Can meditation for ADHD help reduce impulsiveness?

Yes, meditation for ADHD can reduce impulsiveness by giving you more control over your thoughts and reactions. People with ADHD often react quickly and without thinking, making them easily distracted.

Imagine: you're working on an important project, but you get a notification from an online store. Before you know it, you're shopping instead of working. These kinds of distractions can really throw you off your flow.

Meditation teaches you to gain more control over your thoughts, which is essential for improving your focus, especially if you have ADHD. You practice being present in the present moment and focusing your attention on what's happening right now, such as your thoughts, your body, and your breathing.

This awareness helps you become calmer and better understand situations, making you react less automatically. As you meditate more, you'll notice that it's easier to stay focused on the task at hand and that your impulsive reactions decrease.(1)

Meditation isn't just helpful for people with ADHD. Everyone struggles to concentrate or gets easily distracted at times. However, these challenges are more pronounced for people with ADHD.

Here's why meditation can help with ADHD:

1. Self-control - It helps you better observe thoughts and emotions without reacting immediately. By practicing this, you develop clearer thinking and a better understanding of your own emotions and motivations. This allows you to make well-considered decisions.
2. Rational thinking - Meditation promotes a focused and less emotional state of being, allowing you to assess situations more objectively and find rational solutions.
3. Attention - Meditation teaches you to pay attention to what is in the here and now, which forms the basis for good concentration.
4. Learning & Memory - Meditation contributes to an increase in gray matter in important brain areas that help with learning and memory.(2)(3)

During meditation, various changes occur in brain activity. You'll notice this in the effects I mentioned above.

In this section, we look at the key brain structures involved in meditation and how they contribute to the benefits of meditation for ADHD:

• Amygdala - It's a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain. It plays a key role in processing emotions and our response to stress. Regular meditation reduces amygdala reactivity, making you feel more in control of yourself and your emotions.(4)
• Prefrontal cortex - This area is located at the front of your head and is important for self-control, decision-making, and rational thinking. Meditation helps improve these functions because it strengthens communication between different brain regions.(5)
• Hippocampus - Located deep within the brain, it's best known for its role in learning and memory. Meditation has a positive effect on the functioning of this brain region, and therefore on your memory and learning capacity.

It might seem challenging for someone with ADHD to sit quietly for 20-30 minutes of meditation. But if you take it step by step, you'll find it gets easier and easier. I encourage you to give it a try!

Here's a step-by-step approach to learning to meditate with ADHD:

You can find countless of them if you search for 'Mindfulness exercises'.
An exercise I like to do is the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise: Mentally name five things you see, four you feel, three you hear, two you smell, and one you taste. This exercise helps you become aware of the here and now and connect with your body's signals.

Test a few different ones and choose one that your voice feels comfortable with.

Every day is great, but three times a week is also a plus. Don't be put off by the idea that you "have to" sit for half an hour every day. Every time you consciously do this helps!

Sources used

1. Modesto-Lowe, V. (2015). Does mindfulness meditation improve attention in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? World Journal Of Psychiatry , 5 (4), 397. https://doi.org/10.5498/wjp.v5.i4.397
2. Kang, D., Jo, H. J., Jung, W. H., Kim, S. H., Jung, Y., Choi, C., Lee, U. S., An, S. C., Jang, J. H., & Kwon, J. S. (2012). The effect of meditation on brain structure: cortical thickness mapping and diffusion tensor imaging. Social Cognitive And Affective Neuroscience , 8 (1), 27–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss056
3. Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti, S. M., Gard, T., & Lazar, S. W. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging , 191 (1), 36–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006
4. Kral, T. R., Schuyler, B. S., Mumford, J. A., Rosenkranz, M. A., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2018). Impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli. NeuroImage , 181 , 301–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.07.013
5. Verma, M., Rathore, M., Nirwan, M., Trivedi, S., & Pai, V. (2022). Functional connectivity of prefrontal cortex in various meditation techniques – A mini-review. International Journal Of Yoga , 15 (3), 187. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoy.ijoy_88_22