ADHD and impulse control: The science behind why willpower fails

Does ADHD really mean poor self-control? Or is that the myth that’s been making everything harder? 

Dr. Polaris Koi is a philosopher who studies ADHD and self-regulation (and is an ADHDer themselves). In this episode, Cate and Polaris get into why “just try harder” is not only unhelpful advice — it’s based on science that most researchers don’t even believe anymore. 

They talk about why impulsivity in ADHD adults rarely looks like the textbook version (hi, compulsive shopping and 3 a.m. tattoo urges). How shame and anxiety make executive function worse. And why learning to work with your brain’s patterns beats white-knuckling your way through every temptation. Plus why some ADHDers end up over-controlled — which comes with its own set of problems. 

If you’ve ever told yourself you’re just lazy, bad at relationships, or fundamentally broken because you can’t seem to get it together, this one’s for you.

• Listen: ADHD and impulsive spending

• Watch: ADHD break-ups: Impulsive texts and overthinking regrets 

Dr. Polaris Koi: Self-control is no substitute for wisdom, but with that in mind, what we do need is skill in deploying self-control and then maybe to accompany it a bit of insight into what we actually want to deploy self-control for. We need it to be our best selves in the company of loved ones and to stop and smell the flowers when we are tempted to overachieve.

Cate Osborn: That's Dr. Polaris Koi. They're an assistant professor of practical philosophy at the University of Turku, and their research focuses on ADHD and neurodiversity, specifically self-control and decision-making, and asking the question of how biology and social environments shape our agency, decisions, and control.

So today, Polaris and I are talking about impulsivity in relationships and how self-control can impact everything from our self-esteem to stability in intimate relationships. Hi, everybody, and welcome to "Sorry I Missed This," the show where we talk about all things ADHD and its connection to relationships, intimacy, sex, communication, and more. As always, it's me, your host, Cate Osborn.

Now, it is important to mention that not everyone with ADHD experiences impulsivity, and impulsivity looks different in kids than adults, and from person to person when it comes to the lived experience of ADHD. But it is true that when impulsivity is in play, it can be hard to build systems and structures for because, well, it's impulsive, and that has a real impact on the way that we navigate through relationships.

Impulsivity has always been something that I never really thought was part of my ADHD experience. I thought, oh, well, I think before I speak and I'm really good at, you know, not getting up and wandering around at the least moment of boredom. And then I learned about things like compulsive shopping, and then I learned about things like gambling and a lot of ways that impulsivity can show up in the lives of adults with ADHD that don't look like the traditional ways that we often discuss impulsivity.

But those types of impulsivity — self-control around buying things, self-control around saying the most hurtful thing possible when you're in an argument — those kind of things can have a real impact on relationships. And when I heard about the work that Polaris Koi was doing, I was so fascinated because their work is literally around self-control and decision-making and how people with ADHD often struggle with those things.

And how impulsive decision-making is a very different thing than thinking things through, but so many people with ADHD also live with choice paralysis, and so then we can sort of rely on impulsive decision-making because it can be so overwhelming to try and sit down and think through every possible scenario and outcome. Because living with ADHD is really hard, and it's really complex and it's really nuanced. So without further ado, welcome to the show.

Dr. Polaris Koi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Polaris: Thanks so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.

Cate: Polaris, one of the things that I'm really curious about is just how we talk about impulse control and ADHD. And there is this assumption around ADHD that ADHD just basically equals poor self-control. So where does that come from?

Polaris: Long story short, does ADHD have to do with difficulties in self-control? Yes. Then again, when you look at the broad spectrum of people who are diagnosed with ADHD, we are not a monolith. So you're going to see people who struggle a lot with self-control. You're also going to see people who have it, paradoxically, under control — at least to a pretty nice extent.

A diagnosis is not going to determine your capabilities — at least not the diagnosis alone. Instead, it's going to alter what's going to work for you. When we go about regulating our behavior in motivational conflicts where we need self-control — you want to do one thing but you're also tempted to do another — there's a bunch of things that we could do to help regulate how we behave.

And one of them is, you know, just the counting to 10 or just trying really hard not to give in to the temptation. But there's also more indirect things we could do, smarter things we could do, including, for example, minimizing exposure to the tempting things, or teaming up with a friend, which is going to help us regulate where our attention goes. I love that everybody is doing body doubling these days. It's so efficient for most people. And all of these strategies that we could do to control ourselves.

05:27 The psychological impact of self-control on intimacy and the development of internal heuristics for focus.

