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Guide

Urge Surfing: A 4-Step Technique for Sexual Urges

By , author of Sound Mind · Published · How we source

The short answer

Urge surfing means riding out an urge instead of obeying it or bracing against it. It comes from relapse prevention, an approach to addiction developed by G. Alan Marlatt and colleagues.1 It has four steps: notice where you feel the urge, name it and rate it, breathe slowly and watch it change, then redirect once it eases. Set a 15-minute timer, and decide nothing until it ends.

You can’t stop an urge from arriving. You can stop letting it decide.

Most men know two ways to handle a strong urge: give in now, or grit your teeth and give in later. For more than a decade, I leaned on willpower, gaining control and losing it again. Urge surfing is a third way. You stop bracing, turn toward the urge, and watch what it does when you don’t obey it.

What is urge surfing?

Urge surfing is a mindfulness skill for cravings. You watch an urge rise, peak, and fall, the way a surfer rides a wave, without giving in to it and without struggling against it.

It comes from relapse prevention, the approach to addiction that Marlatt and his colleagues set out in the 1980s. Clients were taught to picture an urge as a wave that crests and then washes up on the beach. The lesson was that an urge you don’t act on peaks and subsides, rather than building until it overwhelms you.2

Why ride it instead of bracing against it?

  • Bracing keeps it loud. Strong research on thought suppression finds that a thought you hold down tends to bounce back later.3 Bracing against an urge has the same flaw, because it keeps the urge at the center of your attention. Surfing turns toward it with curiosity instead.
  • Each ride teaches your brain. The cue fires, the urge rises, and this time the payoff never comes. Recordings in monkeys found that dopamine neurons dip when an expected reward fails to show up, which is one way a brain learns that a cue has stopped paying.4

How do you urge surf? The four steps

Start a 15-minute timer, then work through four steps: notice, name it, breathe and watch, and redirect. Until the timer goes off, you don’t have to decide anything.

  1. Notice. Find the urge in your body. Chest, stomach, jaw, hands? Hot, tight, buzzing? Once you can point to it, it starts to feel like a sensation rather than a command.
  2. Name it. Tell yourself, This is an urge. It will rise and it will fall. Put a number on it, 0 to 10.
  3. Breathe and watch. Breathe slowly, letting each breath out run longer than the breath in, such as in for four and out for six. Watch it like a passing storm. Where is it strongest now? Is it shifting?
  4. Redirect. As soon as it drops, even by a point, move. Stand up, leave the room, step outside, call someone, or do 20 push-ups. In smoking research, short bouts of exercise sharply cut cravings, though that hasn’t been tested with sexual urges.5

When the timer goes off, score the urge again. If your phone is part of the loop, time it on a watch or a kitchen timer.

At the peak, short lines help more than long arguments. Keep one or two ready:

  • Wanting it isn’t doing it.
  • This is the top of the wave.
  • Nothing to decide until the timer.

If you pray, a one-line prayer belongs on that list too.

Try this now

Try a practice surf on something small. One minute is enough.

  1. Put your phone face down within reach, and note the time.
  2. Notice the tug to reach for it. Is it in your hands, your chest, or somewhere else?
  3. Name it: This is an urge. Give it a number.
  4. Breathe and watch for one minute, with long, slow breaths out.
  5. Redirect. Stand up and pour a glass of water before you touch the phone.

That’s the whole skill in miniature. A big wave asks for the same four steps, and small ones are where you get fluent.

How do you control sexual urges?

Whether an urge shows up is mostly out of your hands. What happens next is in them, and so is much of what sets urges off in the first place.

  • In the moment, surf it.
  • Before the moment, cut the cues you can, and decide your first move for the rest. An if-then plan handles the deciding: If I feel the pull after 10 p.m., then I set the kitchen timer and start with step one. Plans in that form have strong research behind them, with a medium-to-large effect on goals across 94 tests.6
  • After the moment, take two minutes each evening to note your strongest urge: when it came, what set it off, its peak from 0 to 10, and what you did. Those notes become your map of when the waves come.

If yours tend to start as a thought you keep building on, how to stop thinking about sex all the time deals with that earlier stage.

How do you resist a sexual urge when it’s strong?

Don’t resist in the old sense. Don’t brace, and don’t argue. Make the wave smaller by getting away from the cue, then surf what’s left.

