All Episodes

April 29, 2025 57 mins

Why do we sometimes speak before we think, make snap decisions, or struggle to resist that one-click purchase — especially as women with ADHD?

In this episode, Renee talks about the three types of impulsivity that show up in everyday life: acting without thinking, not being able to stop ourselves even when we want to, and choosing instant gratification over long-term goals.

You’ll learn:

  • What’s happening in the ADHD brain during impulsive moments

  • How serotonin and dopamine are involved in different kinds of impulse control

  • Everyday examples of impulsivity that might surprise you

  • Simple, supportive strategies to help you pause, plan, and feel more in control

Whether you struggle with blurting, interrupting, or making fast choices you regret later — this episode will help you feel understood, empowered, and equipped.  It may even help you understand other people in your life who deal with this, too!

Thanks for listening!

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I am Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
I'm so excited to be here. I recorded a second episode last
week because I like to do two a week, and it was a little
over 50 minutes, almost an hour long.
When I got done, my microphone was muted.
I even tested out the audio at the beginning.

(00:51):
So I'm really nervous just making sure.
I might be checking the audio levels every once in a while.
But, yeah, somehow it got muted and.
And so all that is lost. So I'm gonna try to
do what I did then. I felt so good about that episode,
too. I thought, this is just flowing out of my mouth.
And little did I know you'd never be able to hear it.

(01:13):
But that's okay. So it might be a better
time today. Maybe the timing's better for you to get this.
Now, what I was talking about, I guess you
can tell if you've already seen the title of this episode, is
I was continuing on exploring impulse control and
examining what we can do, what we

(01:39):
can do to prevent, possibly not always, and what we
can do to deal with it, understand it, all of that.
So one thing that I mentioned last week when I had
my first episode about impulse control or impulsivity, the impulse
portion of adhd. Because if you know about

(02:00):
the types of adhd, there's inattentive type, there's hyperactive,
slash, impulsive type, and then the
third type is to combine the two. And then I discovered
some experts even say there's a non.
I already forgot the name of it, but one that's like a non

(02:22):
defined. You don't fit into a category, but you have plenty
of the symptom symptoms. As always, I don't remember unless
it's right in front of me. So. And that's okay.
That's okay. You may not remember either.
If you're driving your car, you're not gonna remember it unless
you. Well, maybe you will, but. Yeah.
So let's go back to impulsivity. So there are three

(02:42):
important types of impulsivity that are studied by psychologists,
neuroscientists, who knows who else.
And I wanted to look at each of those three a little more
and. And understand why we act before we think,
why we might do things, or even if we

(03:03):
are thinking about it, it's still very, very strong.
This impulse, this need to do things is just very strong in
your body. And I can see that that goes along with the
hyperactivity because that is something that's in your body.
This need to move Sometimes you're aware of it, sometimes you're
not. If you can't move, if you're stuck in

(03:24):
line or something like that, if you even use the word stuck in
line, I mean, most people probably do, but you might have
a lot going on inside of your body to break out of
that. And the same can happen with any kind of impulse.
I find it fascinating to think of how far this can go.

(03:45):
Like, if you see a picture on the wall
that's off center, does that bother you?
So let's start there. Does it bother you?
If it does bother you, do you need to get up and fix
it right then? If it's in your own house, do
you think, I can wait, I can do that later.
What if it's not in your own house? What if it's in someone else's

(04:05):
house or it's a place of business, it's not your place at all.
Do you have the urge. Do you have an impulse to
go and straighten it? I'm raising my hand 100% I
do. If you see a word that's spelled
wrong and you know, online, what can you do?
But. But I sometimes want to correct it.

(04:30):
I. I mean, obviously I'm not going to tell people.
In the days of typos and stuff, it's not like, hey, you spelled
that word wrong. We all do that that way.
But when I used to go to Sunday school class and stuff,
if the teacher spelled a word wrong, it'd be really hard for
me to just look at that word and not change it.
And I didn't change it. But it was hard for me.
The impulse to change it was very great to take something

(04:53):
that I see that's off and want to fix it.
And if the teacher ever said, is that spelled right?
I love that, because then I can raise my hand and say, oh, no.
Actually, it's felt this way. But there are a lot of
impulses that you might have that you don't even realize.
Like, why do I want to change where I'm sitting when I'm
in the movie theater? I sat down, I thought I was fine, but

(05:14):
now I'm not. I want to move over here.
Noticing. I mean, if you. If you also have a lot
of sensitivities of sound or I don't know
what else. Light. Lights coming in your eyes.
I want to move over here. Sometimes things just feel weird.
Like if you go into a restaurant and you're sitting in an inner

(05:35):
table, in a chair, around a little table, and there's other
tables around you for me, that doesn't feel as cozy as
being in a booth in the side. It's not like I have
to be hidden in the back of the restaurant, but there's more
vulnerability or something in the middle.
And one time I went into a restaurant waiting for my friend to

(05:57):
meet me for breakfast. The restaurant was pretty empty, and the
server, hostess, whoever it was, sat me in a chair
like that. And I was sitting there, and it was kind of cold,
too, so it didn't feel cozy at all. I usually bring a coat or
sweater, even if it's summertime, just so I can be warm.
Yeah, I'm very high maintenance when it comes to comfort
level, if I can. But I just thought I'd so

(06:20):
much rather be over there in that booth.
And there wasn't anything brought to me yet that
was set up or anything. So I said, would it be okay if I moved
over there? And she said, sure. But sometimes those impulses
to move, to change, or if you're in line at the bathroom,
there's a really long line, a million stalls.
Are you ever curious if there's actually someone in each stall?

