Julie and Jel discuss impatience – what triggers theirs, what extreme impatience can result in, and how this ADHD trait affects them personally.
Extreme impatience is a common challenge for those with ADHD, driven by a dopamine deficiency that creates a constant need for immediate gratification. This can lead to frustration in situations, often triggering impulsive reactions and emotional dysregulation. Impatience, along with other ADHD challenges, are often intertwined. Understanding impatience as part of ADHD helps in developing coping strategies like distraction techniques and mindful adjustments to manage its impact on daily life.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Impatience as a Core ADHD Trait: Impatience is intensified in ADHD due to dopamine deficiencies, creating an urgency for immediate gratification or resolution. This impatience often leads to overreactions and emotional dysregulation.
- Common Triggers: Queues and delays in situations like supermarket lines or late appointments often trigger frustration and avoidance behaviors. When driving, impatience can manifest as road rage or risk-taking, though learned behaviors can reduce these tendencies over time.
- Interpersonal Impact: Impatience may result in interrupting or over-talking, driven by the need to process thoughts quickly or frustration with conversational pacing. Inconsistent reactions can confuse or upset others, emphasizing the need for awareness and coping strategies.
- Physical and Emotional Costs: Impatience is linked to raised blood pressure, anxiety, and impulsivity. Accident-prone behaviors due to rushing can further exacerbate stress.
- Coping Mechanisms and Strategies: Diversion therapy can be helpful; redirecting focus during stressful situations, such as engaging in repetitive tasks while waiting. Structured responses, including developing pre-planned approaches to known triggers, can help negate an impatient trigger. Mindful adjustments like slowing down while driving or adapting to nature’s rhythms offer calming alternatives to impulsive actions.
- Benefits of Awareness: Understanding the roots of impatience allows for proactive management, like recognizing triggers and consciously regulating responses. Conversations about ADHD challenges (like impulsivity or emotional regulation) help in reframing impatience positively.
LINKS
Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024).
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of ‘The Missing Piece’ and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.
JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.
JULIE: Welcome to another episode of ADHDifference. We’ll be talking today about impatience and how that impacts those of us with ADHD. Impatience, along with many other emotions, affects all sorts of people – neurotypicals and the neurodiverse, but it’s the frequency and also how extreme those emotions play out that makes it an ADHD trait.
JEL: Very much. Yes impatience. I think there’s a bit of an idea that we should become more patient as we get older. A bit of wisdom steps in but, with us, I don’t know that we have more patience. I certainly don’t feel I’m more patient as I get older. In some ways I’m less patient but it’s how we mask that impatience, how we respond and behave when we’re around members of the public or family and friends, and so forth.
JULIE: Sometimes though impatience is pretty hard to hide. We can feel it coming. We can feel that boiling up inside us and even though we think we may be hiding it, often that’s far from the truth. We can show it in our face, our body language. It’s very obvious to people around us that it might indeed be brewing.
JEL: So, what’s going on with impatience? Why? Why is impatience a big part of ADHD?
JULIE: I think it’s part of our dopamine and, or dopamine deficiency I should say, and that when we want something we want it now. And it’s a bit irrational in some ways and it can be seen as being quite unreasonable at times. The simplest things, for example, like queuing.
JEL: Something I just can’t do. Well, I have to do, as we all have to do, but something I certainly can’t do. But before going into maybe the examples, I think yeah, touching on the dopamine. The ADHD brain doesn’t have balanced dopamine. We’re seeking dopamine all the time. That’s our … ‘problem’ is not the right word, but that’s sort of us, almost in a nutshell, and it can be the big dopamine hits in life or it could be the small ones. And it can be constant all the time. We don’t have that balance and so if we describe some examples of impatience and how that affects us and how we see that, if you are a neurotypical with a balance of dopamine you can reasonably, and quite rightly, listen to our examples and say “well just be more patient, just understand the situation, and just chill out and calm down a bit.” So, let’s get this … remind you again, that you know we’re not medicated so we don’t have the benefit of medication keeping those dopamine levels at a nice balanced … in a balanced state. So, lots of small things can really trip us up just simply queuing is a good example. Queuing in the supermarket. And if it’s more than two deep on each till, well I’ve been known just to leave the trolley and walk out rather than face that kind of torture. The dopamine I have is I need to achieve the task of getting the food, or whatever’s in the trolley, and I need that, and I want that but it’s too high a price to pay if I have to queue that long or if I’m forced to use a self-service checkout. Because that … even though I’ve said before I’m a technologist, I have to then work out how to use that machine and it’s not my job. And so these things get in the way of the dopamine hit. How I can get around that, which is the wrong answer, is I walk out. I just say “No, stuff this. I’m walking out.” I get a momentary dopamine hit because it’s a victory. It’s a win. I walk away. I’ve shown you that your service and your setup is not good enough and I’m fighting for all the workers in the store but I lose in the end.
