How To Identify And Stop Impulsive Behavior

Our brains are like power plants that constantly generate electricity as they pass chemical messages between neurons. When activity rises, the electrical impulses signal the neurotransmitters to be released who pass their information to the neighboring neurons, creating a wave effect of generated energy. According to the actual process the person is going through and the emotional state he has, there is going to be a continuous fluctuation of these transmitters as they alternate their level and change the chemistry of the brain. In particular, many scientists believe that all emotions and feelings we have can be appointed to these chemical imbalances and all of the states we go through in our life can have a very distinct fingerprint in the quantities of those in the brain.

It is well known that the brain of extroverts is filled with much more dopamine than the reserved introverts who can live in a little room on their own for months on end. Low serotonin can lead to an overthinking, robot machine that puts logic and science above everything else in his life while extremely low levels can lead to depression and anxiety. Similarly, high impulsivity has its own unique fingerprint in the brain where low serotonin leads to over-production of dopamine which translates to a more impulsive kind of behavior where a person can hardly interpret how he is immersing in the behavior he is, let alone try to stop it with reason.

But even though there is a physical correlation between what we feel and what we experience in our bodies, studies have shown that our thinking patterns can have a massive effect on the brain's biochemistry and simply putting ourselves under scrutiny can have remarkable results. When it comes to adaptability our brain will reshape itself constantly the same way our bodies do and it will accommodate our needs the best way it can.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space" is a famous rule that many experienced meditators will abide by and will describe their struggle to attain it throughout their life. For most people, emotions are simply part of them, they take control of their whole body and consume their every thought almost completely. Observing someone behind his car wheel while having an accident seems like a demonized person, and people that immerse into anger will most of the time proceed to do something immensely stupid which they will probably regret just a few minutes later.

Funny enough, I was guilty of this behavior for most that I can remember myself. I have spoken badly of people that didn't deserve it, thrown up opportunities just to avoid those I didn't like and have done things that were quite regrettable for me now that I look back at them. Emotions would consume me almost completely and there was no chance that I would be able to intervene in the process or do anything about it as reasoning and logic were completely throw out of the window.

"Each time we make a choice, our left-brain arm-wrestles with our right. The left (and more pragmatic side) tells us to act logically, while our right puts up a dramatic fight for following the heart's content." --Michael Levine

This sort of battle seems to take place in secret and oblivious ways to us who will usually succumb towards the emotional side of it, as it occupies a more central and primitive part of the brain than logic.

Looking into the list of cognitive biases that people go through in their lives, it is evident that most of them originate from this fight between the left and the right part of the brain, which somehow always results in the emotional side dominating. When we decide to keep working on the same relationship we have been putting our efforts besides the negative results, we are succumbing to the emotional weight of following the investment we have made already and preferring to propagate the lie we tell ourselves than facing the truth than accepting that all our work was in vain. When we decide to avoid the negative feedback from our friends or peers and follow down a defensive road, declaring how awesome and perfect we are, instead of delving into the actual issue and admitting our mistakes we succumb to yet another cognitive bias that is affecting the world massively every day. Yet most of this inner-battle takes place unconsciously and is hidden from public view.

Even more interesting, is the fact that our brain is going to find ways to support our emotions after the fact, blinding us into thinking that it was a logical conclusion when in reality we were just following our intuition all along.

If we really want to get a taste of that ice-cream or can't get to stop ourselves from grabbing that slice of pizza, we'll simply rationalize it with some commonality like "It's always fine as long as you have a balanced diet in general", or "everybody deserves a little bit of a break from time to time". If we believe we live in a world that is a dangerous place and one should always strive to make sure he guards his back, and there is nobody else than yourself that can be trusted in the world, you will simply find a way to rationalize that notion as well, looking into the violence metrics, focusing on the negative news you see in the newspaper, etc. Emotions simply control the best of us for most of our lives, whether we like it or not, and unfortunately, we do very little to take the control back to our hands or even appreciate the order of magnitude of that process.

Follow me here to stay up to date with the latest writings.