How Reducing Stress Can Help Lessen Impulsivity

New research suggests we can cut down on rash behavior.

Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Key points

• Past research has illuminated a connection between boredom and impulsivity.
• New research shows that impulsive people may have higher reactivity, physiologically, to boredom.
• Focusing on ways to lower or better tolerate stress could potentially reduce impulsive action.

Perhaps you know someone who tends to be impulsive — and it gets in their way. They act first and think second, often choosing unhealthy behaviors and perhaps getting stuck in a perpetual pattern of self-sabotage.

Now, researchers at the University of Portsmouth may have some answers for how they can help themselves make better choices.

What is impulsivity, exactly? It's a tendency to act without full deliberation — to rush into a decision without giving as much thought as it deserves, especially in terms of consequences. In its mildest forms, impulsivity doesn't always have to be destructive. But at higher levels, impulsivity can often be a sign of several psychological disorders, and it can make someone more likely to engage in risky behavior, like we see with substance abuse, gambling, high-risk sexual behavior or self-harm.

Past research has illuminated a connection between boredom and impulsivity — specifically, highly impulsive people may be acting the way they do in an attempt to relieve boredom, which perhaps they experience at higher levels at rest than typical people. In this latest study, participants who scored highly on trait impulsivity indeed reported higher levels of boredom after completing a dull task. In addition to that, however, there were interesting findings involving the stress hormone cortisol when it came to these more highly impulsive participants. Specifically, they showed higher reactivity, physiologically, to this boredom. Thus, highly impulsive participants may have found the experience of boredom to be more upsetting — which suggests that cortisol, or the stress response more generally, might be a trigger for their impulsivity, mediating the relationship with boredom.

Of course, most people find boredom to be unpleasant, and one can argue that in our world of smartphones, boredom has become even more quickly assuaged with technology, which makes it even more unfamiliar and excruciating to experience if you don't have an escape. So, seeking out stimulation when bored is nothing new, and certainly not limited to those with impulsivity. But, those with high impulsivity might be triggered even more extremely by boredom, and this latest research suggests that a higher level of stress is the mediator between their experience of boredom and their eventual acting out.

What's crucial about this research is the possibility of treatment approaches that it opens up. For those struggling with impulse control, addiction, or just general patterns of acting before thinking something through, this research suggests that if we can focus on ways to lower stress in the moment — or perhaps their ability to tolerate that stress — the need for impulsive action won't be as high.

With many clients in my practice, we have long worked on "the pause" — creating a mindful moment that occurs between a strong emotional reaction and the sometimes destructive behavior that can follow it, in order to choose actions more carefully. Whether it be a parent who screams in anger at their children, a person who has developed a compulsive pornography habit to distract them from loneliness, or someone who binge-eats when they feel any kind of distress, it is very common to sail from an uncomfortable feeling to an unhelpful behavior. This latest research suggests that highly impulsive people may be even more prone to this automaticity, because boredom creates an itch in them even more intense than for an average person.

For all of us, this lends credence that we can really be helped by inserting the pause, becoming aware of our stress in the moment and charting a healthier path. The more we can slow down and breathe, the more we may realize that scratching the itch as hard as we can often creates more problems than the itch itself.