JULIE: And I think too with … there are always outcomes of every action of course, and by walking away that triggers yet another ADHD challenge and that’s time management. You could leave your basket full of groceries in store but you still need to get the groceries at some stage. So, while it’s a minor victory to walk out and go “Haha we’ve won today,” it’s not. So, if you were to face your impatience while in the queue and having to actually go through that whole process, one that you’re not in control of … and I think that’s one of the reasons we do get impatient, if we could speed it up ourselves we would, but when we’re relying on other people or the environment around us that we are unable to control, that’s when it really hits in. So how does impatience affect you?
JEL: Well, the other thing with impatience is it does lead to emotional dysregulation, which is in itself another episode to chat about, because we’re in danger of responding emotionally in a very irrational way and we have to put a lid on that. We have to mask. If we were being utterly honest, we would embarrass ourselves and security would probably be called because we would blow the whole thing out of proportion when reality is, you may have to wait 10 or 15 minutes to get served. And, if life’s so busy you can’t wait that long, you see other people see the rationality … that’s sorry the irrational in us, but to us it’s a … becomes almost a life and death situation almost and that’s terribly dramatic, but in our minds it can roller coaster and accelerate and it becomes wrong wrong wrong on every level. Rearrange your store. Get staff. Stop treating us like this. It just grows like a … it can blow and you can’t predict how you’ll react. Some situations we can really surprise ourselves and the same situation I can just be very calm and rational about it. We don’t have control over this dopamine hit. So, one technique I think sometimes, is to try to find another way of getting the dopamine which is not the direct objective of what you’re doing, what’s in front of you. Maybe sometimes when I’m waiting on a doctor’s surgery or dentist surgery and they’re running late – 20 minutes, 30 minutes late, then I start playing games and I’m drumming. My legs are drumming all the time and I’m thinking ‘right this is the best opportunity, because I’m stuck here, to learn to play those patterns better’. I’m not a drummer but … so I set challenges. I can do that. I can keep time on that. That’s working but I’m trying a diversion therapy, isn’t it?
JULIE: Absolutely. Yeah, that is a really good one. So, as well as emotional dysregulation which can be an outcome of this extreme impatience, we’ve also got anxiety which is something that I can suffer from when I’m trying to internalize my emotional dysregulation and that can go downhill pretty promptly, but also it brings out some impulsivity in us too. We may become accident prone because of our impulsivity and also there is an impact on our health. We know that our blood pressure will rise substantially in a situation where we’re unable to moderate the impatience and that’s the battle isn’t it. It’s not feeling in control over that one simple emotion.
JEL: Yes, and I’m thinking where impatience kicks in for me far more. I’m far more impatient with people than I am machines or things you know … if a machine, a technology won’t do what it’s meant to do and you’ve got a chance to attack it, and control it, and do something, and force it, and beat it … but you can’t do that with people of course and so someone who’s not perhaps … having a conversation with someone in a service industry and they’re just not understanding what you’re asking, or just not progressing, or not aware, or concentrating, it’s an absolute nightmare when you’re dealing with people like that … you know, a help line or something like that. It’s hard work, it’s hard work.
