:58):
Some of them are without forethought.
Some are them with a struggle to stop
an impulse. So you're trying to hold it in.
So there must be some thought there.
And then there's some that, like, you're really making a choice.
There's three names for these, but I feel like I have
(15:19):
all three. But I do have the awareness at
times with the talking and the. Not always, but I
do notice other people's faces because I'm so sensitive to other
people's emotions and stuff and the looks that they have.
And I do notice when they're not interested in hearing
what I have to say. But I've decided, and I want you
(15:41):
to feel comfortable with this, too, that when I go to the
psychiatrist and I have to go every, I don't know, three
months in the state that I live in, in order to get the stimulants,
you have to see the doctor either on video or in person
every three months to continue getting your medication because
it's controlled substance. So I tried the video and
(16:02):
that's fine. But I felt like I wasn't really connecting with
this last resident and I didn't like him as much and I
don't think he got me. So I finally went in, mostly because I
was supposed to. They said after a year, you have to go in.
So I did, and we got along much better.
But I decided that I am paying them.
So they have to listen to me if I want to be chatty.
Because. Because it's important for a psychiatrist.
(16:25):
It is important for the doctor to understand the ADHD patient.
And if I am really controlling myself, those impulses,
and I can, but sometimes it's not as fun.
And I like to connect with people, so I think I'm paying them,
therefore, they get to see full display of ADHD
patient. And. And that should be fine.
(16:47):
So that's my new. That's my new stance.
Instead of, like, feeling bad about it, I'm like, no.
You know, like, if they had somebody come in who had depression,
they would expect to have them behave as somebody with depression.
So if they come in and they know I'm coming in with a flaming
case of adhd, they can. They can get that.
So, anyway, okay, back to the adhd. So adhd, the
(17:12):
frontal lobe of the brain. I am not a doctor.
I am not a scientist. My son is majoring in
neuroscience. I need to ask him about this when he comes home
tonight because he's flying across the country right now.
But I'm curious about this frontal lobe.
I know there's executive function there.
I know there's a lot of wiring that determines how we
(17:34):
do things. And one is how we direct our attention.
So those who are up in arms and trying to get that hook
on their video to say, it's not an attention disorder,
it's not an inability. Well, this is what I learned
today, is that with ADHD directed attention, so
(17:56):
it is harder to have directed attention.
I'm only getting this out of the way so we can talk about hyperactivity
and impulsivity because, you know, we gotta get the questions
out of the mind so we can focus on something else.
But it's harder for them to use directed attention.
And directed attention is the ability to focus on something that
you find very interesting. So if you are talking to
(18:17):
somebody, they are not very interesting.
There's a TV show on. It is not very interesting.
Your teacher's talking about a subject I didn't used to like.
History. My dad said history is my favorite subject.
And I thought, so boring. At some point, like
when I actually saw it as a story and I'd see movies, you know,
(18:38):
I was in the days of the 8 millimeter videos that came
in. They weren't videos. 8 millimeter film and film strip.
So we didn't really have good media.
But if I could watch a movie or read a book, like all
the books about World War II, then I was able to
focus on it because I found it interesting.
(18:59):
But directed attention is the ability to focus on something that
you don't find very interesting. People who don't have that
wiring problem of ADHD can tune into things that
aren't as interesting. They can tune in better or more easily
than those us who have that. But when we find
(19:20):
things interesting, we can get all kinds of
things done. And that's where we do that.
Like I'm going down the rabbit hole, I'm hyper focusing.
Because we can do that way, way, way, way, way
better. So that's, let's, that's just out of that.
So it takes a lot of energy to use directed attention when you
(19:41):
don't have that, that frontal lobe functioning.
And let's just skip past that. So back to inattentive.
Inattentive, no, back to hyperactive, impulsive, adhd.
So a lot of times they just kind of talk about what
it's like in children because it's very easy to see with children.
(20:03):
Some can sit still, some can't. What about adults?
What could be a way that the
hyperactive could show up in an adult, the impulsive can
show up in an adult. Well, one could be saying
things without thinking, just shouting things out, blurting things
(20:25):
out.
And you didn't even realize you did it.
Somebody is talking and you just interrupt them.
Somebody's talking and you're just chiming in with things like
yes, I know, I remember that all you're doing,
you're not trying to take the attention away from them.
You are just so engaged, you don't even know you're
(20:47):
talking. That is that impulsivity. Without forethought, you're
just, you're just doing it. You're just doing it one time.
Okay. My kids love to talk about this
and I actually find it funny too. I don't like the stories, the
family stories where everyone finds it funny but me.
And it's about me, but this one I found funny.
(21:09):
But we were at the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk and it's
an amusement park that's on the beach.
Like the old fashioned boardwalks from the 1920s.
I don't know when it was built actually, maybe even earlier.
But they have an old roller coaster, giant dipper and
everything. It's really fun. So this was a period of my life
when I was eating very, very healthy, all whole foods.
(21:31):
And the more you eat just whole foods, the more
healthy food looks so good. And I've even done it
to the point of mostly eating raw foods or all raw Foods.
And I remember going to the zoo with my kids once and seeing,
you know, how, like, they'll have, like, lettuce and, you know,
the vegetarian stuff in a dish for, like, the.
(21:51):
Not monkeys. Who would be a vegetarian animal?
I don't know, but they have that. And I remember looking at that
and thinking, that looks good, you know, so.
And I'm not even a salad person. I'm not.
But that looks good. So we were at the.
We were at the boardwalk one night, and it was.
We would go on Monday nights because it was.
It was like a dollar a ride. It was dollar night or something.
(22:14):
So everything was a dollar. It was like a soda, Pepsi, hot dogs,
rides, a dollar a ride. So we would go on dollar a
night on Mondays because, you know, all the tourists were gone.
So we could go and we live 15 minutes away.
And so we were there. And I don't know, my husband's getting.
So I'm just standing there. I'm not going to order a hot dog,
you know, because I'm eating, like, the healthy foods and stuff.
I'm not even drawn to that. I don't even like the smell of any
(22:36):
of those things. But I walk by the little kind
of counter area. It's like around a box
or something, and there's a little counter there where people
can bring the paper tray that they're given.
You know, it's not really a plate with their hot dog in it.
And they can put ketchup, mustard, relish, whatever on it.
(23:00):
There was one of those little. What are they called?
They're like a rectangular little dish that had raw onions
in it. Just chopped up raw onions. And I
walked up to it and I said, mmm. And I picked
some up and I put the onions in my mouth and I started
eating them. And I was just like, these are so good.
(23:22):
And my kids were just horrified. They're like, mom, those aren't
yours. And there was somebody over to the side that
it was their onions to put on their hot dog.
And I didn't. I didn't even think about it before that was in
my mouth. I did not think about it. So I.
It was a swift action without forethought or conscious judgment.
(23:42):
That was. That was that. And. Ooh, my brain.
I think, oh, gosh, I'm going to have an alarm go off because
it's getting close to needing to go.
But, yeah, so you might actually say
something. You might even actually do something.