(06:43):
Do you ever walk out, even if you're not at the front of the
line, like maybe third or fourth back?
Do you ever walk through and look under the stol.
Feet or shoes? And I mean, I guess they're
the same feet and shoes, but do you do that?
Because I've done that a lot in my life and
not always. Sometimes I'll wait, especially if there's not a
ton of stalls. But if you're waiting a long time and nothing's

(07:05):
changing, there might be an opportunity for that where people
just don't. Don't know that there's one.
Open the door, just shut all the way.
And then you can say, you know, you're not trying to take cuts
or anything. You just say, hey, these two are open, or
something like that. So, yeah, just kind of not wanting to
stand still, not wanting things to get stagnant.

(07:25):
So, yeah, there are a lot of ways that we can be impulsive.
Blurting something out, saying something when maybe the timing
is not appropriate, or even saying something that isn't appropriate
for the situation. The read the room kind
of thing. So not all impulsivity is the same.

(07:46):
There's different kinds, and each brain does it in different
ways. I don't. Honestly, it's so normal
to me to be impulsive that it would be really easy for
me to think, well, everyone does this.
But I can 100% guarantee you that my Husband never does this.
He's never impulsive. And my son in law, my daughter's

(08:07):
husband, there's. I, I don't, I'll have to ask her.
But I doubt there's an impulsive bone in his body.
And it can be greater for some people than others.
And when you have adhd, it can be really great.
And it can be hard. It can be hard, it can be funny,
but it can also be hard. And it can also cause problems for other
people or your relationships. So, so the three categories and

(08:31):
when I recorded this last week and it, the sound didn't work,
I only got through two of the categories.
So it's actually gonna be a two parter, but I'm just double checking,
making sure my sound still works. Okay, here I go.
So the first one is the acting without thinking.
Acting without thinking. And that one, I think we
probably think most impulsive behavior is acting without thinking.

(08:53):
That's what I thought, but it's not.
There are other kinds too. So I'm just looking real
quickly to see the name of this. Cause there's, you know, there's
a. Oh my goodness. Of course, as soon as I do
that, I can't find it because I'm trying to think and do
at the same time. But in my notes from the last
week, I know I had that in there.

(09:18):
Are you remembering what it is? Okay, yeah, it was a weird name.
So it's not. Sometimes they just say acting first, but it's also
called self report. The inability to think or not
thinking before acting, verbalizing, moving, any of that.
And studies with this have mostly been on people with addiction
problems. Not all people who are impulsive have addictions.

(09:40):
But I think when people do have addictions, they have that act
without thinking. They have more of a tendency
to do that. So that's who they've studied and they found
that there is some difference. There are
some differences to the functioning of the brain, the executive

(10:01):
function, the control. And if that wiring is not
neurotypical, then impulse can be a problem.
There can be help with serotonin, dopamine, with medication,
but it doesn't necessarily mean, oh, because one's low,
then giving you more will cause this not to

(10:23):
happen. It can also just be the regular regulation, the activity,
the way that it functions when you get the serotonin, when you
have enough dopamine, it's just not functioning normally.
Does that matter to us? I don't know.
But if you're curious about it, it's not just kind of a low or
a High thing. It can show up with a lot in people with adhd,

(10:44):
substance abuse, even bipolar disorder.
So. So, yeah. So let's think about it.
The acting without thinking. How can that show up?
The talking out loud, the saying something without raising your
hand. In school, that's when I was first introduced to impulse
problems. Blurting. What a nice word that is.

(11:08):
Blurting. But, yeah, why did I say that?
When you're a child, I don't even think you think that.
Like, why did I say that? You just get in trouble for saying
it. As an adult, do you ever notice, like, oh, I just
said that. I just interrupted somebody.
I'm in a room with a hundred people and I just made
a comment or something without raising my hand.

(11:28):
Hopefully I haven't done that. If I have, it's been with
people I usually know, but still not always the best
to do so. You could also just agree
to do something impulsively. You didn't think somebody
said, can you watch my kids Friday night?

(11:48):
And you said, sure, bring them over.
You just said it. You just said it really fast.
And that might be your true and 100%, yes, I can
answer. But sometimes you commit to things.
Or do you? Sometimes I do. I volunteer to do
something or accept a responsibility without giving it a little
time. When I first started teaching yoga in a

(12:13):
place where I get paid, I taught for probably 10 years before
doing that. But when I first started teaching yoga classes, each
place that you teach, whether it's a yoga studio or for the firefighters
or at a gym, wherever it is, there may be
other teachers that say, hey, I can't be here.
I'm going to be out of town. Will you sub for me?

(12:34):
And in the beginning, I was just volunteer.
Happy. Yes, yes, I can do that. I can do that.
I can do that. And part of that was the excitement and the challenge
and making more money and wanting, you know, the fomo.
If you have the FOMO thing, if you want to be a part of everything,
yeah, sure, I can go to that dinner that's right after
I'm doing this with my children. That's right after that.

(12:56):
You know, you pack so much in because you don't want to miss
out. You might not have a fear of missing out, but you don't
want to miss out. Can we call it dwomo?
Don't want to miss out, I guess. Yeah.
Because fear of missing. Yeah, I have to figure that out.
I don't. I totally have fomo, but I don't think it's an accurate

(13:16):
name. I Don't have a fear. I just never want to miss out.
But so if you do that, you're not pausing,
you're acting, you're saying you're committing, you're signing
up for something before you've really given it some thought.
And I've learned like with the subbing thing,
if I see a sub request, even if I think, yeah, I

(13:40):
could do that, unless I really, really, really want to
do it and I don't want anybody else to get the opportunity, I
will wait. I will wait before I write back and say
I can do it. Because chances are there's another teacher who
can do it. And if I really don't want to miss the
opportunity, I will say yes first. But most of the time I'm