Cate: Well, and that's what's interesting to me about self-control, because I, growing up, one of the reasons why I think my ADHD was missed for so long was because I am like pathologically self-controlled. Like, you go to the art museum and you really want to touch the statue, but like, no we can't. And I have to really overcome that.

And so I built a lot of systems. I built a lot of ways of being in my own life that are absolutely based around that, like I know I'm going to feel these urges, I know that I'm going to struggle with these impulse controls, but I can't and I mustn't. Or like another place where I see it show up a lot is just in how people react in intimacy.

Like they don't want to make the loud noise or they don't want to react like viscerally because there's this shame around, oh I have to be self-controlled at all times and I can't lose track of myself. So it's interesting how that shows up in relationships.

Polaris: Yeah. Self-control isn't always a great thing. You know, we can use it to repress ourselves. We can use it to inhibit ourselves from doing things that we have every right to do and that are not going to hurt anybody or cause any major damage and so forth. Self-control is no substitute for wisdom, but with that in mind, what we do need is like skill in deploying self-control and then maybe to accompany it a bit of insight into what we actually want to deploy self-control for.

We need it to be our best selves in the company of loved ones and sometimes we need self-control, you know, to stop and smell the flowers when we are sort of tempted to go and try to overachieve.

Cate: The profundity of the way that impulse control can impact relationships and intimacy and just life (generally) is really, really big. So what do you think is like the first step that someone can take if they are noticing places where impulse control is hindering their ability to live a satisfied life?

Polaris: So one of the things that I think people should do is develop their own set of rules of thumb. When it comes to doing things at scale and seeing like what works for most people, that's where science comes in, but you can experiment on yourself for free. So thinking in terms of, can you come up with ways to simplify these situations?

It can look like cognitive change, so looking at things from a different perspective. One thing that I've done, just to give you an example, is that my big problem often in doing the kind of work that I do, which requires sustained focus and staying on the project for really long periods of time, is that I get ideas. I want to run with the new idea.

And I used to be in this place where, you know, I had a zillion undone projects and nothing finished. And one of the rules of thumb that really helped me change that — it's going to sound really silly, but that's how personal these are because it's going to sound really silly — but one of these heuristics that really helps me is telling myself: I don't need this right now.

And I can write it down for future reference, but it's like asking myself, "Do I need this right now? Hand on heart, do I need this right now?" But it's really all about looking at what's enabling you and what's undermining you. So for example, in my case, one big undermining thing is that I get so excited about so many things and that's a richness, but it's also a major barrier to getting anything done.

And it's also a major barrier in relationships because then I get excited about a bunch of things that don't necessarily include the thing that a person dear to me is currently talking about. Which is not a good look in relationships when you're like, "Well, can you stop talking? Like, I need to look at that bird. I was interested in what you were saying five seconds ago, but I'm not anymore, sorry." Like, that's not... you do want to become better at that because you don't want to be on the other side of that equation.

Of course, the physical temptations, in a way, they can be among the most straightforward things to regulate if you have access to regulating your space because then you can allow them in your space or leave them in the store and that's already helping quite a bit. And then now people are going to say, "But Polaris, I can run down to the store or I can order Uber Eats." Yes, you can, but it's at least adding a little bit of friction between you and the thing that you're trying to quit.

That's really all we can do with the strategies. We can add a bit of friction between ourselves and the thing that we're trying to forgo in order to do something that matters more to us.

10:57 Impulsivity and the biological reality of how the brain processes immediate rewards versus long-term goals.

Cate: What is so particularly interesting to me about this whole conversation is kind of honing in on that sense of urgency. Because the sense of urgency for me, at least, it is one of the most uncomfortable parts of my ADHD. Because I will wake up at 3:00 in the morning and be like, if I don't buy a new pair of blue jeans right now, I'm going to die.

And we see that kind of sense of urgency mixed with impulse control really doing a lot of damage in a lot of ADHD lives. Like we see people with ADHD struggling with like financial issues because they're impulsively buying stuff, compulsive shopping. We see like gambling issues and that kind of thing because of that sense of urgency.

This is a true story. I got a DM from a guy the other day who was like, "I need advice on getting tattoos because I keep getting tattoos because I have the idea and then I go get a tattoo and then I regret the tattoo. Do you have any advice?" Do you have any thoughts on how uncomfortable that sense of urgency can get when our brain kind of latches onto this like, "This is going to be the thing," or, "This is going to be the idea that like changes my life"? That's something that I personally really struggle with too.