  • If it’s too big to surf where you are, change the setting first. Put the phone in another room, or leave the house for ten minutes. That isn’t cheating.
  • If it hits in bed, don’t surf lying in the dark. Get up, sit somewhere with the lights on, and run the timer there. Go back to bed when you’re sleepy.
  • If it comes back after the timer, start a new one. Waves come in sets, and a second one doesn’t mean the first surf failed.
  • If it gets louder before it eases, stay with it. When an old habit stops paying off, it can flare first. Studies of behavior therapy found flares in about a quarter of cases, and fewer when other strategies were used alongside. Sexual urges weren’t part of that research, so treat it as a guide.7
  • If you surf and still act, log it like any other ride: what set it off, how high it peaked, and when you acted. Relapse prevention warns that the I’ve blown it reaction can stretch one slip into days of giving up.8 Sound Mind’s first chapter, free to read, helps you decide in advance what counts as a slip.

How long does an urge last?

No one can honestly give you a set number of minutes. What urge surfing relies on is the shape: an urge you don’t act on tends to peak and then ease.

Marlatt’s team taught that urges peak and subside “rather quickly” when they aren’t acted on, instead of building forever. That claim comes from clinical teaching. It wasn’t a measurement, and it gives no minute count.9 Be wary of anyone who names an exact number.

The 15-minute timer comes from the plan in Sound Mind by Adam Hale, and no study set that number. It gives you a stretch with nothing to decide, and a second rating at the end. If the urge is still high when it goes off, change rooms and start another. Over a few weeks, your evening notes can show you the shape of your own waves.

Does urge surfing work?

The early evidence is promising, and a program built on the same roots has stronger support. Urge surfing hasn’t yet been tested with sexual urges.10

  • Urge surfing itself. In a trial of 123 college students who smoked, brief urge-surfing instructions didn’t change how strong their urges were. But over the next week, the students who learned it smoked fewer cigarettes than those who didn’t.11 One small trial: promising, not proven.
  • Mindfulness-based relapse prevention. In a randomized trial of 286 people who had finished addiction treatment, this eight-week group program led to fewer days of drug use and less heavy drinking a year later than standard relapse prevention or usual aftercare.12
  • Closer to sexual behavior. For problematic porn use, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which teaches related skills, cut viewing sharply in two small studies.13 And when 137 men with hypersexual disorder were randomly assigned to group CBT for seven weeks or to a wait, symptoms fell more with CBT.14

Where it falls short

  • It doesn’t shrink urges at first. The smokers in that trial felt the same pull as everyone else. The skill showed up in what they did next.15
  • It’s one skill. On its own it won’t carry you. It works inside a plan with fewer cues, prepared danger hours, decent sleep, and help when you need it.
  • It isn’t built for frightening thoughts. If what comes up is a thought that sickens you, with no pull toward acting on it, that can be OCD. You can still notice, name, and breathe. Leave out the redirect if it would become a way of pushing the thought out. A therapist trained in exposure and response prevention (ERP), a first-line treatment for OCD, can set the pace.16

What surfing looks like once it’s a habit

On a weeknight, a wave shows up while you’re cooking. You notice the familiar heat in your chest, rate it a 6, breathe out long, and keep chopping. By the time dinner is on the table, it’s a 2, and you’re thinking about something else.

Afterward you add one line to your log: 7:40 p.m., cooking, peak 6, rode it. A month of lines like that shows you when your waves come and how they break. Your drive is intact, and urges still come. Riding one out costs a quarter of an hour, a far better trade than handing it your whole evening.

When to get more help

Get more support if any of these is true:

  • Urges keep winning after a month of steady practice, or slips are coming closer together. See a CBT therapist.
  • Consequences are here or close, with your partner, your work, your money, or the law. Get professional help now, and a lawyer if there’s legal trouble.
  • The thoughts sicken you rather than pull at you. See an OCD-trained therapist.
  • Your urges jumped after a new medicine or supplement, or for no clear reason. See a doctor. Some Parkinson’s drugs and other medicines that act on dopamine warn of stronger sexual urges on their labels.17 Keep taking any prescription until your doctor says otherwise.
  • You drink or use drugs before or after the urges. Tell your doctor the whole picture.
  • Your urges involve children. Call Stop It Now before anyone is harmed. It’s free and confidential (US: 1-888-773-8368; UK: 0808 1000 900).18

If you’re thinking about harming yourself, don’t wait for anything else. Crisis lines answer day and night: 988 by call or text in the US, 9-8-8 by call or text in Canada, Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, and Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com will find one near you.19 If your life is in danger right now, call your local emergency number.

Questions men ask

Is urge surfing the same as ignoring an urge?

No. Ignoring is a quiet way of pushing an urge away, and pushing tends to backfire.20 Surfing turns toward the urge on purpose. You feel it fully and watch it change, without doing what it says.

Is urge surfing a kind of meditation?

It uses the same skill: close attention without reacting. You don’t need a meditation habit to surf an urge, but if you have one, you’ll recognize the move.