If you've ever been in your house and you know your brain's going
all over the place. Because you're like, I gotta do this, I gotta
(24:03):
do that. And then you go, oh, I need to do this.
Or like you're running water in the bathtub, but then you go
in the other room to cook something, and then you go, oh, the
bathtub. And then you run back to turn the water off, but you're.
You're not really thinking. You're acting before your brain
is really engaged. And so you trip over something because you're
(24:25):
going faster than your brain is processing what's going on.
Like, you leap. Have you ever leaped in your house left and
tripped or ran into something and have bruises because of that?
I have. And I know a lot of times I come on here
and I think, I might be the only person doing this, and it feels
kind of stupid. But, yeah, I do it all the time.
(24:45):
I just leap across something like, oh, I need to
do that. Or, oh, my goodness, I forgot I had something on the
stove. You know, so it's a combined ADHD reaction.
It's. Sometimes it's, you know, like, oh, no.
Like a disaster can happen if I don't hurry.
But other times it's just like, I should go do that.
And I hop across something. I'm just.
My body goes faster than it should be.
(25:10):
And yeah, so you could do that even on Easter
morning. So happy Easter to anyone who celebrates Easter or just
loves Easter. But on Easter morning, I waited till.
I mean, I spent three hours doing cooking, pre Cooking stuff
for dinner. And then it was time to put on
my makeup and put on a dress and go to church.
And so I knew I could do it fast enough, and
(25:33):
I was doing it. But then the shoes I decided to wear, which
I didn't need to wear, but I decided to wear them, were
sandals. And I thought, well, you never to paint your toenails
anymore. You should paint your toenails.
It's Easter. And there could be another 10
minutes. I never paint my toenails anymore, but I'll just leave
it at that for right now. So usually I'll sit down.
(25:57):
Painting my toenails would be a relaxing thing.
And going get a pedicure would even be more relaxing.
But I kind of just don't have time for that anymore.
So I go into the bathroom really quickly, open
up, look for the toenail polish. That's the insta dry, The Sally
Hansen insta dry. Because I think, yeah, it won't last, but at
least I'll just put it on really fast because I am in a hurry.
(26:20):
So this is an impulsive decision. I knew what I was doing.
I didn't trip on the way to the drawer.
I didn't slam my finger or anything.
I didn't drop anything, break anything, which is actually a miracle
because usually that kind of thing will happen.
But I, I leaned over, I didn't
even see it on the ground. And I love sitting on the ground,
so usually that's my go to fit. I, I leaned over and I
(26:40):
am just painting my toenails so fast.
So fast that it would look like my grandson had
done it. I mean it was just like the toe and everything.
But I didn't have time. It was so impulsive.
It so such a crazed behavior that I was like
committed to it. And in my mind I knew you don't have to
wear those sandals. You can wear closed toed shoes.
(27:02):
You don't even have to have your toenails painted.
I'm at the age where I think no one is looking at you that much.
No one cares what you look like.
But I did it. And then I grabbed some fingernail polish
remover and a little paper towel and I thought
my husband's going to hate it if I try to take clean this up
in the car. Cause he would hate the smell.
(27:23):
But he ended up not wanting to wait for me.
So I rode with my daughter and I just said sorry, but I have
to do this. And I was really careful.
I didn't spill any in her car cause she has leather seats and
stuff. But anyway, I just knew as I was doing it.
This is totally impulsive. This is stupid.
It's not pre planned. It's not a good choice to try to
squeeze this in when you need to get there on time.
Because I was leading the children in a song and I needed to
(27:45):
get there to get the visuals and stuff.
I knew it wasn't a wise choice, but the impulse was
so strong. Strong to wear those shoes and paint my toenails
that. Yeah, it's kind of lame. But anyway.
Oh my goodness, stop reminding me. I should turn off
my reminder. Sorry about that. But yeah.
(28:07):
So I'm just going to tell you these because obviously I'm on
a time crunch. But there's three kinds of impulsive
behavior. The first one, they call it self report.
I have no idea why, it doesn't make sense to me.
But it's the acting first. They call it an inability to think.
And I guess that's it. I think of it as I'm not thinking first,
(28:27):
but I guess I'm unable to think of it first because
I act so quickly, do something like, you
know, someone has a mosquito on their face and I slap
their face or something. You know, that'd be like slapping without
thinking, is this appropriate? So it's just making an action
with your body, with your words, without thinking about it
(28:51):
first, unable to think about it. The other one is having
some kind of action in you. So they call it not being
able to withhold a response. So. And I
don't know that everybody else even wants this response, but
if I am sitting in a meeting, if I'm sitting in
a zoom call, all I want to do is move my
(29:15):
body. All I want to do is change how I'm sitting.
But I'm so aware of everyone else and so afraid that's going
to be distracting that it just builds up inside of me.
So
you have this bursting feeling. And as a child, you probably
don't have that bursting feeling as much.
As a child, you're probably just more doing it.
(29:35):
You're probably just like thinking, I want to get up
and move, I want to get up and move.
So maybe you are thinking about it first.
My youngest son did this a lot. He'd get out of his chair and
he'd go do something and the teacher would get mad at him, especially
if he did it out of curiosity, because a lot of times he was
curious about something in the room and would want to touch it,
feel it, investigate it, see how it was made and figure
(29:58):
that out, which was definitely a learning experience.
You know, you're at school to learn.
So he was. His brain was thinking, but he wasn't participating
in the classroom in a way that he should.
So you are thinking about it, but you still don't
contain yourself. And the first one,
the self reporting, the acting first, the not thinking, the
(30:24):
study that I read, and this is like the National Health, you
know, they have a website where they kind of tell the studies.
It's where they study all these illnesses and diseases
and things. And this is with the impulsive.
But the first one, they just said that they've done most of their
studies on people with addictions and so impulsivity, they're
(30:46):
studying more because. Not because that person has adhd, but
because they have an addiction. And if you think
about it, when you see somebody who's really strung out on drugs,
not that I have a lot of experience with that, but it can
be scary because they are not in control of their bodies.
So they're not thinking, they're unable to think, and their bodies
(31:08):
can be powerful. And scary and do things that are dangerous,
you know, so you just think, oh, that person, you know, like,
I gotta, you know, be careful. You can see it in
their eyes. So that's somebody who's under the influence of
something that's causing that. So they study people with addictions
to see what's happening to them, what brain structure and
(31:30):
function is happening for that kind, for the not being
able to hold a response. But thinking about it, that
is a serotonin function problem in the brain.
And it's interesting because they said that amphetamine.
They study how amphetamines, which is one of the medications,
(31:52):
the stimulants that people use with adhd, how
that helps.
I don't know that because I do take stimulants.
I don't know that it helps me at all with that need
to move, to do things, to talk more.
(32:13):
I haven't noticed medication helping me with that at all.
In fact, I would say when I go to teach
yoga, when I take the medication right before, I feel like
my need to talk is greater, I feel like it's greater.
So I don't know what I mean. Maybe that is because you don't
see energy, but the serotonin. So the serotonin levels has something
to do with that second kind of impulsive behavior.
