“My Urges Are Out of Control”

If you’ve ever taken some time to sit with your emotions and figure out how your feelings actually feel, then you’ll know what an urge feels like. If you were to close your eyes right now, think about what it feels like to have an urge. Where in your body is this feeling? For me, it’s in the pit of my stomach and the color is bright red. It’s moving super fast and it makes me want to do something, anything. It’s like I have all this pressure built up and it’s uncomfortable and I just want it to go away. 

Not a pretty feeling. No wonder we start to feel like our urges are out of control. 

Thoughts That Create Urgency

So let’s dig into this a bit deeper. We know that our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings create our actions and our actions create our results. What are the thoughts that generate feelings of urgency?

Maybe it’s something like, “This day is too much to handle. I can’t even deal “ or “Today is a full schedule” or “Oh geez, Sunday is here. That means Monday's tomorrow.”

As innocent as they may be, these thoughts are unsettling and uneasy. They tell you that you can’t sit still for another minute, you have to do something, so you build up the feeling of urgency. It has to be taken care of right now. 

Buffering

Typically, we want urges to go away. That’s where buffering, when we use an external something to take away an uncomfortable feeling, comes in. Typically buffering behaviors secrete feel-good hormones in our brain, like dopamine and serotonin. And when you have an urge and it feels really uncomfortable and you just want it to go away, your brain will remember the things you did in the past to feel better, whether that’s food, alcohol, shopping, exercise, whatever it may be. 

I have a client who first came to me because she was buffering with overeating and, as a result, gained some weight and was not feeling good about her life. But talking about urges led to a huge breakthrough for her. She realized that when she drove home from work, she would get to a particular stop sign. If she could drive past that stop sign and not have the feeling of wanting to raid her pantry, she knew she’d be fine. But if she got there and had urges or thoughts of “I’m not getting through tonight without overeating,” she was done. That stop sign determined her evening. 

So we made a deal. My client was allowed to give in to her urges, but only after she could slow her restlessness down first. That meant she had to recognize that she was restless, pull that feeling into her body and notice where it was, what it felt like, and had to allow that feeling. She knew she was resisting it if she wanted her treats even more and the feeling was so powerful she couldn’t possibly sit with it for one more minute. Guess how many times she proceeded to eat her treats after she processed the feeling? Never. To this day. If she can slow down the feeling, she doesn’t give into it.

When my client learned to sit with the discomfort and process her restlessness, the stop sign lost its power. She went from a 20-year history of overeating, giving in to urges, and buffering, to it completely going away. She’d thought that this was just a part of her, that she didn’t have control over her life. But that just wasn’t true. Even though we may be doing certain behaviors for years, my client learned we can make changes almost immediately. 

Allowing the Feeling

For some reason, humans respond to negative or red, bouncy, uncomfortable feelings by wanting to get rid of them. But the power lies in being willing to feel that feeling. Because anything that could happen in your life will only create a feeling. If you can handle any feeling, you can handle anything. 

This cognitive thought work - the ability to tap into our automatic thoughts and identify the limiting belief system that is not serving us well and is holding us back - is magic. If you have any bad habit or want to take on a new positive habit, this is the type of work that will make it happen. 

When you get to know the feeling, call it out and recognize it, and you are there in the moment with that feeling, you can watch it dissipate. It loses its power right before your eyes. All you have to do is acknowledge it and not push it away. Say “Hey restlessness, how are you?” You get into your body and you just sit with it.

What this does is stall the behavior that you’d typically take. It makes you pause. Pausing disrupts the programming that would have led you in the past to go straight to the pantry. That pause alone will allow you to feel the feeling, watch it go away, and not want to pursue the behavior. Over time, when you feel restless or urgent, your brain won't even think about the pantry because you will have retrained your brain. It’s all about the pause.

If you don’t like the feeling of restlessness and you push it away, it’ll escalate. The minute you resist it, it amplifies and gets even more powerful. On the other hand, sitting with it will give the power back to you. 

Step One in Overcoming Your Urges

Believe it or not, taking the first step to overcoming your urges is that simple. Recognize that you have an urge. Feel how it feels. Understand the associated thoughts and what the urge makes you want to do. Know that you have power over your urges, you’re in control. You can do anything you want to do, even rewire your brain. Maybe you’ve been dealing with this for years and feel so overwhelmed, like it can never change, but it can. You can do this.