PS. I started this last night. I had the topic in mind. I came into my room and began to write this. Was that impulsive? Yes and No. We will see as we read.
I'm very good at learning. I have several degrees to prove to the world that I'm not stupid. So, how is that, that there are things I have done in my past, and things that I do now, that I ought to know better, and not do.
I recently did something on impulse. I had an opportunity to go to Israel for three weeks this summer with my "adopted" family.AD* (Whom I love with all my heart and don't get to see so much since I moved to FL). I jumped on the chance without thinking. That's cause I knew if I gave it thought, I might not go. I kind of did that when I got married 17 years ago, but that's a tale for a different night.
Well, after several days after having purchased the tickets, I got some information, started to think about what I was doing, and that it would mean being away from my husband for three weeks, and spending a bunch of money that I hadn't budgeted for. Those are just a few of the reasons that I decided to cancel which I had to do as immediately as I had booked the trip. Then I lost nearly 400 bucks in doing so. I consider myself lucky because the trip would have been at least ten time that, and wasn't going to be what I had thought. The first act was impulsive. The second I gave some thought. However, I didn't have to act so quickly. I did because the anxiety of not doing so was making me unstable.
I told myself that this would be a lesson to learn from, due to the heavy penalty I had to pay. I started to think about it, and realized that, no, it won't be a lesson. I haven't done exactly this, but it's not the first time I've done something impulsive, where there had or would have been consequences that I believed would teach me a lesson. This lesson was supposed to teach me better behavior. To teach me not to do "stupid" things. Well, the yokes on me.
I can't say that I haven't learned anything. I have matured and don't do many of the things I did when I was younger. I'd say stupider but that's not the case. Single was more likely the reason.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? YES US. I AM SURE I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE THIS APPLIES TO. YEAH, I'M SPEAKING TO YOU AS WELL.
The definition on the street for crazy, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In some way, that' what I'm talking about.
BEHAVIOR: There have to be some behaviors you (and I) do that we know are not good for us. Sellers count on us. They have stores that know we're coming. That's why they have all these goodies for us to look at while we wait on line to pay. They are referred to as "impulse items" and they are. You weren't planning on buying a baseball cap, teddy bear, pack of gum or the Enquirer, but you did. Well, it was only a few bucks so what's the biggie?
Those aren't too bad,(unless you are on a strict budget) but there are other things we do that are more harmful. Smoking, drinking too much, eating poorly, over exercising so you hurt yourself, having unsafe sex, cheating on your spouse, betting the mortgage money, driving too fast, going on a vacation you can't afford, and the list goes on. They may not all seem like impulsive behaviors, but if we looked, we might find that most are.
DEFINING IMPULSIVE:
Not so easy as I hoped. The psych. book has it as a disorder. As in Impulse Control Disorder. An anxiety related to obsessive compulsive disorder in which a person feels an intense, repetitive desire to perform certain behaviors.
Nah, I don't have that. Not so much. Not usually. Not so intense. AND it didn't define impulsive. How do they do that?
My handy dandy Webster's states that it is 1. impelling, driving forward; 2. acting or likely to act on impulse. So, What's an impulse?
IMPULSE: 1. An impelling, or driving forward with sudden force;
2. Incitement to action arising from a state of mind or an external stimulus;
3. A sudden inclination to act, without conscious thought.
Yup. This is better. Especially the part about "without conscious thought".
Do WE LEARN TO BE IMPULSIVE?
A-B-C
If you're reading this you've learned your ABC's. These letters however, stand for: Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence. Generally this is how we learn.
Something happens. We produce a behavior. A consequence occurs. Depending on several factors, this should produce learning.
For example. I'm an infant. I'm hungry. I cry. My mother hears me crying and brings me a bottle. She holds me and feeds me. It feels good. I'm not hungry anymore. The being held was a bonus.
What did I learn? That if I am hungry and I cry, I get fed.
Antecedent = hunger Behavior = Crying = Consequence = need fulfilled.
