Riding the Urge: Overcoming Cravings with Urge Surfing Techniques
Coping With Sober October: Week 1
It’s quite the week for cravings as I tread through this Sober October challenge.
I didn’t realize how triggering it would be to walk past the wine wall at the grocery store. I grappled with automatic thoughts like, Oh, there’s a sale on Cabernet sauvignon. Wait. Ugh.
I found myself searching for reasons to give up, rationalizing in the moment.
I’m arguing with a kid; I deserve a drink.
I’m dealing with so much at work. Drink.
I could lie to my readers and pretend to be sober all month. How will they know?
One day of drinking isn’t going to hurt. Hell, it’ll be an insightful perspective on relapse and picking yourself up again. Right?
All of these what-ifs swirled around in my brain, pressuring me like girls smoking in the bathroom during my high school years.
But I’m determined, and I won’t give in that easily.
I hadn’t experienced any significant withdrawal symptoms, but I was having intrusive thoughts, stressing me out to the point of anger.
The problem? I was trying to fight my urge to drink.
The Urge Surge
Have you ever smelled freshly cut watermelon on a hot summer day?
It immediately triggers the senses. You start to imagine the refreshing sweetness quenching your thirst and cooling your tongue as it melts in your mouth.
This surge of desire that rises when you smell the watermelon is a craving.
The power of your memory has held that delicious experience and connected it to your senses and emotions. The same thing happens with other pleasure-triggering experiences.
When those memories lead you to give in to urge repeatedly, you create a habit.
Habits and Their Effect On Behavior
If you’ve created a habit around a craving, it’s been filed under “reward” in the brain. So, when you’re attempting to quit that craving, your mind resists the change in behavior.
The conflicting behavior is an unfamiliar discomfort that makes the mind have to work harder to perform than the habit you formed initially. This goes against the brain’s natural tendency to conserve all energy for survival.
So, when you decide to quit alcohol, reduce calorie intake, or resist any other urge, in the beginning stages, the mind will focus more on that desire in order to pull you back into your comfort zone.
It will reach into your craving files and present the reward memory. This triggers the senses and reminds you of the emotions you had during the experience.
This is where the urge starts to surge, affecting your behavior.
Because habits are triggered by the consistency of your past behavior in that specific situation, your behavior, when presented with said situation, becomes automatic.
The survival mind and impulsive behavior make it difficult to battle these habits with a strong will alone.
Ironic Rebound Effect
We instinctually fight the urge to jump on TikTok instead of writing that thesis, or the impulse to pull out the crumbled pack of cigarettes we threw away in disgust, vowing never to smoke again. We fail nearly every time. Why?
This war of the mind is called the Ironic Rebound Effect.
What it means:
If you resist an urge, it becomes stronger and eventually, you relapse.
So, instead of fighting against a growing wave of desire, we must surf the urge.
Urge Surfing: The Concept
Introduced by Dr. Alan Marlatt as a technique for relapse prevention, urge surfing uses 2 natural propensities of the mind when it comes to daily stimuli:
- Curiosity- the mind becomes excited about new things and when you engage in those things, dopamine is released.
- Tolerance- over time you’ll develop mental apathy for repetitive activities.
The purpose of urge surfing is to use these tendencies to observe and understand urge patterns, and how they interact with the body without feeding them. Thus, creating greater self-awareness and control.
Techniques: Building Boredom for Bad Habits
Before I discovered this topic in a desperate attempt to Google a quick fix for my alcohol cravings, I was on the brink of giving up on this entire challenge.
But it grounded me emotionally and allowed me to face the surge by incorporating the following techniques:
Mindful Awareness: Acknowledge the fact that a craving is emerging. Notice the ways it affects you physically and emotionally.
What parts of the body are affected? Do you feel anxiety? How is your breathing?
Neutrally focus on these sensations, accept them, and slow your breathing.
During this time, you’ll start to have those intrusive thoughts I mentioned. Instead of fighting them, ponder the root of the thoughts. Your mind is attempting to justify the urge and manipulate your current state to persuade you to act on it.
Self-validation: While the craving wave is rising, use self-compassion and acceptance to avoid criticizing yourself for feeling this urge.
You are not your habits. And it is perfectly normal to go through moments of weakness.
Stay in the present moment: Keep your attention on the present moment. If a meditative setting is not for you, occupy yourself with an activity that distracts you from the impulse and aligns with your goals and values.
As you implement these techniques and stop reacting to your impulses, your mind will grow a tolerance for the thing you once desired. This means you’ll subconsciously become bored of the bad habit.
Urge surfing is an effective strategy for developing your self-awareness and tolerance to habits that no longer serve you. However, it’s not easy and in the beginning, you may fail at it. Celebrate it whether you ride that wave or crash into it. Then, try again, because you deserve to have full control of you.