Polaris: Yeah. I think that's one of the main things that neurotypical people, when they try to give advice to us, get wrong the most. I never had a gambling problem, but I will happily admit to playing far too many computer games, including on time that was supposed to be for something else. And there is this sense of urgency, like, I need to do this game right now, I can't wait until work is done.

And then, you know, the neurotypical advice is like, "You know, just wait until you're done with the stuff of the day." And it's like, what do you mean just wait? It's not a "just." It's not a "just." It's like one of the hardest things. So what we need to do instead — and this is actually something which is interesting because it's also, to an extent, true of neurotypicals, I think we just have it amplified — is that we really need to play with "out of sight, out of mind."

We need to find a new "ooh, shiny" that is more aligned with our purpose to distract ourselves away from the previous one. And this is something that was already learned back in the '60s. So you might have heard of the Marshmallow Experiment, where small children were asked to wait in the room alone with a marshmallow. And if they succeed in waiting without eating it, then they get two when the experimenter comes back.

And there's been a lot of subsequent research and, you know, some parts of that have been criticized, but the thing that keeps replicating is what they already found out in the '60s, which is that children wait better if the reward is not visible. So if the reward is visible, they just eat it. They see marshmallow, they eat marshmallow. But if it's not visible, then it's easier to wait.

And similarly, what we can do is we can try to shape our circumstances such that the temptations are just not available. I think every ADHDer should have a good website blocker app on their computer that just helps them block any websites that are their typical problems during predetermined periods of time. Again, it's about adding friction.

Can you circumvent your website blocker by booting your whole entire laptop? Probably. Are you actually going to go through the trouble? At least not every time. So it's going to help. And that's the way these things go — because it's about our inner desires and motivation, there's just no silver bullet solutions. We can do incremental improvement here, incremental improvement there, and it's going to add up over time.

Cate: One of the things that I hear a lot is like a lot of this conversation around, well, I have ADHD, so I can't. And that can be really frustrating in relationships. That can be really frustrating just as someone who is like on a journey of self-improvement in some way. It seems like a lot of people sort of systematically underestimate their own self-regulation abilities. So can you talk a little bit about how that kind of works in terms of building those systems?

Polaris: So that's one of the harmful aftermaths this ego depletion theory has had in, you know, not just in self-help books, but also in magazines and wherever you see it all over the place. And I'm sure that a lot of listeners have heard about this idea that it's kind of like a muscle.

In the '60s, '70s, Roy Baumeister, who is a social psychologist, he came up with this theory according to which self-control is a bit like a resource or a muscle that you sort of wear out, and then maybe it gets stronger in the long run. The evidence for that theory is mixed at best. And that's going to mislead us in a way because it's going to make us think that if I failed in self-control, then I need to just do the same thing that I did but with more effort.

And when that's not going to work out, then it's going to look like I have a lot of evidence that I'm just incapable. So instead of thinking about it that way, I'd like to suggest that people take a step back and look at their capabilities at regulating motivational conflicts from a bit of a broader perspective.

So a lot of people, when they think in terms of their self-control difficulties, they're only looking at the failures. But also there is nobody who would always fail at self-control and nobody who would always succeed in it. So it pays to look at where am I already doing a little bit better? Often when we think about self-control, we're thinking in terms of work and study and fitness and productivity.

16:45 Reframing self-control challenges to reduce the cycle of anxiety and self-blame.

Polaris: But we need self-control wherever we have motivational conflicts. So for example, do I make this ask to my partner right now or do I wait until a better moment? Or — speaking of personal experience — when you're an underslept parent of a small child who wakes you up 20 times in a night, and your whole body is screaming you just want to sleep and you still get up. That takes a lot of self-control.

I think that's really amazing, how can it be that we are capable of that kind of stuff? If you've been in that situation, you don't get to tell yourself that you don't have self-control. Uh-uh. You've got to instead look at how is this situation different from the situations where I'm not doing so well and how could I change things around?

Cate: Knowing what you know about impulse control and self-control and all of those things, what would you change about the way that we talk about impulse control and we teach kids with ADHD how to "behave"?

Polaris: I would sort of shift the narrative away from thinking in terms of, are you powerful or are you weak? Are you a success or are you a failure? Shift away from that, let go of that, and instead of that, think in terms of, where am I enabled to deploy self-control? Where are there barriers to my deploying self-control?