(14:01):
just fine if somebody else does it. I need the time to do
things like this, make my podcasts, get my website up again,
and whatever else I've been doing in my life in the past several
years. But yeah, just not committing to do
stuff because then you have to figure out

(14:22):
your life and move things around. And sometimes that's fun, but
sometimes it causes problems. So another thing is
buying something, Buying something that you weren't planning
on an impulse buy. They actually call it an impulse buy because
and probably everyone in the world, except maybe my husband

(14:44):
and maybe my son in law do we have pulse vice where you see
something, think I should get that? I don't know, maybe they
do too, you know, because advertising knows when you we put this
in front of this person, they will see it, they will
imagine their life with it, they will imagine their life better
with it is what it is. And then they'll think, yeah,

(15:04):
I need that or oh, that sounds yummy, that sounds really good,
I should eat that. So if you buy something, especially
if it's spending more money than you have,
that's not something that you took time or care to do.
And when I first got married, I didn't really get that.

(15:25):
I remember going to a Christmas time craft fair.
So it was a holiday craft fair in Pasadena or somewhere near
there. We lived in Pasadena, California back then.
And I got into a car full of women that were going, I
was invited and it was like $25 a ticket to go.
We hardly had any money then. And I had a friend that
said, I go to this every year. I bought two tickets, I want

(15:48):
you to come. I bought you a ticket and I thought, well that's
nice. And I probably had maybe $10 I could
spend at that craft fair. Maybe, maybe these were the days
that my husband and I ate Cheerios three meals a day.
Sometimes he ate honey nut and I ate just the plain.
And at the end of the day, we'd see bowls and spoons in the sink

(16:09):
because we were fine like that. And it's just we had to, you
know, save money sometimes or we just didn't have a lot of money
to spend sometimes in between paychecks or something.
But we were fine. We were fine. But anyway, so we
go to this craft fair and I probably spent
my $10. I don't even know if I had a credit card
back then. Actually, this is in the 90s.

(16:30):
I had an ATM card that was a big time thing, but
I knew not to take out more money than I had.
And same with the card. So anyway, on the way
home, one of the women was saying something like, oh, my
goodness, I spent $200. My husband's gonna say, what did
you do that for? We don't have that money.

(16:51):
And she's like, we don't have the money.
And I spent $200. And I thought, how can you spend money you
don't have? I was so naive. But that was impulsive
because she didn't go there planning to do that, but she saw
the cutest things, so she bought some things.
And I think of the really impulsive acting without thinking,
like the store, you know, like, maybe you have to get in line
and you can rethink stuff. I don't know.

(17:12):
If you do that where you get up to the counter and you say,
oh, can you put these socks back? I only need this pair of socks
or something like that, you can think things through because
you're actually in the store. You could walk back to the row
where you got that. And I do that in tj, Maxx and Marshalls,
where at the end I look at my cart, My

(17:32):
daughter and I developed this little pattern looking in our carts
and then saying, do we really like, We've been here 45 minutes,
do I want to get the same thing that I thought I wanted
when I walked in 40 minutes ago? That's a non impulsive thing.
That's taking care to think about it.
And the impulsive thing, it's easier to spend money on the
Internet online because you can just see an

(17:56):
ad. You can be on Instagram and see an ad and then you click
on it and go, oh, my goodness, that jumper looks so cute.
Cute. Oh, it's on sale. You know, like each little thing
is this little hook. They're trying to say, hey, I'm
Gonna. I'm gonna get you in here, you know, Come follow me, little
girl. Around this corner. You know, they're trying to.
To get you to where they want, which is in that shopping cart,

(18:17):
spending some money. And once you get there and you
do it and it feels so good, and then it's over.
And you think, you know, honestly, when the package comes in
the mail, most of the time I don't even remember what it is.
And that could be a memory thing too, but.
But that's how. How much I don't need that item because
I'm surprised. Like, it's Christmas every time a package comes.

(18:38):
But yeah, there are things that I'm like, when.
When is that coming? I really need that.
But. But the impulse buys, the acting without thinking.
And oh, yeah, I honestly think that
it's hard to catch this. Even the buying online, you

(18:59):
can catch that a little easier. But the blurting thing, for
me, working through this and having strategies, you have
to do what you can to prevent it
a little bit before the situation. So, like, if a
teacher's saying something, you're in a class and you're just
like, oh, yeah, you know, and you want to just comment with

(19:22):
this or put your hand up or share the story or
whatever it is, that initial reaction right then isn't
really the time to stop it unless you walk in.
Like, if you walk in the room and just think, okay, I'm going
to not raise my hand, or I'm not going to say something

(19:42):
unless the teacher's asking for participation.
And in order to help with that, I will bring a little
notebook and I can doodle to give me something, or I can write
down any questions I have or anything that I would
like to share. It is not as fulfilling when you have something
to share and you just have to write a note about it.
I can guarantee you that. Because some of what we do with

(20:04):
this impulse is to release something that's building up inside.
Speaking from lifetime of experience here.
So if the teacher isn't calling on anyone, if you
have realized you could share or, you know, raise your hand,
you should raise your hand. And, you know, you really can't blurt
out. You have at least that awareness, even just the not
raising your hand and not distracting the teacher or the person

(20:27):
running a meeting or whatever it is, it's going to be
harder for you because whatever's going on in your mind, it
won't get to go away if you share it, you get
to go away. Or if you have a question and you ask it and they
give you the answer, that need will go away.
And you're trying to make that go away.
Just like when you decide, oh, this is a cute pair of

(20:49):
shoes. I see them online. You're filling up the cart, you're
researching the shoes, you're reading the reviews, blah, blah,
blah, blah. All this is building up inside of you.
Of, I need to get this, I need to get this, I need to get
this. Do you really need to get this?
Maybe you do, but most of the time you just
really need to relieve that pressure that's building up.
That impulse is just like pushing. It's just knocking on the

(21:11):
door. It's just like, not more at the knocking, but it's just
like forward and back, forward and back.
And if you push send on that cart and,
you know, make your payment, you've relieved it.
You don't have to think about it anymore.
It's done. You've checked something off of your to do list.
Same thing is happening when you want to ask a question.

