I'm in need of direction....
I have a huge problem, and I don't know what it is.
I have always struggled with impulse control- when I was younger, I would return home with perfect report cards- except the ever present comments about my inability to sit still, inappropriate comments, and problems talking out of turn. As I grew older, my impulse control issues shifted- shoplifting, reckless driving, and now- for the last ten years, huge financial management issues.
I have been fortunate in that I've always skirted around getting in serious trouble- talked my way out of tickets in court (or at least had them lowered), talked my way out of being prosecuted for shoplifting (caught twice, let go both times), and talked my way out of serious financial repercussions.
I graduated with a business degree from a very reputable college, but only by the skin of my teeth. Again, impulse control- I would push as far as I could before breaking with my school work (turning in papers 2 weeks late by sweet talking professors, etc).
I have a variety of other issues that go along with this- I kind of float between highs and lows, although I've never been 'stuck in bed for days' or felt suicidal.
As an adult, I am now married with children, which is leading me to seek help for my problems. I don't want to be like this any more, I just want to be normal....I have an appointment with a metal health professional, but the wait is ridiculous (5 weeks!)
Your problem is much more common than you might think, and not nearly as difficult or insurmountable as it might seem in the beginning. Like many others, you are cursed with the taboo blessing of high social intelligence and attentional skills and no positive cultural context to put that in. Simply put, you are a natural manipulator, and as any natural manipulator knows, that's not the fun Hollywood has made it out to be. Instinctively, it might seem like an innate talent for social interaction and change agency would be a huge boon, in reality the ability is almost over-adaptive today: it can be used for almost
anything, as you illustrate, and so many natural manipulators become over-dependent on it.
What you need to learn is not to rely so exclusively on your social skills. Your problem isn't impulse control, it's single-dimensionality: you need to work on developing other abilities to the point where they become a viable alternative to manipulating someone else to solve the problem. Until you do, any attempt to "control" your innate talents will be an exercise in futility because it's inherently maladaptive to select an obviously inferior strategy, and human cognition isn't wired for maladaptiveness, so unless you're actively thinking about what you're thinking about (meta-cognition) at the time, you will select manipulation as your tool of choice the vast majority of the time.
What you need to concretely do is think about your behavior patterns and which adaptive strategies you use when - what are the situations where you use your over-developed talent for social interaction instead of a traditionally more appropriate strategy. You have five weeks of waiting time, and I would choose to see those weeks as preparation time, because you have a lot of learning and experimenting to do, but it'll be well worth it in the end. Once the preparation time is over, you should be able to explain your problem to your counselor, who will then be able to produce effective advice for how to fix your problem. You'll also want to use the counselor as a coach (who you bounce your observations and thoughts off) rather than a doctor (who you just expect to fix you up with science-magic).
You'll also want to watch your self-efficacy, which is how fully you believe your efforts will produce meaningful relief and one of the heaviest predictive factors in treatment success bar none, very closely. Make
sure that you resolve any and all doubts with your counselor and information resources as soon as you can verbalize them. This is done to prevent as many slips in treatment compliance as possible and thus maximize treatment speed and efficiency. While you should be highly critical of any psych diagnosis (including this one), once a diagnosis you're comfortable with is made, it's better for you to actively work to have faith in your treatment than to seek out too much information on your own.
Edit: Above all, sapere aude!
