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Urge Timer

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

In short

An urge timer gives you 15 minutes in which you don’t have to decide anything. You rate the urge, then walk through four steps: notice where you feel it, name it, breathe and watch it, and redirect as soon as it eases. When the time is up, you rate it again. Most urges rise, peak, and fall if you don’t act on them.

First, move. If you’re in bed, get up, go to another room, and turn on a light.

How strong is the urge right now?

0, barely there10, as strong as it gets

If your phone is part of the loop, read the steps, start the timer, then put the phone face down out of reach. It chimes when the time is up.

Nothing you enter here is saved or sent anywhere. It stays on this page and is gone when you close it.

How the four steps work

The timer walks you through the same urge surf taught in Chapter 6 of Sound Mind. You can also do it with any watch or kitchen timer.

  1. Notice. Find where the urge sits in your body: chest, stomach, jaw, hands. Is it hot, tight, or buzzing? You’re observing, not obeying.
  2. Name it. Tell yourself, This is an urge. It will rise and it will fall. Give it a number from 0 to 10.
  3. Breathe and watch. Let each breath out run a little longer than the breath in. Watch the urge the way you’d watch weather move across a valley.
  4. Redirect. The moment it eases, even slightly, use your body: stand up, change rooms, step outside, do twenty push-ups, or call someone. In research on smoking, even a short burst of exercise cut cravings sharply.1

Why 15 minutes?

Fifteen minutes is a working tool from the plan, not a number from a lab. The idea behind it is older. In the relapse-prevention approach developed by G. Alan Marlatt, people learn to picture an urge as a wave, and are taught that urges “peak and subside rather quickly if they are not acted on.”2 The timer gives the wave room to do that. You only have to wait, not win.

Does it work?

The evidence is early, and it’s honest about what changes. In a trial with smokers, people who learned to surf their urges felt cravings just as strongly as everyone else. They smoked less anyway.3 So don’t judge a surf by whether the urge vanished. Judge it by what you did next.

When to get more help

If urges keep winning even with a plan, add support. A therapist who uses CBT or ACT can fit these skills to your life. If your thoughts frighten you rather than tempt you, that can be OCD, which has its own well-tested treatment.4 For the full skill, read the urge surfing guide.

If you’re thinking about harming yourself, reach out now. In the US, call or text 988. In the UK and Ireland, call Samaritans on 116 123. Elsewhere, visit findahelpline.com.

Sources

  1. 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. Short bouts of exercise reduced the desire to smoke. Tested on cigarette cravings, not sexual urges. PMID 22861822↩︎

  2. Marlatt GA, Gordon JR, eds. Relapse Prevention. Guilford Press, 1985, as 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. A clinical teaching, with no minute count attached. Larimer et al. 1999↩︎

  3. 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; urge surfing didn’t lower the strength of urges, but those who learned it smoked fewer cigarettes over the following week. Not yet tested with sexual urges. doi:10.1037/a0017127↩︎

  4. American Psychiatric Association practice guideline (Koran LM 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. PMID 17849776 · CG31↩︎