Room Between the Urge and You

Most of the time nothing dramatic has happened. One glass at the end of the day has become most of the bottle, or the phone is in your hand before you decided to pick it up, or a few weekend bets now fill most evenings. Wanting more say in what you reach for is reason enough to open this, and nothing in it asks you to call yourself anything.

A 36-page workbook across five sections: what the urge feels like and what the reach does for you, the areas of your life it shows up in and the kind of help that fits each one, how the house you grew up in handled hard days and slow evenings, the decisions about it you have been saving for later, and the five parts you can build on — what matters to you, your own rules, what you let in, how you see it, and the conclusion you would rather live under.

It covers far more than drinking: cannabis, nicotine, pills, a bet, a game, a shopping cart, the feed. The work is less about trying harder and more about seeing where a habit sits in your life, and then deciding, with your own values in front of you, what you want to do about it. Written by Kristen Burrus, LCMFT, LMAC, a licensed mental health therapist. Fillable on your computer, or print it and write by hand.

There is also a $9 worksheet, Riding Out the Urge, for getting through a single craving in the moment. This workbook is the longer look at where the habit came from and what you want to do about it.