(32:35):
The third one is called choice impulsivity.
And that is an inability to make a
choice that's logical. That's how I would say it.
But it's an inability to delay gratification for a
larger payout. So this is the eating a snack instead
of waiting for dinner, eating the sugar, because you just
(32:58):
need to have something that tastes good fast.
And you don't want to make something that takes longer or go
to the store and get things. So. Or even if somebody just says,
you know, dinner's in an hour, you want to.
You're not able to make a really balanced decision.
You're not able to have that control to delay the gratification.
(33:20):
One of the things that I've seen is I do that a
lot with my haircuts. And that might sound weird, but I don't
ever want to wait for a haircut. And so if I think
I want to get my hair cut, that's I need to make
an appointment that's going to be in two weeks.
I think if I. If I have the desire to do it, I want to
do it now. And so I'll do things like go
(33:44):
in the bathroom and start climbing my bangs or cut the back
or whatever. And last Month. I actually did make an appointment
because I wanted to do some highlights.
I don't know if you can see me here.
Wanted to do some highlights, too, but that appointment was a
month away. So I waited and waited. And I had cut
my hair right before that. But I thought, you go and you get
(34:04):
it. Get a decent haircut and look back.
You know, look into getting highlights, see if that helps you
at all. It was like four days before
I got this impulse to go get my hair cut and to
clean up the bangs and the back that I didn't do right, that
I'd been dealing with for, like, three weeks and didn't even
care. But for whatever reason, that impulse came, it was
(34:28):
so strong, I couldn't get myself to wait.
So I go to the cheapo place where I can get one that
night. It was such a good lesson and
a bad experience. It was such a good lesson on wasting.
Wasting money on something that I had to clean up.
It was bad. It was really bad. The bangs were so.
(34:52):
So short and crooked, and I'm still kind
of dealing with it. In fact, when I actually went in for the
haircut, she said, do you want me to ignore the bangs?
I thought, no, because I cleaned them up.
And I want him. I want to, you know, like, if I'm
paying you, I want it to be nice. And so I had to start
short. And they're starting to grow out, but they're still shorter
than what I would do. But that was my total choice impulsivity.
(35:15):
I could not make a wise choice because I'd have to wait
to make a wise choice. And if you've ever done that,
you spent more money than you should, you've not gone to
bed when you know you should, you know, it's better for your
health, you know, tomorrow morning. But the impulsive nature
to. But I. I got things I want to do.
(35:37):
I'm. I'm happy. Like, I'm not tired.
I'm. Da, da, da, da. You know, whatever.
You're not making a wise decision because you have
the impulse to do what you're doing right now.
I. I see it with the sleeping things.
I think having more control to go to sleep when it's
good for your body is a very balanced decision.
(35:58):
And if you're that gratification of happiness in the morning,
you're like, but I'm happy now. I'm watching this TV show.
I can't wait till, you know, to finish it later, whatever it
is. So not wanting to slow down. And this one,
they say it has to do with your dopamine pathways, so it has
to do with the receptors and, you know, how.
(36:18):
Which, okay, this is the last thing I'm going to say because
I really do have to go. But the dopamine levels.
I don't know if I mentioned this last time, but when I went to
the psychiatrist last time, he said that.
That not being able to do something when you're overwhelmed is
more of a procrastination problem than an ADHD problem.
And I thought, what? Like, that's what everyone gets up in
(36:42):
arms. Like, I'm okay with getting up in arms about that.
When people are with ADHD are accused as just being procrastinators
or lazy. He didn't say the word lazy, but he said, that's
more of a case of procrastination. I thought, well, yeah, a procrastination.
Procrastination is the description of what you're doing,
but it's not the reason for what you're doing, why you're
(37:03):
doing it. And. And I said, you know, and so I
tried to do the smooth thing where I'm questioning him or challenging
him with questions, I guess, is that what.
What I mean, instead of saying, you can't say that.
And I just said, well, I've always thought that, because I was
told that with low dopamine levels that you don't have
(37:25):
the ability to, you know, to kind of step
up, to make that little push to get things done
in the same way as people who don't have the low dopamine, who
don't have the adhd. And that with the stimulant, with a
different kind of medication, it brings up the dopamine, which
for me totally works. That's where my power is with the
(37:47):
stimulant, is with the dopamine levels going up.
And then he said. He said people with ADHD
don't necessarily have low dopamine.
They have more receptors. I'm like, you're blowing my mind
right now. So I have to go down. And I didn't have anything to
challenge that because I hadn't read into that.
I had always read that we have low dopamine.
(38:08):
And so when I went back, it still,
it made sense what he said, because if you have more receptors,
your. Your amount of dopamine isn't feeling the need
in your brain
to do what dopamine does because it has more receptors.
(38:30):
And so even though you. I guess what he was saying is you
have the same amount of dopamine as other people, but you have
more receptors, so your brain's not going to work well unless
all the receptors are receiving the dopamine and you don't have
enough. Even though. Does that make sense?
You don't have enough dopamine to meet all those
needs. So it's kind of like I have six
(38:51):
kids, and they're not home anymore. I mean, a couple of
them are home, but they're all adults now.
But I have six kids. It's like saying you have the same amount
of food in your fridge, but you have six kids to feed instead
of two, so you know, it's not going
to go as far. It's not going to meet the same needs.
So, anyway, I thought that was fascinating, but.
But I'm just going to leave you with that.
(39:11):
There are so many symptoms. There are so many ways.
Oh, my goodness, I really do have to go.
I have to teach class in 50 minutes.
This is another example of the impulsive thing.
It's like all day long, you knew you needed to do this, and I
did, but I had somebody coming over.
I had a dentist appointment. And so fitting it in.
It's way more fun in my brain to do it impulsively.
(39:33):
Like, let's see if you can go up and make a podcast episode right
before your class and then run down and put on your shoes
and. And just submit it later, which I'll do.
I just knew I had to do it before dark because now that I'm doing
on video, you have to see me better.
And my son's coming on the plane tonight.
But anyway, back to this. Yeah. So many things that
you could do that you notice in children.
(39:54):
You know, like, you might be fidgety, you might have your hand
flap, your foot flap. Mind you, my feet are always going.
Or your knees going. You get up when you're supposed to stay
seated. You want to walk around. You have a hard time choosing
where to sit. You can't. You know, like, you're.
You're restless.
You might not be as quiet as people.
It's kind of funny because one of the descriptions of ADHD is
(40:17):
that these things are. With a neurodevelopmental disorder, is
that things that you're doing aren't typical for
people your age. And I go to the bank, and I
see myself in line, swaying and moving, and nobody else
is doing that, you know, moving my arms up and down.
You know, not people my age. But it's not like I'm going to grow
(40:39):
into that. You know, you want to jump, you want to run.
You want to sway. You want to change how you're
sitting 100 times. You might interrupt people or chime in, as
I like to say. You know, both can happen.
You might talk more than other people.
You might finish people's sentences.
