they don’t tell you what anxious impulsivity looks like.
when people imagine anxiety, they always imagine risk averse behavior. you overthink, you’re deliberate, your thinking is catastrophic, and you’re always thinking through seventeen possible scenarios in which things can go wrong.
but sometimes you’re so anxious and things feel so horrible that you do things without thinking because you want the bad feelings to stop. you say something stupid in a group chat, so you immediately leave all of your servers and block your friends so that you don’t have to see the aftermath. you’re unsure about your relationship, so you break up with your partner out of nowhere or you wake up one morning and just decide to ghost them so you don’t have to deal with it anymore. you’re uncomfortable at a party with people you don’t know, so you run outside and take the train home at 3am without realizing how dangerous that is because you just need to leave.
your anxiety can get so bad that, in an attempt to feel safe and secure, you can’t predict what you’ll do next.