DBT · Baseer Maroof, LCSW
Urge Surfing
An urge is a wave. It rises, peaks and breaks. Ride this one without acting on it.
Your waves are saved only on this device, and only if you choose.
Your wave log
What’s pulling at you?
How strong is it, right now?
How long a ride?
Urges build, crest and ease, often within 20 to 30 minutes, even when it feels like they won’t. This ride is a few minutes. You can always ride another.
Riding the wave
Check in. How strong now?
Where do you feel it?
Back on the sand
It peaked and passed.
The next ten minutes. Pick one, if you like.
Why this works
Every time you act on an urge, your brain learns that the urge gets results, and urges tend to come back stronger. Every time you ride one out without feeding it, it learns the urge is a feeling that rises, crests and fades on its own. Over time, many urges get weaker and come less often.
You’re not trying to make it go away. You’re watching it from the board instead of from under the water.
A slip earlier today, or last year, doesn’t cancel this. Each wave you ride is practice, whatever came before it.
Urge surfing comes from relapse-prevention work by G. Alan Marlatt and colleagues, and is taught in DBT and mindfulness-based relapse prevention. The wording here is original.