That's a hard one. It's a hard one not to finish people's sentences
(41:03):
sometimes. So, yeah, any of those things have a
hard time waiting in line. You'd rather not do something
than wait in line for it. I've left stores many times because
there's a line. I walk in, I see the line.
I'm like, nope, not today. And I just.
I think of it as patience thing, but it's an impulsivity thing.
(41:23):
It's a hyperactive thing. And, yeah, I could look at his impatience,
too, but, yeah, but it's okay. It's how
we're wired, and we can learn to work with it.
And hopefully people in our lives can learn to work with it,
too. Like, I've been working with my.
I've been holding my hair back all the time.
It's what I do. I play with my hair.
I can French wave my hair from the. Can you do that?
(41:43):
I learned how to do that in math class.
I learned to French frame the person in front of me and then
how to do my own, either on the side, side, or here.
Here gave me something to do with my hands, and I
loved it. But I really do have to get out of here.
So thank you for being patient with me, for my timing and all
that. And my son won't be in this room all the time
the next couple days, so I will come up here and continue on
(42:05):
with this because I find it fascinating in looking into this,
just the impulsivity part, the hyperactive part, I also
became curious about other things, and I'd love to share
those with you. I hope you're curious about it, too.
And if you ever have anything that you want to share with
me or questions that you have or more information that I don't
(42:26):
have, I would love to hear it. So thanks so much.
I will be back again. Bye.
(43:07):
Rewind. I've run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with Renee Allen.
No, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
I think it's easier for me to say when I'm just doing audio.
When I see myself on the camera, it is a little bit
distracting. But. Welcome, welcome to the podcast.
(00:50):
Today my son's coming home. During his break he, I record
in this room where he sleeps. So when he comes home it was never
his room cuz we moved here after he had graduated.
But I'm getting my recording done last second, which
is perfect because I'm talking about impulsivity and
(01:10):
just the irregular ways we may do things if we
have that part of adhd, and I definitely do.
So I feel like people talk more about the
inattentive part of ADHD or the hyperactive part
of ADHD more than the impulsiveness, the
(01:32):
impulsivity, the definitions or the types.
The categories of ADHD are actually four types.
It depends on which website you look at.
I think I was looking at the Cleveland Clinic website, which
is really good, has really good information on adhd, but I was
looking at a few and I think it was saying there
(01:52):
were four types. But there's the attention deficit type,
there is the hyperactive impulsive type, which sometimes people
say hyperactivity type or impulsivity type.
And then there is the combined type that you have
both of those impacting you with your adhd.
(02:16):
There's a fourth type which is basically saying
there aren't enough symptoms to put you in
either of those types or any of the three
types. And so they just say it's. What
do they call it here, an unspecified presentation.
(02:39):
So you do have some severe symptoms of ADHD that
interfere with your daily life, but your symptoms don't meet
the official criteria for, for the three types.
So they call it unspecified adhd. That's the first time
I heard of it. But I thought I'd let you know in
case you think, well, I went to my doctor and he said
(03:02):
I didn't have either of them, but I definitely have these symptoms.
And there could be other reasons you're not diagnosed, but that
could be one of them. So you could always ask about that.
But it's interesting because, you know, in the world of Internet,
the world of TikTok, I don't really watch TikTok.
Do you watch TikTok? Look at TikTok, whatever, whatever the lingo
is these days. I don't really look at TikTok very often
(03:24):
unless my daughter sends me something or when Taylor Swift was
still doing live performances. Sometimes I go in there and watch,
but. And I go back and watch the concert that we
saw, the Tampa second night where we got the lover
Sky. So proud of that. Anyway, back to TikTok.
Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts. I see a
(03:48):
lot of ADHD videos that show, you know, like,
neurotypical person leaving their house, just walking out
the door. This one kind of made me sad because I see.
I see myself way too much in this one.
But the neurotypical person, my husband walking out the door,
or at least the person without ADHD walking out the door.
(04:11):
And then the ADHD person, you know, like, where's my keys?
You know, like, you're. You're tapping every part of your body,
or this was a man in this video, but you're looking through your
person, you know, like, do I have this?
Do I have that? Wait, did I grab my keys?
I got everything else, you know, and they're in your hand or
they're on the table or whatever. Every day of my life, that.
That is me checking. Sometimes I have it all with me,
(04:34):
sometimes I don't. So there's. There are those kind of videos.
They're also the ones that, I mean, I'm just putting them into
categories because I always have my pet peeves of videos I
watch, and that's probably why I don't go to Instagram or TikTok
very often. But the other one is telling us something really
specific about ADHD or having an opinion.
(04:56):
And the one that I saw yesterday was, ADHD is not awesome.
Because there are people who say that ADHD is awesome.
Or there might be a website that's like, ADHD is awesome to help
kids not feel bad about themselves, or maybe
help us feel more positive that there are some perks.
(05:17):
There are some positives. For me, there's a lot of
things that are comical about it. Just the crazy things.
Every day I think, oh, I should write these down and talk about
them, because. But there's so many. I can't even keep track of
them, of the things that I spill, the things that drop out of
my hands, the things that I trip over.
The. The moments, you know, like, where you think, okay,
(05:40):
I'm so on top of it. I have my water bottle.
I have so many water bottles. I have handles.
Okay, hydro flask. If you can see this handle, so
it's not so big, it doesn't hurt your hand and you don't drop
it as much. Or that if you don't put the lid
on all the way all the time I get to yoga and
my bag is soaking wet. And I don't know how many times
(06:01):
I brought my bag home and had to open up my wallet and dry
everything out and. Yeah, okay, so all those things are frustrating
but comical. But, you know, the ADHD is
hard. And I agree. I've had hard moments
today with adhd, but I still feel positive about
(06:21):
it because knowing what I'm dealing with helps me when
it's hard, helps me understand, it helps me see what's
happening. And I am surprised that each
week I am still learning things that I think I didn't realize
I did that and. Or I thought maybe I did
it a few times. I didn't know. I do it so often.
(06:44):
You know, the things that other people see about adhd, the other
videos that I see are the ones that say things like.
And I know they. They say things that will catch your attention.
They call them the hook. You say something that makes somebody
stop the scroll and watch. Yeah, you say when
(07:05):
you see that. And one of them is, why do they
call it a disorder? You know, like, that is awful to tell
us that we have a disorder. Or why is it.
Why do they say it's. We don't have attention, you know, attention
deficit. We pay attention to a lot of things.
So they're taking a little bit of that ADHD title, group
(07:30):
name, whatever you want to call it. However, the psychiatrists,
whoever it was that came, came up with this.
This catar. Categorization. Categorization.
And they. It's. It's the DSM Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual. So that would be a DSM
(07:51):
of mental disorders. So that is a big book.
Or if it's an actual book, it probably is it where
the psychiatrists at some point have defined all.
All these mental disorders, personality disorders, neurodiver,
neuro. Now I can't even think of it.
(08:14):
Neurodivergent. Is that what this is?
Yeah, Neurodevelopmental. That's what ADHD is.
