Coaching practices for Urge Surfing Riding the Wave of a Craving After a Loss

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Urge Surfing Riding the Wave of a Craving After a Loss, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • When a craving hits it feels like it’ll just keep building and building until I cave
  • Every craving still feels like the first one, just as overwhelming as ever
  • I gave in, and now I’m tearing into myself
  • The craving to pour the drink, raid the fridge, send the message lands like it absolutely cannot wait
  • When a craving hits it feels like it’ll just keep climbing forever until I give in

Practices that may help

  1. Urge Surfing: Riding the Wave of a Craving
    Urge surfing means treating a craving like a wave — observing it rise, peak, and fall instead of either fighting it or acting on it. Drawn from Alan Marlatt’s mindfulness-based relapse prevention, it works because urges are time-limited and pass on their own when not fed. It is a well-established clinical technique for everyday cravings; for serious addiction, it belongs alongside professional support, not instead of it.
  2. Ride the wave to its peak and down
    Watch the urge rise, crest, and fall without acting — like a wave you are surfing.
    Urge Surfing: Riding the Wave of a Craving
  3. Ride the Wave (Urge Management), Made Practical
    "Riding the wave" is a mindfulness-based urge management technique: rather than acting on an urge or fighting it, you observe it as a rising and falling wave of physical sensation, without doing anything. Urges are time-limited; if not acted upon or fought, they peak and subside. The technique has observational support specifically in addiction contexts (urge surfing), and the underlying mechanism — that urges are temporary physiological events — is consistent with mindfulness and DBT research.
  4. Build urge tolerance over time
    Deliberately expose yourself to urges without acting on them — tolerance grows with repeated, successful riding.
    Ride the Wave (Urge Management), Made Practical
  5. Self-compassion when the wave wins
    When you act on the urge before the wave passes, treat the lapse with compassion — not as evidence of permanent failure.
    Ride the Wave (Urge Management), Made Practical
  6. Urge Surfing: Riding Out the Impulse Without Acting
    Treat an urge to act impulsively like a wave — observe it rise and fall without being swept away.
    The STOP Skill: A DBT Technique for Crisis Moments
  7. Understand the anatomy of an urge
    Learn that urges have a beginning, a peak, and an end — and that acting on or fighting them changes the arc.
    Ride the Wave (Urge Management), Made Practical
  8. Surf the urge instead of fighting it
    Urges are waves — they rise, peak, and fall without action if you observe rather than fight them.
    The Willpower Instinct: What Self-Control Actually Is
  9. Meet the urge without judging yourself
    Treat having an urge as normal and human, not as evidence of weakness.
    Urge Surfing: Riding the Wave of a Craving
  10. Notice the urge as it arises
    Catch the craving early, the moment it starts, before it becomes an automatic action.
    Urge Surfing: Riding the Wave of a Craving

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