And those barriers and enabling factors, they can be something external, but they can also be something that's within you. And being able to identify them, it's going to help you maybe devise ways to circumvent some of those barriers. And particularly this is important because this self-blame and anxiety — and anxiety is such a typical problem for ADHDers — it becomes this vicious circle where you're stressed and anxious because you have self-control problems.

But that stress and anxiety in itself is going to make your executive functioning system work worse than it did before, so which is going to create even more self-control difficulties. So in a way, even though in the midst of that anxiety sometimes what we really want to do most is hit the pedal and try to get stuff done as much as possible, sometimes the best thing we can do for self-control is to take a step back and really like try to soothe ourselves first.

Every instance of self-control starts with realizing that you need self-control in that situation. There's so many situations where we do something that we didn't mean to because we simply forgot or we weren't paying attention. So getting to that space of paying attention is always the first step. And this is one of the most important things, I guess, when it comes to thinking about self-control and ADHD, that we often think that because ADHD is this heritable brain difference, then whatever is associated with ADHD is going to accompany us for life.

But the reality is very different. And particularly with self-control, there's a lot of things that can change. It's going to take time and it's going to be two steps forward, one step back, but there is a journey there that can be taken.

Cate: A lot of the kind of literature around adult ADHD especially seems to kind of hone in on that kind of... unconscious isn't the right word, but that kind of... you grow up a little bit, you know, you develop more inhibitory controls, and so for some people, their ADHD symptoms improve.

And so there is kind of this misnomer that ADHD disappears on your 18th birthday, the ADHD fairy comes and takes it away. But in reality, what we are seeing is whether or not people even know that they have ADHD, they are building these systems and they are building these structures, and those are the things that are improving their circumstances and their situation so their ADHD isn't impacting them as much.

Polaris: Exactly. Regardless of whether we are ADHDers or not, we're going to through our life learn to handle ourselves better. It's not something where we need to wait for something biologically to shift in our brains. Like, that seems to be the narrative. That's not really how it works. The way our brains change, the way neuroplasticity works, is our brain starts to process information differently in response to stimuli, in response to our lives changing. So it's really we need to start developing strategies and start shaping our lives to be ones that look like the lives we want to live.

Cate: I've talked very openly on the show before about, like, I was a compulsive shopper for a while. Like I just destroyed my finances and it was impacting my life and my relationships and all of these different things. Like my brain will work overtime, whether it's buying something or choosing like an impulsive action, it will be like, "No, no, no, this is the thing that's going to... it's really going to help. It's really going to help. It's really going to help."

And so I can talk myself into doing something that is actually a hindrance.

Polaris: I think it's something that is just part of being human, that we make up these stories that are only true part of the time. And those stories can be empowering, but they can also be enabling things that shouldn't be enabled. And I think here again, coming up with ways to put a little bit of friction between yourself and the action, it's going to create that space where it's at least possible for you to like start reconsidering and creating that in a way that's not contingent on you being able to say no to yourself.

Or again, sources of boosting, enabling for the things that we want to get around to actually starting and doing. There's nothing wrong with leaving your art supplies on the table if the people who live with you are fine with it, obviously. You're going to maybe want to leave out the things that you want to be using regularly and then hide the things in the closet that you want to be using less regularly.

Also cognitively, we can add friction by making it a bit of a game with ourselves. I was chatting with a journalist who is also an ADHDer, and she was asking me, "But Polaris, I've tried to pick up running at least 20 times, but I just can't make myself a runner." I was listening to that and I was like, "You know, by your own admission, you've gone for a run at least 20 times in your life. By my book, that's a runner."

Cate: Yeah!

Polaris: This cycle of self-blame because it becomes almost a tic that we just keep seeing the negative instead of seeing the positive and just looking at the different side of the equation sometimes can make us see like a world of opportunities.

Cate: All right, Dr. Polaris Koi, thank you so much for being on the show. Your work is fascinating. You are an incredible human. I think you are so cool and so awesome. I'm so grateful for your time.

Polaris: Likewise. You know, I'm a big fan. Thank you so much for being here.

Cate: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.

Thank you for listening. Anything mentioned in the episode will be linked in the show notes with more resources. Have a question, comment, burning story you'd like to share? Email us at sorryimissedthis@understood.org.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"Sorry I Missed This" is produced by Jessamine Molli and edited by Jessie DiMartino. Video is produced by Calvin Knie, our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Production support provided by Andrew Rector. Briana Berry is our production director, Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Cate Osborn. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you again.