Does urge surfing work for porn?

It hasn’t been tested on porn use itself. The nearest evidence comes from ACT, which teaches similar skills and cut viewing sharply in two small studies.21 Use surfing as one part of a full plan, like the one in porn addiction: the signs, and a plan that works without shame.

Sources

  1. Marlatt GA, Gordon JR, eds. Relapse Prevention. Guilford Press, 1985. Summarized in Larimer ME, Palmer RS, Marlatt GA. “Relapse prevention: an overview of Marlatt’s cognitive-behavioral model.” Alcohol Research & Health 1999;23(2):151–160. Clients are taught to picture the urge as a wave that crests, neither struggling against it nor giving in, and learn that “urges and cravings peak and subside rather quickly if they are not acted on.” A clinical teaching from a well-established model; it gives no number of minutes. Larimer et al. 1999↩︎

  2. Marlatt GA, Gordon JR, eds. Relapse Prevention. Guilford Press, 1985. Summarized in Larimer ME, Palmer RS, Marlatt GA. “Relapse prevention: an overview of Marlatt’s cognitive-behavioral model.” Alcohol Research & Health 1999;23(2):151–160. Clients are taught to picture the urge as a wave that crests, neither struggling against it nor giving in, and learn that “urges and cravings peak and subside rather quickly if they are not acted on.” A clinical teaching from a well-established model; it gives no number of minutes. Larimer et al. 1999↩︎

  3. Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR, White TL. “Paradoxical effects of thought suppression.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1987;53(1):5–13. A meta-analysis of controlled studies found the rebound real but small to moderate: Abramowitz JS, Tolin DF, Street GP. Clinical Psychology Review 2001;21(5):683–703. These studies are about thoughts, not urges. PMID 3612492 · PMID 11434226↩︎

  4. Schultz W, Dayan P, Montague PR. “A neural substrate of prediction and reward.” Science 1997;275(5306):1593–1599. Recordings in monkeys: dopamine neurons fire at the cue that predicts a reward, and dip when an expected reward doesn’t arrive. Animal research, not sexual urges. PMID 9054347↩︎

  5. Haasova M, Warren FC, Ussher M, et al. “The acute effects of physical activity on cigarette cravings: systematic review and meta-analysis with individual participant data.” Addiction 2013;108(1):26–37. Pooled data from 17 trials. Exercise hasn’t been tested on sexual urges. PMID 22861822↩︎

  6. Gollwitzer PM, Sheeran P. “Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 2006;38:69–119. Across 94 tests, if-then plans had a medium-to-large effect (d ≈ 0.65). Strong research, though not on sexual urges. doi↩︎

  7. Lerman DC, Iwata BA. “Prevalence of the extinction burst and its attenuation during treatment.” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1995;28(1):93–94. Flare-ups showed up in 24% of 113 sets of behavior-therapy data: 12% when other procedures were used alongside, and 36% when extinction was used alone. Not sexual urges, so treat it as a guide, not a forecast. PMID 16795857↩︎

  8. Marlatt GA, Gordon JR, eds. Relapse Prevention. Guilford Press, 1985; Larimer ME, Palmer RS, Marlatt GA. Alcohol Research & Health 1999;23(2):151–160. Later tests of the abstinence violation effect in smokers have been mixed. Larimer et al. 1999↩︎

  9. Marlatt GA, Gordon JR, eds. Relapse Prevention. Guilford Press, 1985. Summarized in Larimer ME, Palmer RS, Marlatt GA. “Relapse prevention: an overview of Marlatt’s cognitive-behavioral model.” Alcohol Research & Health 1999;23(2):151–160. Clients are taught to picture the urge as a wave that crests, neither struggling against it nor giving in, and learn that “urges and cravings peak and subside rather quickly if they are not acted on.” A clinical teaching from a well-established model; it gives no number of minutes. Larimer et al. 1999↩︎

  10. Bowen S, Marlatt GA. “Surfing the urge: brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers.” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 2009;23(4):666–671. 123 students who smoked were randomly assigned to brief urge-surfing instructions or none, then exposed to cues that made them want to smoke. Their urges didn’t differ, but the urge-surfing group smoked significantly fewer cigarettes over the next seven days. One small trial: promising, not proven. A PubMed search for “urge surfing” in October 2026 found no trial with sexual urges. doi:10.1037/a0017127↩︎

  11. Bowen S, Marlatt GA. “Surfing the urge: brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers.” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 2009;23(4):666–671. 123 students who smoked were randomly assigned to brief urge-surfing instructions or none, then exposed to cues that made them want to smoke. Their urges didn’t differ, but the urge-surfing group smoked significantly fewer cigarettes over the next seven days. One small trial: promising, not proven. A PubMed search for “urge surfing” in October 2026 found no trial with sexual urges. doi:10.1037/a0017127↩︎

