Surf the Urge

I just got off the phone with two of my dearest friends. Each call lasted nearly an hour and had the same theme. They were depressed, on edge, and one step away from hurling themselves out of their respective office windows. I became concerned and probed deeper, asking pointed questions about sleep disturbances and appetites. My clinical inquiry revealed the similarities of their predicaments. Both have their plates chock full: high-powered, demanding careers as psychologists and three children apiece. But the most obvious common factor was that both went out the night before and got loaded. And I mean stinking drunk.

I know the feeling. A few weeks ago I had a long day. My husband handed me a beer, but when I finished sucking it down, the stress wasn’t gone. So I had another. This might have been an inconsequential act for a two-hundred-pound lumberjack with a high tolerance for barrel-stewed grain alcohol. But for a ninety five-pound woman, this bore the omen, “you will pay for this in blood and tears.” Sure enough, the next day I found myself weepy, over-reactive, and wishing I could undo that last Heineken. Being hung over never makes the job of mothering any easier. In fact it makes it infinitely harder. I found myself asking when will I learn I can’t hold my liquor? When will I learn to ignore the impulse to have that extra drink or the second honkin’ slice of pie after a big meal, the one that will distend my stomach and cause me such discomfort that I feel like a snake who’s swallowed a toaster? When will I learn that beer and cake can’t make things better?

We’ve all done it. Spent, drunk, eaten, and said too much. For me, the undermining impulse is usually the extra cup of coffee that tastes so good going down, but leaves me nervous and edgy. Once in awhile a little excess is no big deal, but when we find ourselves getting locked into these patterns, it helps to step back and take a clearer look at what’s really going on. Recently, a group of psychologists discovered that by teaching mindfulness techniques to recovering substance abusers, they could lower relapse rates by teaching the skill of “surfing” the urge to use. Each time a craving arose, the participants were instructed to acknowledge the impulse and imagine riding it like a wave until it passed, watching it come out of the horizon, swell, crest, and then dissipate. Rather than acting on the urge, they were instructed to fully attend to it and be a neutral observer of their cravings. Further, participants were asked to be mindful of the full range of thoughts, feelings, and memories that accompanied their urges. Exposure without responding eventually extinguished the power of the craving. Simply stated: one can have an urge or impulse without necessarily reacting to it. And not acting can save us a lot of trouble in the long run.

I’m not advocating the return of prohibition. And I’m all for going crazy in a moderate sort of way. Mothers sometimes need that. But escaping negative feelings with actions that often carry even greater negative after shocks, like over eating, drinking more than we should, or spending excessively never really solve anything. Rather, they simply increase our psychological burden and limit our capacity to react to our lives with our full arsenal of resources. By surfing the urge, we prevent the mess before we make it.