(21:32):
You want to participate in a conversation or in a group setting,
and you're really not supposed to. Writing something
down to remind you can help you stop doing something with
your hands, cleaning out your purse or drawing a picture or
putting on some lip balm or something that maybe

(21:54):
can keep you busy to help with that.
It won't be the same total release. That's so nice when you
get to share or ask a question or get your
question. But it does help if you have a question, if you just
write it down or, you know, you kind of look it up on your
phone if it's something that you can look up.
Although that's not always appropriate to use your phone either,
but. But anyway, yeah, it's really just letting go of that

(22:16):
and learning that can be really helpful to prevent the impulsive
shopping. Because if you're on this site for
whatever clothing place it is or whatever, and you've just been
just not even just going so fast that you
can't stop yourself. Sometimes you can spend an hour or two going
down this rabbit hole and then something else comes up and you

(22:38):
go, oh, yeah, maybe I should look at swimsuits for this summer.
Do you really need one? I don't, you know, like, you don't even
get that far and you just keep with it and going with
it. If you want to relieve that pressure, just keeping
the stuff in the cart and clicking X, telling yourself, I
need to do this later, I need to do this later, it will relieve

(22:58):
the pressure. Sometimes putting stuff in the cart is the fun
part, knowing it's there later, just like knowing those questions
are later. If you really do need to go up and ask the person
about it, they haven't allowed for time in it.
A lot of times teachers will say, if you hold your questions,
I'll probably answer it later. But that's not always easy either.
I used to go to these meetings, and my friend who was in charge

(23:20):
had an agenda, like a real agenda that we followed, and
she'd pass it out and we'd sit there.
There were only like three or four of us in the meeting.
But, you know, kind of like if you're at a PTA meeting or
something and we're going through and I'd have a question
and she would say, oh, we're going to talk about that later.
She'd point to where the agenda was.

(23:41):
And I'm only laughing because that just made no sense to me
to wait. I just thought that you could answer that in
a sentence right now. You could, you could.
Can you just answer right now? Because of this dying need I have
in my knees shaking right now. Just.
Just reliving this thing that probably happened.
Oh, I would say, like in the year 2000 or something.

(24:03):
Yeah. It builds up inside. So, yeah, looking at what's
happening in your body, thinking if.
You know. Because I did. I did have to wait.
So what can I do? What can I do? If you have things going
on in your body, if your mouth's kind of clenching up, your shoulders
are coming up, can you relax it or can you let yourself wiggle?
Do you need to wiggle your knee? Do you need to change how you're
sitting? Do you even need to just get up and

(24:26):
walk around? Sometimes you do. Do you need to leave and
go get a drink of water? Do you need to just take a drink out
of your water bottle? Something like that to kind of soothe the
body in some way can help. It's hard.
It's hard. I'm telling you. It's super hard.
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So the second one.
The second one. And we'll see if I get.

(24:48):
Yeah, it's looking like I'm on the. Pretty much the same time.
On the Pretty much the same time. Doesn't really make sense.
The same timing as I was last time I talked about this.
But honestly, I feel like I. I shared a lot of really
good examples last time that I have no idea what they are now.
They're just lost into the. To the air in
this room, I guess. But, you know. Oh, well, Life, huh?

(25:10):
So, next one. Okay, I do remember one
of the stories with this already from looking at it.
Yay. Okay, this one is just. It's not that you
act before you think, but you cannot stop the response.
So that's like sitting there thinking, I want to do
this, I want to do this, I want to do this.
So this is, I guess with the awareness of the

(25:33):
first one, you acted without thinking.
Can you take what you learned from that and in the next
situation, turn it into the next kind of impulse
control problem? Because the second one is easier to
manage than not being able to stop a
burst. Not being able to stop the tide that is coming

(25:56):
through. They call it not being able to withhold a prominent
response. Prominent. It's huge. You have this huge need
to respond in this way, and you're not able
to withhold it. What can you do to help
you do that? Have you seen this with children?
Thing is, as we look at children, we've seen more examples, I

(26:19):
guess, of children with hyperactive and impulsive struggles.
And we can. You know, a lot of times we just thought, oh,
he's hyper, or he doesn't obey or he doesn't listen or.
And I'm saying all the he's. Because a lot of little boys like
that can be like that. Little girls sometimes, like, learn

(26:40):
to curb it or hide it or go do a cartwheel or something.
So I was always a cartwheel person. But not being able
to withhold that can cause problems.
I mentioned before, I accidentally kicked my mom in the face
once doing a cartwheel in our house because I did it unannounced.
Just like you might just start singing out of nowhere.

(27:00):
You have this prominent response to just spontaneously sing in
your house out loud or whistle whistling songs.
I love to whistle songs, and I feel like I have kind of control
of my whistle ability. Like it's an instrument or something.
You know, it has a little bit of a vibrato and stuff.
But who knows where that comes from.

(27:22):
I just start singing a song, you know, it's like, where does
this stuff come from? I do not know.
But. But a lot of times that just comes out, out
in public. Most of the time I'm aware enough that
I have some guard that I stop that from coming out.
But sometimes not if you are allowed.

