Ever felt completely swept up by an emotion—like it came out of nowhere, pulled you under, and left you gasping for air? That’s what therapists sometimes call riding the wave. It’s a way of working with overwhelming feelings, not by fighting them, but by learning how to stay afloat and ride them through.
The idea started with psychologist Dr. G. Alan Marlatt, who used it in the 1980s to help people manage cravings—like the urge to drink or use drugs—by imagining them as waves: they rise, they peak, and eventually, they pass.
Later on, Dr. Marsha Linehan, who created Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), took that idea and made it a core part of how DBT helps people manage intense emotions. She built it into a bigger toolkit for handling things like anxiety, anger, or sadness—teaching people not to fight their feelings, but to ride them out with awareness and control.
So while Marlatt started the wave metaphor, Linehan gave it a home in DBT. And now, it’s used by therapists all over the world to help people keep their emotional balance.
RIDING THE WAVE
Observe your feeling
Notice it
Step back
Get unstuck
Experience your feeling
As a wave coming and going
Try not to block the feeling
Don’t try to get rid of it
Don’t try to push it away
Don’t try to hold on to it
Don’t try to make the feeling bigger
Remember, you are not the feeling
You don’t need to act on it
Remember times when you have felt differently
Become more comfortable with your feeling
Don’t judge it
Radically accept it as part of you
Name your feeling
Invite it home for dinner and sit with it