  12. Bowen S, Witkiewitz K, Clifasefi SL, et al. “Relative efficacy of mindfulness-based relapse prevention, standard relapse prevention, and treatment as usual for substance use disorders: a randomized clinical trial.” JAMA Psychiatry 2014;71(5):547–556. 286 people were randomly assigned to eight weekly group sessions of mindfulness-based relapse prevention, standard relapse prevention, or usual aftercare. At six months, both relapse-prevention programs beat usual care. At 12 months, the mindfulness group reported fewer days of drug use and less heavy drinking than both other groups. Three of the authors run paid trainings in the method. PMID 24647726↩︎

  13. Twohig MP, Crosby JM. Behavior Therapy 2010;41(3):285–295: six men had eight sessions of ACT, and their viewing fell by 85%, still 83% lower three months later; no control group. Crosby JM, Twohig MP. Behavior Therapy 2016;47(3):355–366: 28 men, nearly all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were randomly assigned to 12 sessions of ACT or a waiting list, and self-reported viewing fell by 93% with ACT and by 21% on the waiting list. Two small studies: promising, not proven. PMID 20569778 · PMID 27157029↩︎

  14. Hallberg J, Kaldo V, Arver S, et al. “A randomized controlled study of group-administered cognitive behavioral therapy for hypersexual disorder in men.” Journal of Sexual Medicine 2019;16(5):733–745. 137 men were randomly assigned to seven weeks of group CBT or a waiting list. Symptoms fell more with CBT, and the gains held six months later. One trial: promising, not proven. PMID 30956109 · PMID 32900671↩︎

  15. Bowen S, Marlatt GA. “Surfing the urge: brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers.” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 2009;23(4):666–671. 123 students who smoked were randomly assigned to brief urge-surfing instructions or none, then exposed to cues that made them want to smoke. Their urges didn’t differ, but the urge-surfing group smoked significantly fewer cigarettes over the next seven days. One small trial: promising, not proven. A PubMed search for “urge surfing” in October 2026 found no trial with sexual urges. doi:10.1037/a0017127↩︎

  16. American Psychiatric Association practice guideline (Koran LM, Hanna GL, Hollander E, et al. American Journal of Psychiatry 2007;164(7 Suppl):5–53) and NICE guideline CG31. Both name CBT with exposure and response prevention (ERP) as a first-line treatment for OCD. Therapist directory: iocdf.org/find-help. PMID 17849776 · CG31↩︎

  17. The US prescribing information for pramipexole and for carbidopa-levodopa, both used for Parkinson’s disease, warns of increased sexual urges. The label for aripiprazole (Abilify), an antipsychotic also prescribed as an add-on for depression, lists compulsive sexual urges. DailyMed · DailyMed · DailyMed↩︎

  18. Stop It Now (US): confidential, toll-free helpline at 1-888-773-8368 for anyone concerned about their own sexual thoughts or behaviors toward children, with chat and email. Stop It Now UK and Ireland (Lucy Faithfull Foundation): free, confidential, and anonymous, on 0808 1000 900. Checked October 16, 2026; hours change. Get immediate help · How can I find confidential help? · Worried about your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors · Helpline↩︎

  19. Checked on each service’s official site on October 16, 2026: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (988lifeline.org); 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline (988.ca); Samaritans (samaritans.org), for the UK and Ireland; Lifeline Australia (lifeline.org.au); Find A Helpline (findahelpline.com), which lists helplines in over 175 countries. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline · 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline · about 9-8-8 · Samaritans · Samaritans Ireland · Lifeline Australia · Find A Helpline↩︎

  20. Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR, White TL. “Paradoxical effects of thought suppression.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1987;53(1):5–13. A meta-analysis of controlled studies found the rebound real but small to moderate: Abramowitz JS, Tolin DF, Street GP. Clinical Psychology Review 2001;21(5):683–703. These studies are about thoughts, not urges. PMID 3612492 · PMID 11434226↩︎

  21. Twohig MP, Crosby JM. Behavior Therapy 2010;41(3):285–295: six men had eight sessions of ACT, and their viewing fell by 85%, still 83% lower three months later; no control group. Crosby JM, Twohig MP. Behavior Therapy 2016;47(3):355–366: 28 men, nearly all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were randomly assigned to 12 sessions of ACT or a waiting list, and self-reported viewing fell by 93% with ACT and by 21% on the waiting list. Two small studies: promising, not proven. PMID 20569778 · PMID 27157029↩︎

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