(27:42):
Sneezer. Do you know anybody who sneezes really loud?
That is my usual mode. It is about. It's like
a. It's like a scream in the second part.
It's like a high scream, you know, really, really Loud
at home, I do that. It feels really good.
But out in public all the time, except for two

(28:03):
times that I can think of where I accidentally did my real sneeze,
I did. And one time was at Costco and a man came
around the corner and said, I wondered who was doing.
You sneezed like that. And I said, yeah, I forgot I was in
public. Another time was outside walking into Publix, big grocery
store here in Florida. And just walking along the sidewalk

(28:25):
between ups. I looked around to see if anybody noticed.
They probably just thought it was a child screaming or something.
But anyway, yeah, so sometimes you can, you
can curb those things sometimes when you have an awareness, but
sometimes even though you know it's going on, you
can't. And that could even just be doing something

(28:50):
that. Like talking more than other people would want you
to. Some people might say talking too much.
Who decides what's too much? Some people do.
They do. They decide when it's too much.
And this one they say is more related to serotonin function.
And amphetamines can help. I. Or stimulants can help.

(29:12):
I should say it didn't necessarily empathy say.
Yeah, I did say amphetamines can help.
For me, I take an amphetamine and it.
I don't think it helps with the talking part at all.
I find when I take my medicine before I go teach a
class, I almost think twice before doing that because I think

(29:33):
I may, I might, I have an awareness with
it, but I want to talk more when I just taking my
medicine. So who knows, who knows, who knows?
But yeah. So let's go to some examples for this.
So if you are interrupting someone mid conversation, even though

(29:57):
you told yourself, like, I'm going to.
I'm going to really try to listen more than I talk.
But you get so excited you chime in.
So you weren't able to withhold that you thought about it and
you just didn't.
Grabbing your phone, maybe when it's not appropriate, you're
out in public, you're with friends, you're at lunch, you're wherever.

(30:20):
And maybe it's best to keep your phone in your purse or
in your pocket, but you just do that, you know,
oh, I'm curious about this. In your impulse, you don't withhold
that impulse to see if someone has texted you or to answer
a question. I do this honestly all the time when I watch
a TV show or a movie. I don't know that it's in

(30:41):
a. It's inappropriate. But I, I don't stop that
response. The prominent response is a curiosity
is to. To curb a curiosity of how do I know
this actor? Where have I seen her before?
Where have I seen him before? I know I've seen him before.
What show is it? What show is it? What show is it?
I quick get on my phone, IMDb, look at them

(31:05):
up, look up the show. Sometimes I pause the show, see what season,
what episode it is so I can find it.
It's a habit I have. It's really, really hard when I'm
in the movie theater, and I can't do that.
And I never do it in a movie theater.
Thankfully, I withhold that prominent response.
But sometimes I even do it when I'm with family or something
and we're all watching something together.
I like it when they say, oh, that person is this.

(31:27):
And I think, oh, good. I even have to look it up.
But yeah, grabbing your phone, doing something that you might
normally do if nobody else was around or.
But you can't stop it. What about snacking?
Snacking mindlessly eating things without thinking about it.

(31:48):
I mean, we probably all know that we don't always eat mindfully.
Like, oh, I'm gonna eat, and think about how many times I'm
chewing. I've participated in mindful eating challenges, and
they are quite insightful. You know, it was eat every time.
You only eat when you're sitting down and you would do
things like notice how many times you bit into, like,

(32:11):
it could be an almond or something, how many bites it took
before you swallowed the almond, so you're really noticing, or
the flavor, the texture, and it does calm you a
little bit. It does make you enjoy your food the most.
I do, I guess, as a habit is try not
to eat stuff so fast. And I

(32:34):
don't know if it's like, there's actually like a timeframe that
I'm eating faster than somebody else.
But I just mean, like, if you're eating a cookie or
something and you're like, oh, my goodness, this cookie is so
good that you're not even really tasting it because you're just
trying, waiting to get the next bite.
Have you ever done that? Or you're drinking something, oh, this
is so good. And you're gulping it down because you just

(32:56):
want more instead of savoring what you're eating or drinking
right then. Does that make sense? They're like, oh, this is so
refreshing.
So the mindful eating challenge that I did before was
helpful because it taught me that I was not in
the moment at All I was kind of thinking of the
next bite or another bite of ice cream or whatever.

(33:19):
I could enjoy it more. I could savor it.
I was satisfied earlier, and I was more satisfied with
what I was eating. But the other thing of eating, when you're
sitting down, if you are someone who eats impulsively, like,
you just kind of wander through the kitchen and grab whatever's
there and whatever's quick. And a lot of people with ADHD
do that for sure. If you have a need for more dopamine

(33:41):
or you don't feel like cooking something, but
you're hungry, all of those things can make you just grab
food. But what I realized when I set a goal to only
eat sitting down, I'd walk through the kitchen.
It could just be like my son was cutting up strawberries
or something. I would be walking. All of a sudden I'd think,
oh, my goodness, I have a mouth full of strawberries.

(34:03):
And I didn't even remember grabbing them or putting them in my
mouth. Did I do that without thinking?
Yeah. Or was I. Yeah, the whole thing I must
have thought to some degree, but I just did it.
And
yeah, I think I mentioned in the last episode about how I ate
that lady's onions at the. At the boardwalk in Santa Cruz.

(34:26):
That was a total without thinking, because in the kitchen, I
probably did think, oh, those are some strawberries.
But to eat somebody else's food, I totally wasn't thinking.
I wasn't thinking at all. So there are some overlaps with these,
for sure. But yeah, even, like, if
you're in a more of a solemn situation or a quiet situation,

(34:49):
you're not supposed to talk and you really want to say
something to somebody or you laugh out loud and you
really shouldn't, you need to, you know, keep it quiet.
Children might struggle with this more than adults, but adults
do struggle with it, too. When we traveled to Eastern Europe,
we went to. And even Israel, we went to a lot of cathedrals.
And my normal mode is talking mode. And I

(35:14):
sometimes I think, oh, yeah, I forgot I'm in a cathedral and
there are people in here worshiping.
I'm not just sightseeing. There maybe was one or
two times. One was. Were a few times when priests would
say, shh, you know, not just to me, but to other people
too. But yeah, you know, what's your go to response?