It's in the category of neurodevelopmental.
It wasn't something that developed after you were born.
It was something that developed as your brain was forming.
And one of the things that they look for when they
(08:36):
are doing a diagnosis or when you're seeking
to get diagnosed is the psychiatrist, whoever your doctor
is, or. I don't know if therapists diagnose.
I know there are many people who do.
They look for how it showed up in childhood.
(08:58):
They say that to have it be a neurodevelopmental disorder,
ADHD. You see symptoms before the age of
12, and most commonly they start between the ages
of 3 and 6, which I find is super interesting because I
just read that today. So now I want to sit and think,
(09:18):
okay, what do I remember from ages 3 to 6?
I remember nothing from age 3. So this is an ADHD
thing where once. So, you know, we go down the rabbit hole
of, you know, being curious about something and then spending
a lot of time looking into it or deciding you want
to buy a present for your cousin and spending three days
(09:39):
researching which one should be the best, or going to different
stores and tracking things down. Who knows?
Whatever it is that you go down the rabbit hole in, I do
that with my curiosity. And so age three, don't
remember. No memories of age three? Age four.
I have memories. I started kindergarten when I was four,
(09:59):
almost five. And I do remember the
first day of school. And I do remember that my kindergarten teacher
told me I asked to go to the bathroom all the time because I
didn't like to sit still. I didn't know that then.
And, yeah, I do have to go to the bathroom a lot, but that could
be a pattern I developed because I didn't want to stay in my
(10:19):
room. And maybe that's it. My mom
told me I was wiggly when my kids were super wiggly.
She goes, you were wiggly? And I thought, I never knew I was
wiggly as a child. You don't know if you're wiggly unless people
tell you to stop wiggling. And I mostly remember my grandma
telling me not to, you know, jump on the bed and plop down
on the couch. But, you know, so that would be a more impulsive
(10:41):
way of doing, a more active way of doing it.
My one brother, who was. Everyone said he was hyperactive.
No one said he had adhd, but we all know now
he did for sure. But he was always jumping off the couch.
And he and I, I always knew we were the most alike
in so many ways. I did cartwheels, back bends, back
(11:05):
walkovers, randomly, without announcing through the house.
Once I learned how to do that kind of stuff, I did it at PE
Not PE Just like out on the playground with my friends.
We'd run and jump and do diving somersaults, and, you know, no
gymnastics training at all, just on the hard grass in the playground.
And then, yeah, I kicked my mom in the
(11:25):
head once with. With an impulsive cartwheel in the house
because I just thought, I'll do a cartwheel.
You know, I wasn't thinking about it.
And it didn't seem strange to me. My.
Do you know where the salt flats are?
I don't know if you've ever been in.
I don't know if it's in Nevada or Utah.
It's probably in Utah, but we would drive i80 from Nevada to
(11:46):
Utah. And I guess it's in Utah. And there are salt
flats and they're. And they're white and they're beautiful.
Any picture you take out there is so pretty and so pretty.
Everyone looks good when they take pictures in the snow.
But it's not snow. But it's salt. But anyway, of course, I
had to try. This is like, as a mom of six, we were out
there with our kids on a road trip and my husband took a video
(12:07):
of me doing a carpet. Well, because I had to see what it was
like. I do cartwheels at the beach. I had to see what
it was like to do cartwheel on the salt flats.
And it kind of hurts your hands. It's crackly and hard.
It hurts. But so anyway, he took a video.
My husband doesn't talk nearly as much as I do, but he
narrated and said something like, this is
(12:31):
what it's like being married to Renee.
Which I thought was funny. Yeah, because, you know, I.
To me, that's not weird to do cartwheels impulsively.
But, you know, that's because I'm hyperactive.
So. Do you have any of the hyperactive, impulsive parts?
You might not think you have the hyperactive.
Maybe you weren't wiggly when you were little.
(12:53):
Maybe you knew how to sit still. When my kids were
little, I was in awe and shocked, you know, all
of the above with families at church whose children sat
still. Because my children were not that.
My grandchildren are not that depending on the grandchild,
(13:13):
but. And I do have at least three grandchildren.
Three grandchildren with adhd. Well, two diagnosed, but three
for sure. So anyway, we can all. We're
not supposed to diagnose other people, but we can observe.
So, okay, so the hyperactive, impulsive type.
I have the combined. I have the attention deficit type and the
(13:35):
hyperactive impulsive type. And, yeah, people get, like, up
in the arms about. I keep doing this to my hair.
I'm sorry, I gotta apologize to all you audio people because
my hair looks so flat, like, in real life.
I don't feel like it is. Maybe it really is.
Did I see it in a picture or, you know, like, I'll
go get my hair cut and I'll go, oh, it's so cute.
(13:57):
And they straighten it and everything.
And it looks like it has body. And then I'll go home
and say, someone take picture. And it looks like this looks like
she just painted on. So anyway, so, okay, I'm going
to try not to look at myself. Okay, back to the hyperactive,
impulsive type. So let's talk about some of these things, because
(14:17):
even if you're not diagnosed with this type, you're only diagnosed
with attention deficit type. You may have some of these symptoms,
but not enough of them to have a diagnosis with
them. You might have some of them, but not enough because there
are a certain number that they want you to have.
Mine was very. And they'll give you like a severe
(14:37):
moderate. I need to go back and look at the notes.
I do know that my doctor in the first visit said I was hyperverbal,
which made me laugh. See, ADHD can be fun.
Like, it may not be awesome, but it can be funny that your doctor
calls you hyperverbal. And I decided because I could,
you know. Okay, I'm going to talk about this a little bit too,
because there are different kinds of impulsivity.
(14:58):
Some of them are without forethought.
Some are them with a struggle to stop
an impulse. So you're trying to hold it in.
So there must be some thought there.
And then there's some that, like, you're really making a choice.
There's three names for these, but I feel like I have
(15:19):
all three. But I do have the awareness at
times with the talking and the. Not always, but I
do notice other people's faces because I'm so sensitive to other
people's emotions and stuff and the looks that they have.
And I do notice when they're not interested in hearing
what I have to say. But I've decided, and I want you
(15:41):
to feel comfortable with this, too, that when I go to the
psychiatrist and I have to go every, I don't know, three
months in the state that I live in, in order to get the stimulants,
you have to see the doctor either on video or in person
every three months to continue getting your medication because
it's controlled substance. So I tried the video and
(16:02):
that's fine. But I felt like I wasn't really connecting with
this last resident and I didn't like him as much and I
don't think he got me. So I finally went in, mostly because I
was supposed to. They said after a year, you have to go in.
So I did, and we got along much better.
But I decided that I am paying them.
So they have to listen to me if I want to be chatty.
Because. Because it's important for a psychiatrist.
(16:25):
It is important for the doctor to understand the ADHD patient.
And if I am really controlling myself, those impulses,
and I can, but sometimes it's not as fun.
And I like to connect with people, so I think I'm paying them,
therefore, they get to see full display of ADHD
patient. And. And that should be fine.
(16:47):
So that's my new. That's my new stance.
