Your gallbladder is a tiny organ under your liver. It stores bile, which helps us digest foods, particularly fats, sugars, and processed foods. Mine is right beneath the very end of my rib cage on my right side and two years ago, it decided to malfunction. Fun fact: a malfunctioning gallbladder hurts like a mother. After a trip to the ER, several scans and doctor appointments later, a decision was made: my gallbladder needed to come out. Call me crazy, but this felt extreme and there are a lot of problems and unwanted side-effects that can happen when you take your gallbladder out. Mine was not infected and I didn’t have gallstones, so I did a little research (doctor google) and decided to heal my tiny organ before rushing into surgery. I came up with a brilliant plan (heavy sarcasm) to eliminate all things that would upset my gallbladder for the better part of a year and see if this thing would calm down.

Urge surfing is new school therapy jargon for a way to manage bad habits or unwanted behaviors. It started as a technique to help drug addicts and it was so wildly successful that it is now used as a distress tolerance skill in therapy models like DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) and an emotional management tool in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). On a basic level though, it can be used to manage any unwanted behaviors. I heard about it in a meditation class and used it all last year as I tried to stay away from fat, sugar, and processed foods to try and heal my overactive malfunctioning gallbladder. My diet became ultra-radical (I’m already a whole food plant based vegan) and the cravings were intense, but so was the pain anytime I ate anything on a long long list. Surfing the urge techniques helped me manage my diet as I tried to heal myself.

Now that I am really familiar with the program, I find that I use it all the time. Especially as a mother to a teenager. And as an adult with ADD. And as a wife. And as a highly emotional person. And as someone that has a very small space between what I think and what I say. I have a lot of impulses and strong emotions that I’d rather suppress or at least take a second to think about first.

Surfing an urge is just like how it sounds. Rather than giving into an emotion, craving or desire, you ride it out much like a surfer riding a wave into shore. After a period of time, you’re back on the sand and the urge is gone. You get better at this with practice because as your urges go without you giving into them, they get weaker and your ability to manage them, gets stronger. You can use this as a tactic to change your eating behaviors, get through difficult workouts, manage your emotional reactions, or hold your tongue, and it’s a proven method for more serious things like getting off alcohol, smoking, or drugs, etc… We all have things we are tempted to do but know are either flat out bad for us, or simply don’t align with our long-term goals and values.

In a lot of ways, this is mindfulness as its best because it requires a certain level of self-introspection and then thoughtfulness mixed with awareness of what’s happening inside to change our outward actions. It reminds us to foster awareness of the present moment and make the best choice moving forward. There are a ton of really great articles on urge surfing so I’m just going to give you the basics, but I am hoping that this technique helps someone out there the way it has helped me.

1 - RECOGNIZE: First step is just to become aware that you’re experiencing a desire/craving/urge that doesn’t align with who or what you want to be. This step lets you step away from the emotion and look at it for what it is. Everyone has cravings. No one expects you to go through life without ever having an urge. In this step you don’t judge or resist, just realize.

2 - OBSERVE: The second step is to do some investigating on yourself. What are you feeling right now? What triggered you? Just tune into what’s going on in that brain of yours and take notice. As you distance yourself from your emotions, you realize that you have incredible power over them. Where are you feeling this in your body?

3 - VISUALIZE: This third step feels a little silly at first, and you can do this your own way, but basically you visualize a literal wave. I usually try to do some ocean wave breathing where I breathe in slowly, pause for a moment like a wave just hitting the shore, and then breathe out slowly before pausing again once my breath is completely exhaled. If it helps to see in your mind the urge as a wave that’s cresting and then diminishing, do it. The most important part of this step is to tell yourself that this is like a wave that will peak and then diminish. This is the pause for me, the place where I am aware of what I WANT to do or say but choose not to by taking in a deep breath and reminding myself that whatever it is, won’t help me.

4 - RETURN: That’s it! Return to the present moment and let the urge or craving go. You don’t have to give in to it. This is where you get to feel proud of yourself for making the healthier more aligned choice rather than being swayed by everything the brain, body and mouth want right now. This is where you talk yourself through whatever is happening outside.

It sounds simplistic, because it is, but I can attest that it really does work. I spent 9 months watching every little thing that entered my body so as not to upset my gallbladder and ended up needing it to come out anyway. I do feel like the practice in self regulation that I learned last year, was totally worth it though.

These days, I mostly use this technique to think before I speak, or manage strong emotions. I get triggered in big ways sometimes. Surfing the urge helps me breathe through it and visualize whatever is happening, passing. I’m finding that I am calmer. I’m trying to be more thoughtful. I’m working on being more mindful about how I treat myself and others. I’m having less freak outs. I take time and think and breathe before I respond to people either in person or by text. These are very small changes occurring more and more over time, but over that same time they end up making a difference in who I am and also in the quality of my relationships. Thanks gallbladder.