‘Response inhibition’ is a cognitive process (an executive function, more specifically), that allows us to suppress any actions or impulses that might be inappropriate or unhelpful in the moment. It’s also known as ‘inhibitory control’, and it’s basically the brain’s brake pedal – the opposite of impulsivity.
To help make sense of it, let’s imagine for a moment that it didn’t exist at all…
We’d say every single thing that came to mind. “Wow, you look awful today”, “What a stupid idea”, “I don’t really give a toss about this job anyway”.
We’d never get through a single task, or be able to follow through on the things we want (beyond those immediate ‘wants’). Want a bit of that birthday cake that you bought for your 4 year-old’s birthday tomorrow? Just eaten it. Want to cross the road? Just did it, without checking for traffic first.
Conversations would be pretty wild. Everyone talking over each other, and blurting out their most intimate stories without filters. Kind of sounds fun, but it would get pretty awful soon enough.
This is an extreme description, but there may be some bits of it that feel familiar, especially if you’ve got ADHD. Perhaps not to the same extent, but you recognise it.
In general, neurodivergent people can have challenges or imbalances when it comes to executive functioning. Response inhibition is one that tends to be particularly difficult to modulate for ADHDers.
What does it feel like to have low response inhibition?
You see a messy cupboard while you reach in for a cleaning product. Before you even know what’s happening, you’re clearing out the whole thing and cleaning it. You’ve not paid it any attention for months (years, even?), and yet suddenly cleaning out this cupboard has become your number one priority. Never mind that you have urgent emails to attend to and you need to leave the house in half an hour.
Or, perhaps you’re having a conversation and you got really passionate about it, and before you know it you’ve blurted out your opinion. It turns out you interrupted someone, and offended someone else. But you just didn’t get a chance to filter before you spoke.
Whilst this all sounds fairly minor and benign, the impacts can really add up. Especially when you haven’t identified it as a ‘thing’.
The impact of struggling with response inhibition
Personally, I found it super tricky in terms of getting work done (I use past tense here not because my struggles with it are gone, but because they’re way less problematic since I’ve built awareness and new habits around it).
I’d be working on a task, then switch to another one, then before I know it I’ve poured the whole morning into something that didn’t really matter. When that kind of thing is happening all the time, it makes work stressful and overwhelming. I ended up working many extra hours to try to make up for it, and it definitely contributed to burnout over time.
Sometimes it’s fun, like the cupboard cleaning example. Like a ray of sunshine in terms of finally having the motivation to do a boring house task. The task is suddenly easy, absorbing, do-able! But when you’ve also lost sight of other priorities, it’s pretty frustrating. You let people down (including yourself), because of the knock-on effect on your other responsibilities.
As well as considering the cumulative impact of low response inhibition, we can step back and see the broader picture. Response inhibition isn’t happening in a vacuum, it’s part of a system. So it’s also crashing into struggles with other processes, like emotional regulation, organisation and prioritisation.
Response inhibition is part of a system of cognitive processes
It’s connected with frustration tolerance, for example. If you have low frustration tolerance (also a feature of ADHD) you might struggle to handle frustration internally – feeling it more intensely, and having a hard time persisting in something that’s bringing up frustration (even if you want to). Response inhibition could dovetail into this, by making it harder not to act on that frustration. You’re having an experience of finding frustration unbearable, and – before you know it – you’ve taken it out on someone else, or abandoned the task and switched to something else.
It’s not ideal to have excessive response inhibition either though, as we may find in someone dealing with certain kinds of anxiety. Natural impulses to respond in this case might be overly suppressed, leading to a kind of paralysis. It’s a balance, and the ADHD challenges have their positive sides too.
What’s the positive side of all this?
Acting on impulses can be fun, spontaneous and creative. Many ADHDers have a knack for being in the moment, and pursuing new opportunities at the drop of a hat. Sometimes thinking through the consequences or potential risks means saying no to something that could have been totally wonderful.
There’s also a sense of flexibility and adaptability at times. In terms of executive functioning, many people with ADHD score pretty high in terms of cognitive flexibility (whereas this can be more of a challenge for autistic people, for example). They find it pretty easy to respond quickly to change, and ‘go with the flow’ when things don’t go as planned.
So it’s not a case of trying to completely change your neurology, or being doomed to struggles without any silver lining.
Instead, it’s helpful to develop a greater sense of choice where possible. To create more awareness of what’s happening, so that you’re able to pause and reorient. Or just be a bit less harsh on yourself when things have gone wrong.
Tools to support better impulse control
Well, again, you can’t just isolate one specific cognitive process. But the plus side to this is that the things you can do to support you with response inhibition are also helpful when it comes to emotional regulation, prioritisation and all sorts of other things…
I find that the most useful thing (and the one that takes the most time and practice) is developing the ability to pause and pull back. This is directly related to meta cognition, a specific executive function that enables you to notice what’s going on for you, to get some perspective.