(35:35):
Did you think? Did you. Even if you thought about it,
did you. Did you keep it in? Because sometimes, like, if you're
supposed to be really quiet and you're told, like, this is a
really quiet place. And then you wanna say something, you know,
you should. You should be able to hold it, but we can't always
do that, so. Oh, my goodness. So I do
wanna talk about something with this because it really

(35:59):
does build up in the body. And if you want a visual, this
is a story that I shared in my. One that went out into this
room and never, never got recorded. But years ago, my
son, who was born in 2002. So what would that be?
So he's 23, almost 22. It's hard to keep track
of kids ages when they get older. But when he was, I

(36:22):
think in. He was in second grade. I'm pretty sure
he's in second grade. Their class went on a field
trip to San Jose, Downtown San Jose, big city, a
million people south of San Francisco.
And they have a tech museum. And it was pretty cool.
And San Jose is Silicon Valley, so that all the tech stuff's

(36:42):
there. And it was, it was a really cool museum.
We didn't park in a parking lot. We parked.
I don't know, maybe we did park in a parking lot.
I think we parted on the. Parked on the street.
It could have been a parking lot, but it wasn't.
Like right next to the museum. We had to walk down some big
sidewalks. Major intersection of a street that I
would say, I don't know, maybe had three lanes on

(37:05):
each side. It could have been two, I can't remember.
It was pretty wide and it was just. It could even
been bigger. It was huge. But we're with all these little
boys and there are probably three other moms with
me, and we're all going back to our cars to, you
know, we kind of split off from the other people in the class.

(37:26):
And so we get to this stoplight and you have these
second grade boys who have a lot of energy.
And my youngest son's one of them and he has adhd.
He was diagnosed with the inattentive type, not the hyperactive
type. But I think if he'd been tested when he was a child,
100% hyperactive. And I think actually if he'd been

(37:51):
tested by psychiatrists instead of the pediatrician, he went
to the pediatrician when he was in college.
I think he would. They would tell him he had that
hyperactive impulse because there's so many things about this
impulsivity that I have that he has too.
I don't know if he. Yeah, he does need to get up and move too.
I think there's a lot about this component that maybe Wasn't
in the test that he took and the teachers who filled out

(38:14):
that part. He was in high school, so he sat still for the most
part. But anyway, back to him. He needed to move.
He needed to move for sure. And the few times that I homeschooled
him because of issues at school, and he.
We did it through the district, so he went to school half the
day. He did really well doing his math, jumping
on the trampoline, or playing with Legos.

(38:35):
And I would just teach him and have him give me the answers in
the air, and I'd write them down for him because he needed to
move. And if he even went to the home school super superintendent,
and we would meet with her, I don't know, twice a month
or something, whenever she would talk to him and ask him
about things, he would pace and he would walk around the whole
time. That's how he. He thought and got things done in

(38:57):
his mind. He had to pace and walk around to share what
he shared. And I remember in first grade, he was
kicking the counter. He was sitting at the counter and his foot
was just banging against the. The cupboard below, I guess.
And I just said, stop kicking the cupboard.
And he said, oh, I have to do that with my foot because my teacher

(39:19):
gets mad at me when I tap my pencil.
And I thought, oh, my goodness. But I didn't know anything about
ADHD then. But he had to move his foot because he couldn't
move his hand. He got in trouble for moving his hand.
His body learned that he could move his foot and not get
in trouble. He also sang while he ate and hummed.
Hummed while I ate more. So. So did my oldest son.

(39:40):
But anyway, I think I've even caught myself humming
while I sing it too. Yeah. I swear, sometimes I think,
am I the only woman in the world that does this?
Because my psychiatrist did say, well, it's rare for
a woman to still have the hyperactive component.
You definitely do. Anyway, so back to this.

(40:01):
We're at the stoplight, and my son and these other three
other boys are standing at the stoplight.
And this is what I think of when I think the prominent response,
having this energy in your body and just needing to let
that energy out. Needing to let. Let that energy out.
So they're standing at this stoplight, and I remember just seeing

(40:22):
them swaying, like swaying forward and back, forward
and back, forward and back, just waiting.
So when that light turned green and they could run as fast
as they could, which I wasn't really thinking about it, like,
oh, they're Gonna bolt. But I knew that they were waiting to
go. So, you know, we're waiting for
the little. I guess it's a white man.

(40:44):
The white man light. I always thought it was a green one.
Get a green light. It should be a green white man.
But I guess my. My kids told me, no, he's.
He's. It's a white light anyway, so.
So the light turns green. It's okay for us to
walk across the sidewalk. And we'd been waiting a long time.
It's a really wide, and there's a huge space.

(41:05):
It had to have been four lanes on each side, because the space
in between the stoplights, you know, at that corner,
downtown San Jose, was huge. It was huge.
So the light turns green and these four boys let
go of the pole like horses in a racetrack.
Like somebody had let down the gates, and they just bolted.

(41:28):
They were running as fast as they could out into that.
That crosswalk. And the moms are standing there
about to walk, and we see this car driving as fast
as it can from the other side, running the red light.
And we see our boys running toward where that car is

(41:49):
going to go. And we all screamed, stop.
And thankfully, off, all of them stopped.
My son said he could. Like, it was almost like he
could feel the rearview mirror on his body.
He said it was that close, and the person just kept going.

