Counsellor's Corner

Ride the wave – because it will pass

Every strong urge feels like it will last forever. The urge to snap back. To walk out. To send the text you shouldn't. To not get out of bed. In the moment it feels huge and permanent, like the only way through is to act on it right now.

But urges don't actually work like that. They build, they peak and then they drop. Every single one. Left alone, most of them fade within about 20 minutes, often much less. The problem is we almost never leave them alone. We act at the peak, right when the urge is loudest and our judgement is worst.

Think of it like a wave. It swells, it crests, it breaks and then it flattens back out. You don't have to fight the wave and you don't have to be dragged under by it. You just have to stay on your feet long enough for it to pass.

For a teenager, this is a genuinely useful thing to know. The feeling that's screaming do something now is not a fact. It's a wave near its peak. And the skill isn't making the urge disappear, because you can't. The skill is buying time. A few minutes of doing something else, walking to another room, splashing cold water on your face, texting someone safe instead of the person you're angry at, and the wave has already started to drop.

You can name this at home. Next time your teen is caught in a big one, you don't have to fix it or talk them out of it. You can just remind them it's a wave, and waves pass. Then help them wait it out.

The urge always feels like it needs an answer right now. It almost never does.

If you'd like to go a bit deeper, there's a good short video that walks through the same idea - what an urge actually is, and how to ride it out instead of getting pulled under. It uses the exact wave picture we talk about at school, so it's an easy one to watch with your teen and then have a chat about.

Surf the Urge Explained: How to, Technique, Meaning, Meditation - YouTube

Miss Ebony Coldrey

School Counsellor