Learning to pause before you act is an invaluable skill to build over time.
You notice that grotty cupboard, you feel the pull to deep clean it, you pause. You consider how long you have before you need to leave, and you remember what you were focused on a few minutes ago. You manage to pull your attention back, and make a different choice. Ok, it’s just a cupboard, but you know how stressful and painful it can be to throw your day off course, get super stressed later, or let down the person you were going to meet…
Mindfulness (in a way that actually feels doable for you)
A lot of people with ADHD struggle with formal meditation and mindfulness practices. But (versions of) those things really are perfect for building our capacity to pause. You might be able to build in a walking meditation or a short breathing meditation on a regular basis. If you’re able to do this through a meditation app, it’s really worth building the habit (even if it’s a bit sporadic).
It might be that combining mindfulness with exercise makes it easier. Like a guided meditation on a run, or noticing the sensations in your body while going for a walk. Added bonus of the huge benefits of exercise for ADHDers.
If that just makes you roll your eyes because you’ve heard it all before, and it just doesn’t feel possible for you… you can use some micro mindfulness tools that might be more accessible.
When you realise you’ve launched into something without thinking, say ‘stop’ or ‘pause’ (either in your head or out loud). You might not be able to change course for now, but just pausing and taking one breath still creates a neurological shift from the default.
Didn’t notice until the deed was done? Retrospectively take a second to acknowledge what happened. ‘I was getting ready to leave, I got something out of that cupboard, then I spent 40 minutes cleaning it. The result is that I’m stressed and late’.
Shifting self-perception with compassion
So in that last part, where you’re pausing and acknowledging what happened… the biggest shift? NOT berating yourself about it. Noticing with neutrality, and even compassion.
Self-punishment will create even more stress and emotional dysregulation. It won’t help you change things, even though you might be used to leveraging shame as a kind of shove towards action or change.
Personally, I think that developing the ability to pause, plus building the muscle of self-compassion, is the real game changer. It may not be quick or easy, but it can be profoundly impactful.
A lot of us with ADHD are pretty tired of people suggesting surface-level strategies that we’re not actually able to implement. The missing link is often the deeper work we need to do on awareness and compassion, which can then be complemented with more practical tools.
We all know that more lists and reminders will wind up as (yet another) failed attempt at change. But the practical tips do have their place – we just need to stop expecting them to do so much heavy lifting.
So with that caveat in mind… What practical things might help?
Visual cues, structure and reminders
Making your plans and priorities visible in some way can be really helpful. When you’re dealing with differences in object permanence (something that we experience differently from the norm as neurodivergent people), it’s even easier to launch into a task you didn’t mean to do.
If you can be even 10% more deliberate about your priorities, it can help. For example, using a task management system that you can access on your phone and computer. But then also having a piece of paper where you write down your top 3 priorities for the week and make them visible.
Or having a whiteboard where you write down the most important focus point for the day. Or putting visual reminders for yourself around the house – including a physical analog clock so it’s harder to lose track of time.
I could go on and on here, depending on the type of response inhibition we’re talking about. But you get the gist – visual reminders and creating some structure in advance can help you stay on track (as long as you’re also building skills for awareness and compassion).
Social supports and accountability
Have some conversations in advance to get people on your side. Whether it’s at work or in your personal life, can you let some people know that you’re working on this? Perhaps (whilst bearing in mind any RSD) asking people to lovingly point out if they see you falling foul of impulsivity. Clearly, this is only helpful with the right kind of person. The last thing you need is criticism for something you’re not in control of, and are actively working on.
If you tend to interrupt people or blurt things out without thinking, it can be helpful to bring this into your relationships in a different way. Rather than going into a shame spiral, or feeling defensive if there are consequences to your communication, could you try something new?
That could be building a habit of backtracking and proactively repairing with people – actually asking how it was for them, rather than hoping they won’t bring it up. It can also be freeing to name the thing in the moment – “I’ve just realised I interrupted you earlier. It’s something I’m working on, how was that for you?”.
Finally – and this goes in tandem with the self-compassion part – can you embrace yourself just as you are? Seems like a contradiction with all those suggestions for how to change… but it’s not. It’s too easy to make the change process into some perfectionistic thing based on not being good enough. That’s not the thing.
You can choose to make adaptations that could lead to improvements in your stress levels and relationships. And at the same time, you can accept yourself just as you are.
You can even start orienting towards those moments where ‘impulsivity’ is brilliant in your life – noticing those times where you’re spontaneous, creative, passionate and quick. Let yourself celebrate them, even if there is a flipside that can be tricky sometimes.
https://chadd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ATTN_06_12_Exercise.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6698914/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9999224/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1426376/full
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31397614/