Instead of, like, feeling bad about it, I'm like, no.
You know, like, if they had somebody come in who had depression,
they would expect to have them behave as somebody with depression.
So if they come in and they know I'm coming in with a flaming
case of adhd, they can. They can get that.
So, anyway, okay, back to the adhd. So adhd, the
(17:12):
frontal lobe of the brain. I am not a doctor.
I am not a scientist. My son is majoring in
neuroscience. I need to ask him about this when he comes home
tonight because he's flying across the country right now.
But I'm curious about this frontal lobe.
I know there's executive function there.
I know there's a lot of wiring that determines how we
(17:34):
do things. And one is how we direct our attention.
So those who are up in arms and trying to get that hook
on their video to say, it's not an attention disorder,
it's not an inability. Well, this is what I learned
today, is that with ADHD directed attention, so
(17:56):
it is harder to have directed attention.
I'm only getting this out of the way so we can talk about hyperactivity
and impulsivity because, you know, we gotta get the questions
out of the mind so we can focus on something else.
But it's harder for them to use directed attention.
And directed attention is the ability to focus on something that
you find very interesting. So if you are talking to
(18:17):
somebody, they are not very interesting.
There's a TV show on. It is not very interesting.
Your teacher's talking about a subject I didn't used to like.
History. My dad said history is my favorite subject.
And I thought, so boring. At some point, like
when I actually saw it as a story and I'd see movies, you know,
(18:38):
I was in the days of the 8 millimeter videos that came
in. They weren't videos. 8 millimeter film and film strip.
So we didn't really have good media.
But if I could watch a movie or read a book, like all
the books about World War II, then I was able to
focus on it because I found it interesting.
(18:59):
But directed attention is the ability to focus on something that
you don't find very interesting. People who don't have that
wiring problem of ADHD can tune into things that
aren't as interesting. They can tune in better or more easily
than those us who have that. But when we find
(19:20):
things interesting, we can get all kinds of
things done. And that's where we do that.
Like I'm going down the rabbit hole, I'm hyper focusing.
Because we can do that way, way, way, way, way
better. So that's, let's, that's just out of that.
So it takes a lot of energy to use directed attention when you
(19:41):
don't have that, that frontal lobe functioning.
And let's just skip past that. So back to inattentive.
Inattentive, no, back to hyperactive, impulsive, adhd.
So a lot of times they just kind of talk about what
it's like in children because it's very easy to see with children.
(20:03):
Some can sit still, some can't. What about adults?
What could be a way that the
hyperactive could show up in an adult, the impulsive can
show up in an adult. Well, one could be saying
things without thinking, just shouting things out, blurting things
(20:25):
out.
And you didn't even realize you did it.
Somebody is talking and you just interrupt them.
Somebody's talking and you're just chiming in with things like
yes, I know, I remember that all you're doing,
you're not trying to take the attention away from them.
You are just so engaged, you don't even know you're
(20:47):
talking. That is that impulsivity. Without forethought, you're
just, you're just doing it. You're just doing it one time.
Okay. My kids love to talk about this
and I actually find it funny too. I don't like the stories, the
family stories where everyone finds it funny but me.
And it's about me, but this one I found funny.
(21:09):
But we were at the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk and it's
an amusement park that's on the beach.
Like the old fashioned boardwalks from the 1920s.
I don't know when it was built actually, maybe even earlier.
But they have an old roller coaster, giant dipper and
everything. It's really fun. So this was a period of my life
when I was eating very, very healthy, all whole foods.
(21:31):
And the more you eat just whole foods, the more
healthy food looks so good. And I've even done it
to the point of mostly eating raw foods or all raw Foods.
And I remember going to the zoo with my kids once and seeing,
you know, how, like, they'll have, like, lettuce and, you know,
the vegetarian stuff in a dish for, like, the.
(21:51):
Not monkeys. Who would be a vegetarian animal?
I don't know, but they have that. And I remember looking at that
and thinking, that looks good, you know, so.
And I'm not even a salad person. I'm not.
But that looks good. So we were at the.
We were at the boardwalk one night, and it was.
We would go on Monday nights because it was.
It was like a dollar a ride. It was dollar night or something.
(22:14):
So everything was a dollar. It was like a soda, Pepsi, hot dogs,
rides, a dollar a ride. So we would go on dollar a
night on Mondays because, you know, all the tourists were gone.
So we could go and we live 15 minutes away.
And so we were there. And I don't know, my husband's getting.
So I'm just standing there. I'm not going to order a hot dog,
you know, because I'm eating, like, the healthy foods and stuff.
I'm not even drawn to that. I don't even like the smell of any
(22:36):
of those things. But I walk by the little kind
of counter area. It's like around a box
or something, and there's a little counter there where people
can bring the paper tray that they're given.
You know, it's not really a plate with their hot dog in it.
And they can put ketchup, mustard, relish, whatever on it.
(23:00):
There was one of those little. What are they called?
They're like a rectangular little dish that had raw onions
in it. Just chopped up raw onions. And I
walked up to it and I said, mmm. And I picked
some up and I put the onions in my mouth and I started
eating them. And I was just like, these are so good.
(23:22):
And my kids were just horrified. They're like, mom, those aren't
yours. And there was somebody over to the side that
it was their onions to put on their hot dog.
And I didn't. I didn't even think about it before that was in
my mouth. I did not think about it. So I.
It was a swift action without forethought or conscious judgment.
(23:42):
That was. That was that. And. Ooh, my brain.
I think, oh, gosh, I'm going to have an alarm go off because
it's getting close to needing to go.
But, yeah, so you might actually say
something. You might even actually do something.
If you've ever been in your house and you know your brain's going
all over the place. Because you're like, I gotta do this, I gotta
(24:03):
do that. And then you go, oh, I need to do this.
Or like you're running water in the bathtub, but then you go
in the other room to cook something, and then you go, oh, the
bathtub. And then you run back to turn the water off, but you're.
You're not really thinking. You're acting before your brain
is really engaged. And so you trip over something because you're
(24:25):
going faster than your brain is processing what's going on.
Like, you leap. Have you ever leaped in your house left and
tripped or ran into something and have bruises because of that?
I have. And I know a lot of times I come on here
and I think, I might be the only person doing this, and it feels
kind of stupid. But, yeah, I do it all the time.
(24:45):
I just leap across something like, oh, I need to
do that. Or, oh, my goodness, I forgot I had something on the
stove. You know, so it's a combined ADHD reaction.
It's. Sometimes it's, you know, like, oh, no.
Like a disaster can happen if I don't hurry.
But other times it's just like, I should go do that.
And I hop across something. I'm just.
My body goes faster than it should be.
(25:10):
And yeah, so you could do that even on Easter
morning. So happy Easter to anyone who celebrates Easter or just
loves Easter. But on Easter morning, I waited till.
I mean, I spent three hours doing cooking, pre Cooking stuff
for dinner. And then it was time to put on
my makeup and put on a dress and go to church.
