- In this Tool
- Tool Overview
- How To Use This Tool
- Helpful Links
- Example Scenarios
Youth
Use / Urge Log
Tool Overview
An awareness and understanding of urges is crucial to recovery. One way to understand urges is by recording them. After a few entries, we may notice patterns and similarities about our urges. The log then becomes a road map that will help us to anticipate situations and emotions that may trigger urges and plan ways to avoid recognized triggers or distract ourselves from the urge until it passes.
The urge log is a worksheet that can be completed between meetings, whenever we feel a strong urge to use or engage in our behaviour of concern.
By keeping a record of urges it is possible to see:
- That urges are time-limited
- That urges often arrive at particular times and in particular situations — in other words, they have a recognisable or predictable trigger.
This record can help us to understand urges and be less driven by them. It can also help in avoiding potential triggers. Sometimes, just by taking notice of a behaviour, it begins to change.
How To Use This Tool
When struggling with urges or the sensation of experiencing one long, continuous and overwhelming urge.
Helpful Links
Related Tools
View all- Tool
Lifestyle Audit
When we slow down on a behaviour of concern, it can leave a gaping hole in our lives. Often, we find that we have a lot more free time, which used to be filled with activities related to our old behaviour. Also, we may no longer associate with the same group of friends.
- Tool
Setting SMART Goals
It’s important to make sure goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed.
- Tool
Weekly Planner
Once you have set some specific goals and broken them down into smaller, specific steps, the weekly planner can be useful for keeping these goals on track and ensuring that you are taking active steps towards achieving them.
Tool Overview
The ABC Model is a good way of understanding how we can help change our feelings and behaviour by challenging our thinking.
When to Use This Tool
The ABC Model is a good way of understanding how we can help change our feelings and behaviour by challenging our thinking. It helps us uncover beliefs that are not helping us /contributing to the behaviour we are trying to change.
This exercise may be done in the group setting but can also be very useful for participants to look at between meetings.
How To Use This Tool
When working with urges: To analyze a lapse/relapse or to develop coping statements for an anticipated lapse/relapse.
In the event of a lapse, the question to ask is not “What made me do that”, but rather, “How did I talk myself into it?” It is not the urge (A) that causes the lapse (C). It is our beliefs (B); our irrational self-talk.With emotional upset:
The ABC Model can also be used to work with emotional upset or frustrations that may occur at any point in the recovery journey. The ABCs allow us to discover our unhelpful beliefs which contribute to emotional upsets. Disputing helps us eliminate our irrational thinking so we can both feel better and do better. In SMART Recovery we teach that we feel the way we think; it’s not unpleasant events that disturb us, it’s the way we think of them. By changing our thinking, we change how we feel.Identifying and Disputing Unhelpful Thinking.
Disputing is a process of challenging the way we think about situations. It’s about trying to look at thoughts more accurately. Disputing unhelpful thinking can help us make more informed decisions about thoughts instead of just acting on them. Balanced thinking leads to effective new beliefs.
