Kathryn Hansen

urge surfing is trying to ride the wave of an urge. The urge to binge is assumed to swell, peak, and then subside just like a wave; so it's assumed that if you can ride it for long enough, it will go away. On the surface, urge surfing seems similar to what eventually helped me conquer my binge eating, because it involves not acting on urges and not necessarily trying to figure out any deeper meaning behind them.

the wave was just neurological junk

No one—not a therapist, not a nutritionist, not any self-help book—can help until you are willing to stand up against what afflicts you.

Here are the steps that corrected my binge-created brain-wiring problem and brought my bulimia to an abrupt end:
Ste p 1: I viewed my urges to binge as neurological junk from my lower brain.
Ste p 2: I separated my highest human brain from my urges.
Ste p 3: I stopped reacting to my urges.
Ste p 4: I stopped acting on my urges.
Ste p 5: I got excited.

was my mind—my true self, my prefrontal cortex, my highest human brain—that had the capacity to override the harmful matter, my urges to binge, coming from my animal brain.

I didn't feel a need to be sugar-drunk; I didn't feel a need to be temporarily numb to my problems;

my urges to binge weren't symbolic indicators of what I truly wanted or needed—physically or emotionally—and since I knew I could easily do without the secondary benefits of binge eating, it was relatively easy to start viewing the urges as neurological junk from my lower brain.

Like bulimia, OCD is ego-dystonic in that sufferers have intrusive urges that they feel driven to follow. They have recurring obsessive thoughts and feelings urging them to repeat the same compulsive behaviors (e.g., hand washing), which are akin to the intrusive, recurring thoughts and feelings that drive a bulimic to binge.

they were just automatic functions of my binge-created brain-wiring problem. I learned to recognize any thought or feeling that encouraged me to binge as something completely apart from my true self, as merely a product of the habit. This immediately made my urges to binge less threatening and gave me the sense that I was above them.

I was able to look at my lower brain from a distance, so to speak. Each time I experienced an urge to binge, I was able to monitor what was going on in my brain and observe what I was thinking and feeling.