How it works
Rate how strong the urge is, then start the timer. For ten minutes, the only job is not to act on it. You can feel it, think about it, even want it badly. Every couple of minutes a short prompt helps you notice what the urge is doing.
When the time is up, rate it again. Whatever the number, you got through ten minutes without contacting them. Nothing you enter here is saved or sent.
Where the idea comes from
Noticing an urge without acting on it is called urge surfing. It comes from relapse prevention in addiction treatment. In a trial with smokers, it didn’t make cravings any weaker, but the people who learned it smoked less over the following week.1 That’s the idea here too: the urge doesn’t have to disappear for you to not act on it.
Nobody has measured how long breakup urges last, so there’s no promise the urge will be gone when the timer ends. What you will have is ten minutes you didn’t spend contacting them. More in the guide on what to do when you want to text your ex.
Sources
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Bowen, S., & Marlatt, A. (2009). Surfing the urge: Brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 23(4), 666–671. doi.org/10.1037/a0017127. Randomized trial, 123 students who smoked. ↩
