Impulsivity is my main issue. Any advice?

[Frenchy98]

My impulsivity affects my relationship with people... I tend to blurt things out sometimes that sound mean, but I don't do it on purpose. It mainly happens when something/someone annoys me and also when I'm being negative. Sometimes I make my own dialogues in my head but sometimes I don't and when I don't that's when I blurt things out that sound mean.

[Megabar]

I have the same problem. My parents always said that I didn’t have a filler in my head and whatever I was thinking would come out. I specially sound mean when I am very stressed out. I try to apologize after if I realize that I said it mean and say I didn’t mean to say it like that.

[gphill56 in reply to Megabar]

Straterra helped me A LOT with this. That was also my biggest issue, and was a huge factor impacting my marriage. It really helped with the blurting out responses that hurt others, giving me just enough pause to NOT say things and immediately regret them.

[Tie-dye in reply to gphill56]

I feel like I’m always putting my foot in my mouth.

[nuttymunch]

I had to train myself to count to 5 before I say anything. It has helped. However, I still find myself in tricky situations when stress levels are high.

[HadEnuf]

Sometimes, I've found the best remedy to be a sincere word of kindness when I know my immediately-previous words may have stung.

[Frenchy98 in reply to HadEnuf]

My problem is that sometimes I blurt things out and I don't even notice when I sound harsh or mean though. I told my friends to let me know in the moment when I do say something not nice so that I can be aware.

[Adultadhd]

For me what happens specifically when it comes to blurting things out is I am trying to communicate with someone but I can't get words to my lips or at least the words that are well thought out. When I say negative things it's generally because those thoughts have a lot of emotional weight which makes it easy for me to focus on so I can get them to my lips. Choosing to say the only thing that I can focus on it that second generally isn't a good idea because it either results in me saying something that's emotionally charged or something my brain finds novel and stimulating. You would think novel and stimulating would make me interesting to others but without proper leadin It stops the flow of conversation and makes it appear as if I'm not listening.

How do I combat this? Try to stay medicated while interacting with people (meaning don't forget to take my pill or put it off). I also have been working on my cognitive behavioral therapy to try to limit thinking about emotional things to give me focus. Also I try not to overwhelm myself because I find overextending myself mixed with ADHD is a recipe for disaster for me, most of the time when I am reacting to what people say or do negatively it is because I am over stimulated with things I have taken on or the environment I'm in itself.

And the last thing I want to mention is anytime something gets pointed out or something happens and I realize it's my ADHD I'm very kind to myself and sometimes even joke about it to myself.

I hope some of that rings true for you and helps you out.

[The1Path]

I’ve been working on this almost my whole career, as I was only diagnosed w ADHD very recently. I have mainly learned the hard way to limit what I share out loud in front of others. Wish I had a magic pill for this, but it has been my own stubborn commitment to learn from my mistakes that has helped. Committing to improving is the first step, I’ve also learned a lot from books on emotional intelligence.