I’m having trouble telling when an urge is truly over. I’ll recognize the urge to eat, and then I’ll drop into noticing how my body feels and identifying the feeling, which is usually anxiety. For me, anxiety is often like a tightness/empty feeling in my stomach and tightness in the back of my throat. So then I’ll sit with the feeling for a while and it’s hard to tell if/when the urge goes away because that anxiety feeling is still there even if the urge seemingly isn’t.

I don’t think that the purpose of allowing urges is to make the feeling of anxiety (or any other underlying feeling) go away, right? The feeling can still just be there in the background continuously, making many different urges pop up, but am I right that the key is just to let the urge go, not eat, and put a bead in the jar? I’m having a tough time deciding when the urge is truly over and therefore when I get to do the satisfying bead drop! Any insights would be appreciated.