(42:10):
Didn't even care. Didn't even care. Didn't even care.
And I was 100% amazed that my son stopped because he hardly
ever, ever listens to anyone. And I said to him afterwards,
because I thought, what a teaching moment.
Because it wasn't like he didn't listen to people, but he.
He has that inquisitive mind that wants to
challenge everything. At least he did then.
He doesn't as much now, but he'd usually think that his

(42:33):
idea was fine and he didn't need to stop what he was doing.
And I told him afterwards, that's so good that when we
yelled for you to stop, you should stop.
He said, I didn't hear anybody say stop.
He said, I just. He said, I heard a voice.
I heard a voice in my head that said, stop, And I knew
I needed to stop. Like, it was just something stopped him, which
is crazy and wonderful, but not crazy, but you

(42:55):
know what I mean? Like crazy that it.
Crazy situation, for sure. And wonderful that that happened.
But to this day, whenever I. Not that
I see these moms anymore, when I go back to California, I do.
Were you there that day? They say, yeah, we got back Talked to
the teachers, they held meetings about it to the kids.

(43:16):
We don't run at a stoplight. But this is the energy.
This is the energy. Think about that when you're feeling like,
I need to do this, I need to do this.
It's building up in your body. It's waiting just to be
volcanic explosion. And for some people, it's like that with.
With thoughts that they have. Even if you have an email,

(43:39):
you. You get an email, you get a text and you think, well,
why did they say that? That's not what I.
You know, like, it's. And you want to respond to them, and you
have.
You have some emotions attached to that response.
You want to let go of those emotions.
You want to write that letter, that text, that email, and let

(44:01):
that person know how you feel from reading what
they said. Not a good idea to do that right away.
Not a good idea to give into that impulse, because
often you don't really know what their intent was.
Maybe you're misunderstanding something.
And even. Even if you're 100% correct by writing something,

(44:26):
often the emotional connection is lost.
And it's really easy for that person to be hurt by
what you say or misunderstand what you say.
Much better to pause and pause and pause and pause or
write the text in your notes. And like, some people say

(44:46):
that the letter that you never send.
I've done that before where I send a text and I think,
this isn't going to do any good. Or I'll write an
email and I'll take out at least half of it and just
send the bare bones. And starting with thank you for getting
back to me so quickly, or something like that.
You know, they always say to sandwich it, something nice, but.

(45:09):
But, yeah, whatever you have building up inside of
you that is hard to resist noticing what that is,
is helpful. But if you can find a way to
just do part of it, like the shopping, do part of it, but
don't buy it. Like, if I was at that craft fair and

(45:34):
I didn't want to spend the $200, and I didn't, but that woman
did, and she had a lot of regret afterwards.
This is causing some issues. She was feeling bad about it.
If she had done something else, if she'd strategized, okay, I'm
gonna be tempted by these things. I really like it.
I'm gonna bring my friend over and say, look how cute this is.

(45:54):
Or you do things that are just more practical.
Like when I want to buy more things.
Like, I like these. Life is good. Shirts or my Lululemon leggings
for yoga or something. I get good deals.
I shop the sales. Still, I don't have an unlimited income.
I have whatever it's called, you know, I have
a top to it, a budget. I have a cap, for sure.

(46:17):
And even though some things may look so great
on that person or even in my mind or it
could be really great for this occasion, sometimes I think, do
you have room in your closet for this?
Do you have room in your drawer for this?
What do you already have? That's like it.
Do you really need it? And that can help me decide

(46:41):
on my own. That can help take away the pressure, because I'm
the one who changed my mind. Sometimes taking away the pressure
is just getting rid of the shopping experience, walking
out of the store, clicking that X at the top of
the screen, or even just preventing it by taking
those apps off of your phone. If you tend to get an email

(47:03):
and you can go to that app on your phone pretty easily, take
the app off your phone. So you have to do it when you get home
and look on your laptop, your computer, whatever you have.
And that might prevent it. Delay, delay, delay.
So anything like that can. Can be helpful, you
know, just to slow down even. One of the suggestions
I read was telling yourself, you'll be fine.

(47:26):
If they'd used different words, I might have liked it better,
but my daughter used to say that to me
when I'd think, we should move, we need to change seats or we
need to go get in a different line or whatever.
My impulse to do was to switch lines or leave the store or
whatever, and you'll be fine, Mom. It was probably actually a
really nice thing that she was saying, but to me, it was more
like what I was hearing was, don't be ridiculous, Mom.

(47:51):
So. So, yeah, verbalize it however you
want, but maybe, you know, count to 10, sing a
song you like, take a walk, or just tell yourself,
you know, take it. Take an hour and see
if you feel the same about this. I've even done that in the store.

(48:13):
Like, if something's on, well, it's not really on sale on Mondays.
If you're over, I think, 55 at TJ Maxx.
Not in every state in the U.S. but if you're over
55, you get a 10% discount on Mondays.
And that has really helped curb my spending because I don't
always feel like going there on a Monday, but I don't go very

(48:35):
often on other days because.
Because I don't want to. Like, I think I could wait till Monday
and get the 10% off, but there was one time that I
went in there and I saw this picture that I really wanted, or
a framed print thing and wanted it, but it
wasn't cheap. And I thought, I really, really like it.

(48:56):
And I thought, wait a week and if you come back here next
Monday and it's still here then, and you still want it, then
get it. And it was still there because sometimes just that, that
understanding that it might not still be here makes me not
want to do it. But it can also help kind of, you know, like
if it's meant to be and it was still there and I got

(49:18):
it. I don't even know. It might have been on sale, but I don't
think so. Anyway, I love it on my wall.
It's really a wonderful, wonderful purchase.
I'm glad I bought it. But I gave it some more thought.
But yeah, sometimes you just need to change your environment.
Get up, walk around, sing a song, drink some water,
you know, talk some sense into yourself if you need to.