JULIE: Another example too of impatience that’s not so major but we do it every day and that is our impatience leads us to interrupting or over-talking. And in my case, with my ADHD, I really struggle sometimes to complete a sentence because there’s so many things going on in my head – or trying to find that word that best describes the situation for me and Jel, my darling husband, will get impatient with me saying “Just spit it out. What are you trying to say?” and we have a great relationship and I know what he means he’s … you know, I don’t take that to heart at all but you’re impatient just to drag that conversation yeah, drag it out.
JEL: Finish the sentence, or look for the key word in the sentence, because … I kind of generally, not all the time but most of the time, can imagine what you’re about to say. And I … so jump to the keyword. It’s almost … I need stuff in sound bites, faster faster faster. Because I’ve already jumped ahead, constructed what you’re going to say, and what the impact of what you’re saying is, yeah?
JULIE: I know. I agree. And part of that too is often with storytelling, instead of speaking or explaining something in a linear fashion, it will be nonlinear. So rather than ABCD, this is the outcome, it would be more like BQAS. You know, it is quite random at times but that’s when my brain’s jumping all over the place. Hey that’s another ADHD trait altogether but you can see how that can bring on impatience with other people. And, then there’s self-impatience. At times when you just can’t do what you want to do. For me it’s reading instructions. I don’t like to wait and waste that time reading instructions where to me it should be pretty obvious. Now that’s not always the case, as you can imagine, with kit-set furniture or quite detailed instructions when performing a new task, perhaps online, that you haven’t done before. I tend to skip. Skip the bits that I think I know. Which again the outcome of that is time management and having to start all again and …
JEL: I love expressions that have been around a long time but there’s a good one for that ‘one step forward, two steps back’ because that’s what I observe when you skip an instruction and you go … okay we have to go back several stages now. We’re coming across with impatience as it’s … that we’re permanently wired and on the edge of anxiety all the time, that everything is a challenge and a stress and everything, because of impatience, is that our blood pressure is always high and we’re all always wired basically. Not really the case because you can turn that impatience into a dynamo, a motor. Certainly, thinking back in careers, you know, when I’ve been project managing quite big projects that had tight deadlines and required all sorts of resources, whether it be people or items, things from around the world, and in that environment, excuse me, I flourished. Because you just bash down all the walls of the obstacles, and you look for the results, and you find the route that gets you the fastest answer, and solves the problems, and delivers on time. So, it’s a very powerful thing to have.
JULIE: I think the difference there though is that you are in control of the situation because you can make that phone call. You can acquire that widget to complete your … whatever you’re working on.
JEL: They can’t supply it then move aside, bash them aside, find someone that can. You know, because we’ve got to get there. Yeah. And no, each day in our ordinary lives, it’s not like that because, as we will often mention in these podcasts, we live rurally so nature’s a very good calmer. Nature’s very good at taking away the anxiety of impatience because you can’t make things grow faster. You can’t stop them growing either. So, you cut the lawns, and that can take 4 hours here, and then 10 days, a week or so later, whatever, they’re back grown again. It’s like there’s no point getting stressed with that so you get, kind of … nature is good at being the sort of zen, the antidote. So yeah.
JULIE: Another one would be … is driving, and this is a very common one for many people with ADHD, their impatience when it comes to slowing down at intersections, or waiting patiently for someone to make that turn, the speed in which one is driving. That’s a very common one. Road rage, whether it’s externalized or internalized, is also a challenge for many people with ADHD. Well, I’ve become a bit of a Sunday driver and I know that sounds terrible and there’ll be people not very happy with yet another Sunday driver on the road, but it occurred to me that it actually wasn’t worth the stress. And I’m talking about heart palpitations and blood pressure going through the roof just to get there that 3 minutes earlier and so I will tend to be the one that, if I’m behind a tractor, which happens around these parts, I’ll sit behind the tractor until he pulls over or unless there’s a very easy clear path ahead of me. I won’t be the one taking risks in that situation and that’s through trial and error to be fair.