And so I knew I could do it fast enough, and
(25:33):
I was doing it. But then the shoes I decided to wear, which
I didn't need to wear, but I decided to wear them, were
sandals. And I thought, well, you never to paint your toenails
anymore. You should paint your toenails.
It's Easter. And there could be another 10
minutes. I never paint my toenails anymore, but I'll just leave
it at that for right now. So usually I'll sit down.
(25:57):
Painting my toenails would be a relaxing thing.
And going get a pedicure would even be more relaxing.
But I kind of just don't have time for that anymore.
So I go into the bathroom really quickly, open
up, look for the toenail polish. That's the insta dry, The Sally
Hansen insta dry. Because I think, yeah, it won't last, but at
least I'll just put it on really fast because I am in a hurry.
(26:20):
So this is an impulsive decision. I knew what I was doing.
I didn't trip on the way to the drawer.
I didn't slam my finger or anything.
I didn't drop anything, break anything, which is actually a miracle
because usually that kind of thing will happen.
But I, I leaned over, I didn't
even see it on the ground. And I love sitting on the ground,
so usually that's my go to fit. I, I leaned over and I
(26:40):
am just painting my toenails so fast.
So fast that it would look like my grandson had
done it. I mean it was just like the toe and everything.
But I didn't have time. It was so impulsive.
It so such a crazed behavior that I was like
committed to it. And in my mind I knew you don't have to
wear those sandals. You can wear closed toed shoes.
(27:02):
You don't even have to have your toenails painted.
I'm at the age where I think no one is looking at you that much.
No one cares what you look like.
But I did it. And then I grabbed some fingernail polish
remover and a little paper towel and I thought
my husband's going to hate it if I try to take clean this up
in the car. Cause he would hate the smell.
(27:23):
But he ended up not wanting to wait for me.
So I rode with my daughter and I just said sorry, but I have
to do this. And I was really careful.
I didn't spill any in her car cause she has leather seats and
stuff. But anyway, I just knew as I was doing it.
This is totally impulsive. This is stupid.
It's not pre planned. It's not a good choice to try to
squeeze this in when you need to get there on time.
Because I was leading the children in a song and I needed to
(27:45):
get there to get the visuals and stuff.
I knew it wasn't a wise choice, but the impulse was
so strong. Strong to wear those shoes and paint my toenails
that. Yeah, it's kind of lame. But anyway.
Oh my goodness, stop reminding me. I should turn off
my reminder. Sorry about that. But yeah.
(28:07):
So I'm just going to tell you these because obviously I'm on
a time crunch. But there's three kinds of impulsive
behavior. The first one, they call it self report.
I have no idea why, it doesn't make sense to me.
But it's the acting first. They call it an inability to think.
And I guess that's it. I think of it as I'm not thinking first,
(28:27):
but I guess I'm unable to think of it first because
I act so quickly, do something like, you
know, someone has a mosquito on their face and I slap
their face or something. You know, that'd be like slapping without
thinking, is this appropriate? So it's just making an action
with your body, with your words, without thinking about it
(28:51):
first, unable to think about it. The other one is having
some kind of action in you. So they call it not being
able to withhold a response. So. And I
don't know that everybody else even wants this response, but
if I am sitting in a meeting, if I'm sitting in
a zoom call, all I want to do is move my
(29:15):
body. All I want to do is change how I'm sitting.
But I'm so aware of everyone else and so afraid that's going
to be distracting that it just builds up inside of me.
So
you have this bursting feeling. And as a child, you probably
don't have that bursting feeling as much.
As a child, you're probably just more doing it.
(29:35):
You're probably just like thinking, I want to get up
and move, I want to get up and move.
So maybe you are thinking about it first.
My youngest son did this a lot. He'd get out of his chair and
he'd go do something and the teacher would get mad at him, especially
if he did it out of curiosity, because a lot of times he was
curious about something in the room and would want to touch it,
feel it, investigate it, see how it was made and figure
(29:58):
that out, which was definitely a learning experience.
You know, you're at school to learn.
So he was. His brain was thinking, but he wasn't participating
in the classroom in a way that he should.
So you are thinking about it, but you still don't
contain yourself. And the first one,
the self reporting, the acting first, the not thinking, the
(30:24):
study that I read, and this is like the National Health, you
know, they have a website where they kind of tell the studies.
It's where they study all these illnesses and diseases
and things. And this is with the impulsive.
But the first one, they just said that they've done most of their
studies on people with addictions and so impulsivity, they're
(30:46):
studying more because. Not because that person has adhd, but
because they have an addiction. And if you think
about it, when you see somebody who's really strung out on drugs,
not that I have a lot of experience with that, but it can
be scary because they are not in control of their bodies.
So they're not thinking, they're unable to think, and their bodies
(31:08):
can be powerful. And scary and do things that are dangerous,
you know, so you just think, oh, that person, you know, like,
I gotta, you know, be careful. You can see it in
their eyes. So that's somebody who's under the influence of
something that's causing that. So they study people with addictions
to see what's happening to them, what brain structure and
(31:30):
function is happening for that kind, for the not being
able to hold a response. But thinking about it, that
is a serotonin function problem in the brain.
And it's interesting because they said that amphetamine.
They study how amphetamines, which is one of the medications,
(31:52):
the stimulants that people use with adhd, how
that helps.
I don't know that because I do take stimulants.
I don't know that it helps me at all with that need
to move, to do things, to talk more.
(32:13):
I haven't noticed medication helping me with that at all.
In fact, I would say when I go to teach
yoga, when I take the medication right before, I feel like
my need to talk is greater, I feel like it's greater.
So I don't know what I mean. Maybe that is because you don't
see energy, but the serotonin. So the serotonin levels has something
to do with that second kind of impulsive behavior.
(32:35):
The third one is called choice impulsivity.
And that is an inability to make a
choice that's logical. That's how I would say it.
But it's an inability to delay gratification for a
larger payout. So this is the eating a snack instead
of waiting for dinner, eating the sugar, because you just
(32:58):
need to have something that tastes good fast.
And you don't want to make something that takes longer or go
to the store and get things. So. Or even if somebody just says,
you know, dinner's in an hour, you want to.
You're not able to make a really balanced decision.
You're not able to have that control to delay the gratification.
(33:20):
One of the things that I've seen is I do that a
lot with my haircuts. And that might sound weird, but I don't
ever want to wait for a haircut. And so if I think
I want to get my hair cut, that's I need to make
an appointment that's going to be in two weeks.
I think if I. If I have the desire to do it, I want to
do it now. And so I'll do things like go
(33:44):
in the bathroom and start climbing my bangs or cut the back
or whatever. And last Month. I actually did make an appointment
because I wanted to do some highlights.
I don't know if you can see me here.
Wanted to do some highlights, too, but that appointment was a
month away. So I waited and waited. And I had cut
my hair right before that. But I thought, you go and you get
(34:04):
it. Get a decent haircut and look back.
