Understanding & Managing Urges and Buffering

I’ve spent a significant amount of my life giving into urges and buffering with food, but one event from a few years ago stands out for me:

Like always, I was trying to diet, trying to resist the overriding desire for sugar and flour that was omnipresent. I’d resisted the urge over and over, trying to be “good,” pushing it down, down, down. Like a beach ball pushed down below the surface of the water, the urge bounced back up with a vengeance.

Here is what happened:

~I drove to the grocery store with a singular focus: To purchase something to eat that would take away the intense and unignorable discomfort I was feeling. 

~I raced into the store and made a beeline for the bakery. 

~I purchased a package of soft, frosted sugar cookies.

~I got back into my car.

~l put my bag on the passenger seat.

~There in the parking lot, I forcefully ripped open the package of cookies.

~I attacked* the cookies with such ferocity and desperation that I scared myself. 

*Attacked is the correct verb here. It’s exactly what I did. Those cookies didn’t have a chance.

I was completely out of control in that moment. To me, those cookies were a lifeline. In that moment, as far as I was concerned, those inanimate objects made of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter were the only things keeping me from losing my mind. They were the only things keeping me from spiraling out of control.

Such is the power of our thoughts and feelings. Because the exact opposite was true. I was out of control when I acted on the thought that the cookies would save me and the urge to eat them. The moment when my prefrontal cortex (the decision-making part of my brain) partnered with my primitive brain (the I want I want I must have part of my brain) and complied. 

To be honest, after I attacked the cookies I did feel relief. I felt better. I was calmer. I could breathe. I could think. For about five minutes. And then the self-loathing kicked in and the cycle began anew. 

What is an urge?

An urge is a feeling, an intense desire for something caused by a thought.

An urge is supremely uncomfortable. 

An urge is an intense vibration in the body.

An urge feels “urgent,” like an emergency, like something that must be addressed NOW. Five minutes ago, yesterday.

Giving into an urge is buffering. 

Buffering is our attempt to change our emotional state. We don’t want to experience any emotion we view as negative. 

Buffering is seeking false pleasure. Unlike genuine pleasure or deep satisfaction, a false pleasure is transient and fleeting. In the moment, the false pleasure works. We get temporary relief from the urge and the thought that preceded it. Common forms of buffering include drinking, gambling, shopping, spending too much time on social media. Anything, really, that takes time and energy away from genuine self-care, and ultimately causes more harm and compounds the original problem. 

We buffer to eliminate the urge. The urge is so strong, so dominant, and so incredibly uncomfortable that we will do anything to get rid of it. It demands our attention. It’s hopping up and down, waving its arms, kicking and screaming. We cannot ignore it. So we do the habitual thing. We eat. We binge. 

Then we admonish ourselves. The inner critic releases a torrent of abuse. “What is wrong with you?” it might say. “How could you? Again?” “You are so weak. You’ll never lose weight.” And on it goes. It is unlikely that most of us stopped to give ourselves the support, care, or love we were really seeking in the first place. And like I stated earlier, we compound the original problem, the reason we chose to buffer in the first place. Things intensify over time. We haven’t addressed the original reason why we felt a strong urge and responded by buffering. That issue is still there, but it’s not alone. The shame, guilt, and frustration we feel at our seeming lack of control is also present. Every time we buffer to eliminate the urge, it intensifies. Over time, we need to buffer more to gain the same level of relief we’ve felt in the past. Stronger urges, more buffering, greater overall suffering. 

We buffer because we think we’re supposed to feel good all of the time. Women, especially, feel like they always have to be positive, up, and look on the bright side of things. Because we think this is how we’re supposed to be, we suppress the negativity that we feel. We have negative feelings because we’re human. We’re supposed to experience a full range of emotions, but somewhere along the line, that message was lost. Today, we think that we’re “bad’ or unappreciative, or a “Debbie Downer” when we feel cranky, sad, angry, or frustrated. We tell ourselves we should be happy. We don’t want to experience the negative emotions, and frankly, we don’t know how, so we buffer. 