It's a beautiful formula (pun not intended) when it works. Unfortunately, if doesn't often go as planned. What if mum isn't consistent? Sometimes she comes right away and sometimes she hopes you'll cry yourself to sleep. What have you learned now? Sometimes crying works and sometimes it doesn't. This is very confusing. What you have learned is not to trust your mum, or whomever it is who is supposed to be taking care of you.
So, consistency is important. So is timing. When we learn, we pair the behavior with the consequence and the timing. (Forget about the Antecedent for now.)
We can stay with the infant. If I get fed within a reasonable amount of time, I know that my crying is what brings the food. If it takes too long, I don't know why I'm being fed. Think of training a dog to pee outside. You may or may not have had the pleasure of house training a pet. I did.
Basically, if you catch them in the act you pick them up and bring them outside and then reward the behavior. Punishment doesn't work. Not for animals and not for children. Don't get me started on this. Punishment is not negative reinforcement. That's also a different topic, at least for now.
I will actually give you a sick example from a zillion years ago when I taught second grade in Bedford Stuyvesant. For those of you unfamiliar with Brooklyn, it was a very scary ghetto. Which isn't really important except for the fact that I had an aide in the morning because we had federal funds.
I was not doing a good job at teaching. (read that as controlling) I was brand new. I took over the class near the beginning of the term for a teacher on maternity leave. I was like a sub. Two strikes and I was almost out. Back to the relevant part. The aide used to take the class to the bathroom after reading, before math. I was thrilled to have a few minutes of a break.
One day, I was beginning the unit on measurement. I picked up a ruler and held it up. The students sitting directly in front of me, all ducked and put their hands over their heads. I was surprised, to say the least. I asked them what they were doing. They told me they thought I was going to hit them because once I got them to spill, it came out that, my aide was taking them to their break and using a large ruler if they got out of line. Literally and figuratively. She was hitting them with the ruler. She and I had a talk after that.
The point is, they didn't learn to stop being unruly. They still were. They learned to be afraid of a ruler. And probably the aide.
The behavior you're trying to stop doesn't go away, it goes underground. You don't smoke in front of your parents right? Does that mean you don't smoke?
Okay. You get the idea.
In order for learning to be effective, the consequence must happen as close to the behavior as possible. As Shakespeare so nicely said, "and therein lies the rub". An example of this is masturbation. The climax is an immediate consequence of the behavior. If you get reprimanded after that has occurred, you missed the boat. This is one reason why certain "habits" are hard to break. If the consequence is a positive one and follows immediately you got big trouble. And probably a sexual one as well.
And this would be the reason why certain types of impulsive behaviors are tough to stop. The behavior is usually followed by some kind of rush. Excitement, relief, pleasure, even an item that is now yours and you can hold it and anything that your brain would consider a "payoff". In the last case the payoff can be a thought, like " I am rich and powerful. I bought that." When the bill comes due, you freak out, but it doesn't compare to the rush you had, and is delayed too long to really connect them up. The consequence may be bad. You may have ruined your credit, gained another 5 pounds, or gotten an STD. It's too late. The pleasure came first and the pain, well, life is filled with pain and we don't necessarily want to connect it to our previous behavior.
HOW DO YOU BREAK THE CHAIN?
FIRST- You have to really want to. oops, sorry, but it's a factor.
If you aren't motivated to change, you won't. I mean really motivated for yourself because you have finally recognized that you are doing damage to yourself, even though it feels really, really good at the time.
SECOND- Can you figure out the trigger? (antecedent is too long a word and it really means the same thing for our purpose). What is it that triggers the desire that leads to the need for the behavior? Have I lost you yet? Please, just stay with me here.
An example. Maybe not a good one, but it's late and I'm tired. Usually in the evenings my husband and I watch TV. When we watch TV, I do most of my munching/noshing. I can put away a half a pound of chocolate with no problem. Except when I weigh myself the next day, and the scale isn't kind. I get mad at myself. And then, I do the same thing the next night. And the next, and the next.