(49:39):
Oh, my goodness, I think I am going to stop at that
second one today because I'm about where I was last time.
There is a third type of impulsivity, impulsive behavior,
impulse control problem. And that is it's.
I mean, it's. If you think about the eating world and.

(49:59):
And if the eating world, I'm talking about the
diet culture or I should be eating more healthy
or whatever it is, the not wanting to wait
for a result, like getting something now instead of getting
something better later. Many people deal with that.

(50:21):
But if you have this problem in your brain of
not having as much control with your impulses, it might be
harder for you if you've wondered. I've been on so
many diets and I know the world now isn't as like, diet, they
probably are, but I mean, we don't use that language as much,

(50:44):
you know, like, I gotta go on a diet, I gotta go.
You know. It was way more common 20 years ago, super common.
Even though everyone kind of tried to fight out, like, this is
not a diet. They all were diets. And there were a lot of
books that I bought that were flat out diets for sure.
But yeah, it was really hard because I
would think, okay, my goal is in six weeks, in two

(51:06):
months, you know, you'd always like, I'm going to a wedding on
that day and I'm gonna fit in this dress, or I'm gonna go
to this family reunion and I'm gonna wear a swimsuit.
And not be embarrassed or whatever it was.
There wasn't as much body positivity then, I don't think.
And that reward, that delayed benefit compared

(51:27):
to the right now. I could eat some ice cream.
That benefit could just, oh, you know what?
I can wait till next Monday. You know, I'll start my diet on
Monday. I'll wait till, well, it didn't work out today.
I'll do it tomorrow. There was always pushing it off, Always
pushing it off. And that might be a struggle for a lot
of people, but 100%, if you've got problems with impulses, your

(51:48):
impulse might be, I can't wait for that.
So I'll talk more about that in the next episode.
It'll be the next one this week, and I'm going to Arizona
on Thursday, and we'll be back to the next
week. So I'll will record everything before then from the
same room. It won't be somewhere else.
I haven't become daring enough to try podcasting somewhere else.

(52:10):
I'll listen to podcasters who's like, I'm in the airport right
now. I could try, but I have a feeling I've never recorded
one from my iPhone. I'm using this trusty microphone.
Although last episode, it somehow got muted.
But, yeah, one of my favorite people that I've
learned how to. How to do blogging, although since

(52:31):
I've changed my website, I don't even have any of my blog articles
up. But somebody that I've been learning from, his name is Pete
McPherson. If you want to learn about blogging or any, I don't
know, kind of online business tips, I really like his approach.
I just connect with him. I have to connect with the person.
If I don't, I have a hard time learning from him.
But he made a podcast episode about kind of

(52:54):
like, simple way to start a podcast.
And I already had my podcast. This is like a month ago.
I was listening, but he was walking through his kitchen while
he was podcasting. I'm like, how on earth can you do that?
Like, I have a feeling I could try. But first of all,
I'd want to do things that would be noisy.
Yeah, it'd be really noisy. I even have a hard time Marco Polo

(53:15):
ing to friends and stuff while I'm in my kitchen.
I can talk on the phone because I can get stuff done and that
noise doesn't come in. But, yeah, I think I'll do all
my podcasting right here for a while.
We'll see. And thank you for being here.
I appreciate you Knowing you're out here.
I love that feeling that we have a community
of women with adhd, that we're not alone.

(53:38):
We're not alone. And if you can think of anyone
you can share this episode with, maybe even two people.
Do you remember that commercial, the Fab.
I think it was Faberge Organics. This is.
And I don't even care if it dates me.
And people say this dates me or I'm so old.
I think, who cares? We're all our age.
We can't help it. So when I was younger, they had that

(54:00):
commercial where the women was there, like I told two friends,
and so on and so on and so on. And it didn't just
go from 2 to 4 and 4 to
8. It didn't just double. It was getting squared.
It was like 2 to 4, 4 to 16. 16 to. What
is that? Sat 116 times 16. Where's my math?

(54:21):
Okay, I have to figure that out real fast because that's my impulse.
I should know this because I was really good at math when I was
younger, but I swear my kids took my brain cells
256. I was going to say something else.
Yeah. So anyway, things can multiply when we all share
with two friends. Isn't that like the multi level marketing?
But this isn't that. I'm not doing that.

(54:42):
This is the multi level podcasting, the connecting with
other women like. But thank you so much and do go
to my website, see what I've been doing.
I kind of miss my old one. I took screenshots of my old one and
this one will never look like that because the setup is so different.
But I'm excited because I can have a membership in there where
I can make courses and stuff. I can have my

(55:05):
quiz on there. I just made a new quiz last
week with a different software and found out that it didn't have
a feature that I needed. It was my most important feature.
So I got a refund on that. Oh my goodness.
Life is so crazy, isn't it? But thank you for being here.
And I guess that's it. I guess that's it.
If you're listening on audio, you get to hear my son and

(55:28):
daughter sing their song at the end.
And if you're on YouTube, thank you for coming on here and leave
a comment please leave a comment. Say hello.
I love talking to people. And you can also go to my
website and get on my newsletter. I will answer.
I want to say I will always answer your email.
I will always answer your email. Even though this is 10 years
later, I will. Thanks so much. Bye.

(55:56):
I butter my toast spread on some grape
jelly I don't need to fuss But
I'm a chef and a good one My grandma
can't hear me here that breakfast is done Ever
getting col

(56:24):
Open windows broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
Time for a

(56:57):
rewind like run out of time to sing
melodies and harmony I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Dateline NBC

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

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.