JEL: As a young man I was definitely very impatient with driving and I was even involved with motor racing when I was younger so, I kind of had … knew a little bit about, and had police training in high-speed Driving. It was Defensive Driving but it was a lot of good techniques to get from A to B safely and quite quickly. But those days are long gone. Now I don’t poodle along at half the speed limit. I drive sensibly according to the conditions but the key thing that’s different now is when I was young-er, when I was a young man, and someone was in the way, I would be looking for the overtake constantly. And I was taught how to overtake, so safely, in strange situations like at junctions and now it’s quite the opposite. Now I’m … if they’re behind me, really close, and they’re tailgating and they’re in a hurry, what I’m doing now is looking for the place for them to overtake. So, I’m anticipating the road to pull over, to give them the chance to zoom off at some break neck speed, and most of the time I’m driving on long trips I’m pulling over. So, not holding up the traffic. Thinking and being a considerate driver but a completely different relationship to the patience/impatience associated with driving. So that is a maturity wisdom thing. That is being older. I could drive as fast now as I used to if I wanted to but I don’t fancy dying just to get somewhere 30 seconds quicker.
JULIE: Also being diagnosed with ADHD has been really helpful to us. We were diagnosed in our 50s, as we’ve mentioned, and prior to the diagnosis we didn’t have an answer for our extreme impatience and we probably would blame it on other people or whatever.
JEL: Externalize it.
JULIE: Correct. Now that we know how our brains work and, after a lot of talking, which continues, we just keep talking, it’s easier for us to establish those times where impatience will kick in and almost have a bit of a game plan. In fact, we have now, isn’t it, with being more patient on the road, knowing that our gut instinct is to be more impulsive and impatient, and what we can do to counterbalance that.
JEL: But one thing that does work for us, I think, is this diversion therapy. It can work on a small momentary scale or it can work on a very long-term scale. For example, we really really want to sell our house and move somewhere down the line. It’s quite a big important move for us at our stage of life and we can’t sell the house because the market’s completely flat. There are virtually no buyers out there so we have to wait and we’ve pretty much worked out that it might have to wait about a year and a half at the moment, so that is about the worst thing that can happen to two people making a big life-changing decision with ADHD so, how do you get around that? Well, you say “What an opportunity. We have 18 months to start lots of new projects and throw ourselves into those,” and you know, it all sounds so terribly easy but that’s the only way we can survive it. Because if we don’t throw ourselves into these new projects and try to … come up with things that’s very hard to fit in 18 months, so actually I could do with two years maybe three, and squeeze it in then, you see we’re appealing to our dopamine. It’s “Oh, I’ve got it done, got it done. We’re doing it, we’re going to … should get it done in time,” and hopefully those 18 months pass because there’s no alternative. If we don’t do that, we’re going to wake up every day for the next year and a half and go mad, basically. It’s outside of our control, isn’t it and that’s what’s so dreadful.
JULIE: We know what our plan A is, but rather than saying that that’s the only plan, we’ve actually come up with a plan B that is equally as exciting in the meantime. That’s being quite rational for people with ADHD. Again, how do we manage to do that? You said it’s almost survival mode isn’t it. We must have something to do otherwise we’ll drive ourselves nuts but yeah I think it’s good.
JEL: Yeah, you need the motivation. You need … It’s constantly. I think everything we ever really talk about is probably going to come back to this dopamine thing. To me, and everyone has their own understanding or relationship with their ADHD, to me it’s always about dopamine. My imbalanced brain is looking to find balance. It needs a hit. It Needs something. So yeah, the next 18 months I’m finding very exciting but I still rather sell the house. I’d rather find a buyer tomorrow and move because that triggers a huge dopamine hit. Because it’s a whole new life, a new house, a new place, and new adventures, and you know, so you replace one set of dopamine solutions with another.
JULIE: Yes. We’re going off track slightly but it …
JEL: Sorry, but it is about impatience, isn’t it. Back to the impatience and it is intrinsically linked to dopamine.
