How to Manage & Allow Urges

The next question becomes, how do you allow an urge without resisting, without reacting to it? I’ve tried that many times before. I’ve tried to stop wanting it, stop drinking, and I just can’t do it. It seems to overpower me. It’s because you haven’t had the skill of allowing an urge. You’ve only reacted to it or resisted it, so I’m going to teach you right now exactly how to and allow an urge, and there’s 3 ways I like to think about it.

• The first way I like to think about it is when you have an urge in your body, it’s really not that unpleasant until you start trying to resist it. If you can be present with it, the way that I’d like to talk about an urge is you describe it in your body as if you were describing it to a little Martian that had never experienced an urge before. It’s a little bit tight. It’s a little bit uncomfortable. There are some thoughts going around in your head, but overall, it’s really not that big of a deal. Writing down the description of it on purpose on paper is one option.
• The second option is you can watch that urge. You can become the watcher, and you can witness yourself experiencing both the thought and the feeling. As soon as you get into that watcher mode and you watch yourself do it, it offers you relief from that feeling. Okay? You’re literally separating yourself from that emotion. You’re recognizing that you’re having a thought causing the feeling that you are not literally that thought and that feeling.
• The third way that I like to teach this is by practicing holding that urge in a place of peace. I like to imagine the urge is in the body, and I have this big peace bubble around it that I’ve opened the door and I’ve welcomed it in. It maybe something that’s unpleasant that I’m allowing it in the home. Maybe something that creates a little tension, but I’m allowing it into my life. As soon as you add that acceptance, that gentleness, that watcher energy, then you can be present with it.

Now, for many of you, this will be very challenging. You’re used to climbing out of your skin, getting away from yourself, reacting to those urges, so it will take practice and repetition. One of the things that I’d like to encourage you to do is increase your opportunities to practice. Put yourself in situations where you will have urges, where you will experience that desire to drink, and practice just being present with it. You can actually visualize yourself in situations where you might have those urges, and you can practice having the urge in your mind when you’re not even having it literally, and watch yourself not reacting to it, not resisting it, and allowing it.

One of the things that I think is essential is that you have at least 100 unanswered urges. You’ve interrupted them 100 times with an unanswered drink and reward. It’s just like you’ve rung that bell a hundred times and not giving that dog food, so the drool dries up. That’s what you need to do.

Now, this can take a long amount of time if you’re waiting for all the instances where you might have an urge to drink, or you can literally put yourself in those situations in your mind, and when you go out with your friends, when you go to bars, when you go to restaurants, be ready and prepared for that urge to come. Allow it to be there and don’t answer it. As you keep track of those urges, as you get closer to 100, you will notice that desire will wean.

One of the things in the stories that I’ve talked about a lot is it takes 10 hours to learn how to ride a unicycle, and all of the 10 hours up until that last hour, you are falling. That’s all you’re doing for 10 hours, and then once you get it, you’re riding it, and that’s exactly what it’s like when you’re de-conditioning a neuro program in your brain. You have taught yourself to desire something and reward yourself for that desire, and you’re teaching yourself the opposite. It really is a simple as that. If you practice 100 times unanswered urge, you can leave it unanswered.

The last thing I will give you is you can always replace this action with something else. I highly recommend that you have another drink, that you automatically order that’s not alcoholic. I like to order a fizzy water like Le Crack, or a club soda with ice and lime in a wineglass. You can order whatever you would like. Maybe some hot tea. Maybe a cup of coffee, something that you have to order instead. That is the response to this that doesn’t provide it with the reward of drinking an alcoholic beverage. Plan ahead. Rehearse that in your mind.

Unlearning desire is about unanswered, unrewarded urges. When you have an urge, it doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. In fact, it means that your brain is functioning normally. We have taught ourselves to have this urge. We have taught ourselves to drool involuntarily for this alcohol by providing it with the reward that is a concentrated amount of a natural substance that gives us an unnatural reaction, and therefore, an unnatural desire.

The process is allow the urge 100 times by understanding that you will have a trigger, you will have a thought, and then you will have the urge. The way to remove that urge, that overwhelming compulsion, that overwhelming desire is to un-answer it. The reason you haven’t been able to do that before is because you didn’t have the skill of allowing that emotion to be there without reacting or resisting it, so start now. Get a hundred unanswered urges.