Arch Counseling

Get Ready

Increase Awareness

Interrupt Reactivity

Accept & Dismiss Urges

Dissect Your Reactions

Don't Lock Horns with the Devil

Love You, Hate The Porn (PDF Download)

Accept & Dismiss Urges

Instead of reacting as usual by succumbing or resisting, simply notice and accept urges without a sense of obligation to respond.

Succumbing to an urge only strengthens it. However, so does resisting it, because it causes us to attach even more importance, mental energy, and meaning to it than it otherwise would have had. Ironically, mental acceptance can diminish both the power of an urge at the time and also the likelihood that it will return.

Instructions: To accept an urge, allow yourself to fully experience it without doing anything in response. Familiarize yourself with the urge by bringing your full attention to it. The way we think fosters either acceptance or reactivity. Watch for provocative, alarmist thoughts like, "I can't believe I'm tempted after how hard I've been trying. I can't stand feelings this way." Instead, try talking to yourself using language that externalizes, minimizes, normalizes, and depersonalizes the urge and isolates it in time. You might say some of the following to yourself, "There is one of those cravings, it's just a normal craving. Lot's of other people also have these. It doesn't define me. I happen to be having it at this moment and there are lots of other times when I don't feel this way at all. So what if I feel it right now? It doesn't mean I'm a terrible person. It doesn't mean I'm hopelessly addicted. It doesn't mean that I'm on the verge of acting on the thoughts that popped into my mind. It is what it is and nothing more. I accept it for what it is." In this way, we neutralize urges and deflate their potency. Urges have less power over us once we differentiate them from the essence of who we are.

Instead of getting into a tug-of-war with your urges, learn to dismiss them and move on with the rest of life.

It is possible to get over a destructive habit without really trying. In fact, it's the only way I know of. As I talk with people who are five or ten years beyond their last relapse, not one has ever said, "I still fight the same battle every day-it's just that now I always win." They haven't overcome their habit by investing more time, more energy, and more of their heart and soul in the battle. Ironically, they did it by learning to spend less time, less energy, and less of their heart and soul in the battle. Anything that orients us toward our habit-and that includes either entertaining it or resisting it-keeps it in the center of our focus. Our goal is not just to avoid destructive actions, but to attain the inner freedom of not having to give our former struggle much thought.

Instructions: We can decrease the size of our destructive habit's footprint in our lives by learning to dismiss urges and cravings altogether instead of engaging with them. We can simply turn back to the rest of life and get on with it. Acknowledge the pull and then move right on to some mundane aspect of life. "Wow, that's appealing . . . now what shall I have for lunch today?" "There's a wild thought . . . now I'd better remember to put gas in my car before I get home." You don't have to give an urge more meaning or power or attention than it deserves.