What is urge surfing, and does it work?

Q: What is urge surfing, and does it work?

Urge surfing is turning toward an urge and observing it rather than fighting it. It does not make urges go away, and people who try it expecting that conclude it failed. In the original randomised study, smokers given brief urge-surfing instructions reported no fewer urges but smoked significantly less over the following week. It weakens the link between urge and action.

It is the most misunderstood tool in this space, because the thing it does is not the thing people want it to do.

In the study that named it, 123 student smokers went through a cue-exposure procedure; the ones given brief urge-surfing instructions did not report weaker urges, and did smoke less over the following seven days. The urges stayed. The automatic link between urge and behaviour loosened. That is the mechanism, and it is the right thing to want: not a life without urges, a life where an urge is just weather.

The technique is genuinely this simple.

Notice and name it. "This is an urge." Naming turns an atmosphere into an object, and you can observe an object.
Find it in your body. Chest, gut, throat, hands, a restlessness in the legs. Urges have a location and most people have never looked. Looking is most of the work.
Describe it, don't evaluate it. Tight. Warm. Buzzing. Pulling. Not: awful, dangerous, proof of anything.
Breathe and watch it move. Note it going up. Note the plateau. Note when it eases.
Don't fight it. Fighting is engagement, and thought suppression rebounds, reliably, including for sexual thoughts specifically. You are not pushing the wave away. You are floating.

Expect discomfort. This is tolerating something unpleasant while doing nothing, which is a skill, and it improves with repetition like any other.

Where this comes from

Read the full lesson: Urge surfing, properly →

Sources and how strong they are (2)

Well establishedIn a randomised study of 123 undergraduate smokers undergoing a cue-exposure procedure, brief urge-surfing instructions did not reduce reported urges but did reduce smoking over the following seven days.
- Bowen & Marlatt 2009, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 23(4):666-671, doi:10.1037/a0017127, PMID 20025372
Well establishedSuppressing a thought tends to make it more frequent once you stop suppressing — the rebound effect, found consistently across 31 experiments. Whether the thought increases while you are still suppressing it shows up only under additional cognitive load. On sexual thoughts specifically the evidence is indirect: the one study in this area is a cross-sectional survey of religious adolescents that models suppression as a mediator, not as a cause.
- Wang D, Hagger MS & Chatzisarantis NLD 2020, "Ironic Effects of Thought Suppression: A Meta-Analysis", Perspectives on Psychological Science 15(3):778-793, doi:10.1177/1745691619898795
- Does not report a rebound effect — Efrati Y 2019, "God, I Can't Stop Thinking About Sex! The Rebound Effect in Unsuccessful Suppression of Sexual Thoughts Among Religious Adolescents", J Sex Res 56(2):146-155, doi:10.1080/00224499.2018.1461796, PMID 29702013