So, what do we do? First, we have to address the urge and subsequent buffering. 

What to do with an Urge

An urge demands action. But it doesn’t have any authority. Even though we feel like we don’t have any control over the urge, we do. 

We respond to urges in three ways:

1. We react to it.
2. We resist it.
3. We allow it. 

Reacting to an urge: This is giving into the urge. If you have an urge for a cupcake, you eat a cupcake, whether you are hungry or not. We do this because it feels as though we don’t have any control at this point. (Good news – we do!)

Resisting an urge:  Pushing the beach ball under the water over and over again, until finally it springs back above the surface with a greater force than the one used to push it away.
Ultimately, resisting leads to reacting and complying. (This is our attempt to control the urge. Unfortunately, we are going about it the wrong way.)

Allowing the urge is the only way to extinguish it;  Remember, an urge doesn’t have any authority on its own. It needs help from your brain’s command center. (This is how you can be in control of the urge in the right way.)

The Easy Part – Not doing the thing that the urge wants you to do. Just don’t do it. 

The Hard Part – Dealing with the urge itself. It will not feel good to deny the urge. It just won’t. You are going to feel uncomfortable. Period. But it will pass. And every time you allow the urge and it passes, it will get that much easier. 

How to ALLOW the urge:

1. Don’t respond to the urge.
2. Breathe: a four-count inhalation followed by a two-count hold, followed by a six-count exhalation. Repeat a few times. 
3. Just let it be there. Remember, it doesn’t have any power on its own. 
4. This will suck. Embrace the suck. It’s not going to feel good. It will probably feel intense. 
5. The discomfort won’t kill you, it won’t even hurt you. It is just an unpleasant feeling. 
6. Don’t reward it. Just watch it. Witness it. 
7. Stay with it… even though you are uncomfortable and think it’s going to kill you. It won’t.
8. Breathe into it. Again. 
9. Eventually, the urge will extinguish itself. 

Every time you do this, the urge will have less impact. It will have less influence over you. It will lose the authority over you that it doesn’t really have. 

Consider this analogy:

A toddler is in the grocery store with his/her parents. 

The toddler wants candy. 

The toddler demands candy.

The parents say no.

The toddler throws a fit.

The parents give in and give the toddler candy.

What has the toddler learned? That he has the power to get what he wants by throwing a fit. The fit is rewarded. 

Now, it’s no fun for anyone when a toddler throws a fit. But if the toddler’s demands are not met, eventually the toddler will exhaust himself. And the demands still are not met. 

Over time, the toddler will learn that his demand for candy won’t be met. He will stop throwing temper tantrums to get candy because that strategy won’t work. 

The same is true for your urges. 

The urges will throw fits. 

You will allow the urges to throw fits. 

But you won’t reward the fits. You’ll simply witness them.

Over time, your urges will become less intense.

They may disappear altogether.  But they don’t have to because you will be an expert at allowing them to be there, knowing that they cannot hurt you. They cannot derail you. 

Remember: An urge is just a feeling caused by a thought. 

Remember: You have 100% control over your thoughts. Always.

You might be thinking, “Does this mean that I can never eat the things I have urges to eat?”

The answer is no. You can eat anything you plan ahead of time to eat. If your thing is cake, then you will plan to eat cake at least 24 hours ahead of time. This works because you, utilizing your prefrontal cortex, have made a conscious decision to eat cake. You are planning to eat cake. The cake isn’t going to jump up and slap you in the face. You are choosing to eat cake tomorrow. You’ve written it down in your food journal. And after you’ve eaten it, you will assess how you did and confirm that you did, in fact, eat the cake. This set of steps is the opposite of an urge. It is planned ahead of time with thought and care. 

With time, patience, and practice, it is possible to reduce and eliminate urges and buffering.