You know, look into getting highlights, see if that helps you
at all. It was like four days before
I got this impulse to go get my hair cut and to
clean up the bangs and the back that I didn't do right, that
I'd been dealing with for, like, three weeks and didn't even
care. But for whatever reason, that impulse came, it was
(34:28):
so strong, I couldn't get myself to wait.
So I go to the cheapo place where I can get one that
night. It was such a good lesson and
a bad experience. It was such a good lesson on wasting.
Wasting money on something that I had to clean up.
It was bad. It was really bad. The bangs were so.
(34:52):
So short and crooked, and I'm still kind
of dealing with it. In fact, when I actually went in for the
haircut, she said, do you want me to ignore the bangs?
I thought, no, because I cleaned them up.
And I want him. I want to, you know, like, if I'm
paying you, I want it to be nice. And so I had to start
short. And they're starting to grow out, but they're still shorter
than what I would do. But that was my total choice impulsivity.
(35:15):
I could not make a wise choice because I'd have to wait
to make a wise choice. And if you've ever done that,
you spent more money than you should, you've not gone to
bed when you know you should, you know, it's better for your
health, you know, tomorrow morning. But the impulsive nature
to. But I. I got things I want to do.
(35:37):
I'm. I'm happy. Like, I'm not tired.
I'm. Da, da, da, da. You know, whatever.
You're not making a wise decision because you have
the impulse to do what you're doing right now.
I. I see it with the sleeping things.
I think having more control to go to sleep when it's
good for your body is a very balanced decision.
(35:58):
And if you're that gratification of happiness in the morning,
you're like, but I'm happy now. I'm watching this TV show.
I can't wait till, you know, to finish it later, whatever it
is. So not wanting to slow down. And this one,
they say it has to do with your dopamine pathways, so it has
to do with the receptors and, you know, how.
(36:18):
Which, okay, this is the last thing I'm going to say because
I really do have to go. But the dopamine levels.
I don't know if I mentioned this last time, but when I went to
the psychiatrist last time, he said that.
That not being able to do something when you're overwhelmed is
more of a procrastination problem than an ADHD problem.
And I thought, what? Like, that's what everyone gets up in
(36:42):
arms. Like, I'm okay with getting up in arms about that.
When people are with ADHD are accused as just being procrastinators
or lazy. He didn't say the word lazy, but he said, that's
more of a case of procrastination. I thought, well, yeah, a procrastination.
Procrastination is the description of what you're doing,
but it's not the reason for what you're doing, why you're
(37:03):
doing it. And. And I said, you know, and so I
tried to do the smooth thing where I'm questioning him or challenging
him with questions, I guess, is that what.
What I mean, instead of saying, you can't say that.
And I just said, well, I've always thought that, because I was
told that with low dopamine levels that you don't have
(37:25):
the ability to, you know, to kind of step
up, to make that little push to get things done
in the same way as people who don't have the low dopamine, who
don't have the adhd. And that with the stimulant, with a
different kind of medication, it brings up the dopamine, which
for me totally works. That's where my power is with the
(37:47):
stimulant, is with the dopamine levels going up.
And then he said. He said people with ADHD
don't necessarily have low dopamine.
They have more receptors. I'm like, you're blowing my mind
right now. So I have to go down. And I didn't have anything to
challenge that because I hadn't read into that.
I had always read that we have low dopamine.
(38:08):
And so when I went back, it still,
it made sense what he said, because if you have more receptors,
your. Your amount of dopamine isn't feeling the need
in your brain
to do what dopamine does because it has more receptors.
(38:30):
And so even though you. I guess what he was saying is you
have the same amount of dopamine as other people, but you have
more receptors, so your brain's not going to work well unless
all the receptors are receiving the dopamine and you don't have
enough. Even though. Does that make sense?
You don't have enough dopamine to meet all those
needs. So it's kind of like I have six
(38:51):
kids, and they're not home anymore. I mean, a couple of
them are home, but they're all adults now.
But I have six kids. It's like saying you have the same amount
of food in your fridge, but you have six kids to feed instead
of two, so you know, it's not going
to go as far. It's not going to meet the same needs.
So, anyway, I thought that was fascinating, but.
But I'm just going to leave you with that.
(39:11):
There are so many symptoms. There are so many ways.
Oh, my goodness, I really do have to go.
I have to teach class in 50 minutes.
This is another example of the impulsive thing.
It's like all day long, you knew you needed to do this, and I
did, but I had somebody coming over.
I had a dentist appointment. And so fitting it in.
It's way more fun in my brain to do it impulsively.
(39:33):
Like, let's see if you can go up and make a podcast episode right
before your class and then run down and put on your shoes
and. And just submit it later, which I'll do.
I just knew I had to do it before dark because now that I'm doing
on video, you have to see me better.
And my son's coming on the plane tonight.
But anyway, back to this. Yeah. So many things that
you could do that you notice in children.
(39:54):
You know, like, you might be fidgety, you might have your hand
flap, your foot flap. Mind you, my feet are always going.
Or your knees going. You get up when you're supposed to stay
seated. You want to walk around. You have a hard time choosing
where to sit. You can't. You know, like, you're.
You're restless.
You might not be as quiet as people.
It's kind of funny because one of the descriptions of ADHD is
(40:17):
that these things are. With a neurodevelopmental disorder, is
that things that you're doing aren't typical for
people your age. And I go to the bank, and I
see myself in line, swaying and moving, and nobody else
is doing that, you know, moving my arms up and down.
You know, not people my age. But it's not like I'm going to grow
(40:39):
into that. You know, you want to jump, you want to run.
You want to sway. You want to change how you're
sitting 100 times. You might interrupt people or chime in, as
I like to say. You know, both can happen.
You might talk more than other people.
You might finish people's sentences.
That's a hard one. It's a hard one not to finish people's sentences
(41:03):
sometimes. So, yeah, any of those things have a
hard time waiting in line. You'd rather not do something
than wait in line for it. I've left stores many times because
there's a line. I walk in, I see the line.
I'm like, nope, not today. And I just.
I think of it as patience thing, but it's an impulsivity thing.
(41:23):
It's a hyperactive thing. And, yeah, I could look at his impatience,
too, but, yeah, but it's okay. It's how
we're wired, and we can learn to work with it.
And hopefully people in our lives can learn to work with it,
too. Like, I've been working with my.
I've been holding my hair back all the time.
It's what I do. I play with my hair.
I can French wave my hair from the. Can you do that?
(41:43):
I learned how to do that in math class.
I learned to French frame the person in front of me and then
how to do my own, either on the side, side, or here.
Here gave me something to do with my hands, and I
loved it. But I really do have to get out of here.
So thank you for being patient with me, for my timing and all
that. And my son won't be in this room all the time
the next couple days, so I will come up here and continue on
(42:05):
with this because I find it fascinating in looking into this,
just the impulsivity part, the hyperactive part, I also
became curious about other things, and I'd love to share
those with you. I hope you're curious about it, too.
And if you ever have anything that you want to share with
me or questions that you have or more information that I don't
(42:26):
have, I would love to hear it. So thanks so much.
I will be back again. Bye.
(43:07):
Rewind. I've run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com