I did notice, that, if I don't read or watch TV (reading is the other trigger), and come into my woman cave and write a blog, or paint a picture or do some kind of craft, I'm not hungry nor am I craving sweets. So, what's the trigger?
Yeah. Reading and watching TV. Two activities where I am passive and my hands don't have much to do. Stop thinking dirty. I know where your minds go.
The taste of the chocolate is the immediate gratification. The watching TV is one of the few activities my husband and I do together. That creates a dilemma. I know that what I'm doing is bad. It's not healthy to eat all that crap. My solution is not one that I suggest. At this point, it's the only one I have been able to do.
I don't eat much during the day and so when I do eat the chocolate, my weight can be stable. I haven't solved the problem. I've figured out a stupid way of dealing with it.
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Just put chocolate in the bowl. I eat Pirate Booty as a palette cleanser.
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Only you can figure out your own triggers, rewards and consequences. Or you can go to a therapist. Especially if it's really fucking up your life.
If you know the trigger, AVOID it. Common sense. Like at Gambler's Anonymous it really means shutting yourself up in a cave. Because gamblers will bet on anything. So, they can't watch the news because of the sports reports. The can't watch TV because there may be something in a show that sets off the impulse. It's hard to have an addiction. I'm hoping your impulse problem is more garden variety and doesn't fall into the serious ones.
Overspending is another. It used to be easier because you didn't go into stores. Now, with online shopping you have to lock up the computer and your smart phone or put in safeguards.
Of course, if you're lucky, you can try to understand why that trigger is connected to the behavior.
THEORY:
The trigger is usually one of those things mentioned in the definition. A state of mind or external stimulus. Those are the trigger to the trigger.
Like with many of states of mind the ones that trigger behavior are usually ones that are uncomfortable and need to be excised. Like a feeling of emptiness, loneliness, disconnection, hopelessness, helplessness, sadness and the list goes on.
The behaviors we go to are really attempts to fill a hole in your soul. The trigger are a surfacing of the unwanted feeling or thought and the discomfort must go. The trigger gets pulled and the behavior starts. You feel better. The unconscious is repressed and the cycle begins.
There are some people with brains that are predisposed to impulsive behavior. Even they can learn ways to control it.
Each of us has accidentally found a behavior that stops the anxiety/pain. They may be different because of what we experienced as kids, but the outcome is the same. We do things we really don't want to do. Sometimes we can learn to substitute one bad habit for another. The consequences don't seem to matter. The timing is too off. So what can you really do?
It comes down to another old saying. KNOW THYSELF. Most of us don't want to look into our psyches for fear of what we will find. The trouble is, that we do things that are worse than what we find.
If you know you're buying things to feel powerful, what is it that makes you feel "unpowerful?" If you're having sex with too many people, do you know why? Do you need to feel validated? What makes you feel unworthy of validation? If you're eating because it feels good, but you're overweight and hate yourself, why do you need to hate yourself?
You need to ask those hard questions. And often they will point to a lack of self love and self esteem. Holes in you that you are attempting to fill with things that take away your esteem. So what can you do?
A friend once said that in order to feel self-esteem you have to do esteem-able things. They will be different in some ways, but not in all. What makes you feel good? Is it helping someone else without them knowing? Is it volunteer work? Is it being kind to the clerk in the store who was rude to you? Apologizing for your behavior and then not doing it again?
CONCLUSION:
Not all impulse driven behavior is the same. Being spontaneous isn't the same as impulsive. Impulsivity is bad when it causes more damage than joy. If you're rich and overspend you're helping the economy. Still, you may be looking to fill some hole that you need to fix. Sorry. My mind fixated on the word hole. And a recent cartoon. I will photo and add.
Just to sum up. If you don't want to be impulsive, you can stop. It won't be easy and it won't be quick but it will be better. And who doesn't want to be better?
This girl is not being impulsive. Or maybe she is. Maybe he isn't an asshole. Oh well. That's what I thought of when I wrote the word hole. doesn't speak well for me.