JULIE: Yes. Now you said sorry which triggered a thought for me. It was really, you know, those moments when you might be waiting for a takeout coffee and the person in front of you is paying in cash, or worse in coin, and they drop some coin on the floor and then they can’t find the last 20 cents, or whatever it may be, and you know your impatience starts to rise at that point and being aggravated internally. By the time you get to the counter often we’ll say “Sorry about that. Sorry I, you know, thank you. Thank you so much for the coffee, it’s wonderful.” We almost apologize for our actions because we know we’re being impatient. It’s not a surprise to us. It’s not something that a friend or family member has pointed out saying “Hey, you seem to be a bit impatient.” We’re very aware of what’s happening to us but also quite thankful when that can drop away and we can become somewhat calm again.
JEL: But talking about impatience something that most of you would regard as associated with young people, teenagers in particular, and young adults, or children, you know, “It’s not your birthday, you have to wait.” Here we are that we’re meant to be the bastions of patience, and calmness, and setting an example, but no. We have it as bad as a seven or eight-year-old, a lot of the time. We just mask it and we just cover up and find techniques. But I guess what comes out of that, for me, is if you don’t have ADHD and you’re watching this, and you are with someone with ADHD, or work with someone, then just maybe have a stop for a moment and think that they may seem irrational to you but their relationship with patience and impatience is very different probably to yours. If you’re employing someone, for example, you know you’d really want to think about what situations you’re putting them in where they’re likely to have some conflict, compared with situations and aspects of their job where they could flourish and get results. Because it is a … real impatience can be a real strong motivator. It can be a good thing or a bad thing. It depends which way you harness it.
JULIE: There is one more thing on impatience too, and it’s that I tend to be accident prone when I’m impatient. And that’s just doing things irrationally, impulsively, in a hurry, which has an overflow. You know, I might stub toes or break plates, or any object in the house really. I’m able to do that just because I’m impatient, excuse me, and I just must get there faster for whatever reason. So, there are lots of interrelating traits and challenges that stem from impatience. So, we’ve covered being accident prone, impulsive, some of our emotional outbursts, and also anxiety, and the impact on health, again with blood pressure.
JEL: I like that you touched on yeah, how you do often drop things, or can break things, or jump into situations. Often, I see you doing something and I stop you and say “Just stop there a second. It’s going to fall off. It’s going to cause an accident. We don’t want to end up in A&E.” So, my last thought on it really with impatience, is for me, it’s ended up making me Mr Health and Safety. You know, dealing with machines that can cut your hand off quite quickly or cause all sorts of damage, you … I somehow for years, I’ve just worked out – jack the car properly. Make sure it’s not going anywhere before the wheel comes off. You know, do this, do this properly and I do slow down a bit but the one thing I don’t want to do is have an accident. No one wants an accident, even a small one. And why don’t I want a small accident? Because if I cut my finger because I was being silly, and I don’t need to go to hospital for that, it now makes it hard to do the next part of the job so my impatience increases. I can’t do it as fast. So sometimes going slower enables you to go faster. My nightmare would be some kind of injury that required me to sit in A&E in hospital for 8 hours waiting to be helped. You see, that is such a nightmare to me. The impatience would … I couldn’t cope with that so I do slow down a bit.
JULIE: Now, just between … just between us, Jel’s not hearing this, that sounds like a very reasonable thing to do, and I must admit, you’re extremely good with your health and safety but there are times too, from the garage workshop, I hear a yelp and some expletives that I can’t relay right now, when you’ve injured your thumb or you’ve bashed something because you’ve been impatient, and I know I should have really used the vice so instead I got my mallet.
JEL: Oh, we’re not perfect, you know.
JULIE: No, so it does happen but I guess what you’re trying to say is identifying the big things and at least deal with them.
JEL: But the emotional dysregulation then kicks in. If I bash my thumb and there’s blood, and now it really hurts, it completely wrecks the next couple of days of working because it slows me down. You know, it’s … I get so grumpy with myself even having the smallest of accidents, you know. Impatience. So, there’s no quick fix for it. It’s just that we do have a lot of it. I hope people can appreciate people like us with ADHD, we are impatient.
JULIE: And it doesn’t come without outcomes and we know what they are, and they’re at times challenging to deal with as well. So your patience would be lovely.
JEL: Thank you very much.
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