Manchester

Thank X for a good posting. You are so right about the danger of thinking the worst that could happened is something awful, when unreality the worst is not that bad e.g. leaving early. It is important to get out, to have a life, and manage. No-one is interested cos peeing is as interesting as blowing your nose, and no-one is interested in anyone else blowing their nose.
cheers
Andrew

Thanks for the support! Where are you located?

hi,

I am 22 and have had a few years of experience in coping, not coping with this. I thought I'd share a few things that I have learned.

Firstly, like being anxious about anything, it is useful to ration what will actually happen if you take what you are worried about to its conclusion. In this case, you get stuck in a situation where you cannot go and then? I got around this part when I opened up to my brother about this problem because I couldn't really take it much longer. He said, your 22 years old, nobody cares what you do and aren't that interested, so even if you get to a point where you can't go and are in a social situation, you can just leave. A good example for me was going to parties, I avoided them like the plague. Using his advice I worked out that I could try and go in the bathroom with people waiting outside and this might fail, but the consequence, the worse thing that could happen is i just say I had a call to take or I needed something from the shop and walk down the road to a public restroom or a bush. This idea meant there was no eventual doom or place I could not go and the lack of pressure made it get better. In the worse worse situation where I couldn't find anywhere I would just call it a night and go home, which nobody cares about. this safety net allows you to practice with the mindset, what's the worse that could happen? I found that with this release of pressure it wasn't a huge moment going to the loo, it mattered less.

Secondly, as I got a bit more confident, I started going to more places and seeing more people and doing more things. This built my social confidence and the peeing issue was no longer the centre of my life. The general confidence in yourself means going to the loo you are less anxious and you feel like you're meant to be there and can handle the situation.

Third, going to the workshop is where everything turned around for me. I think that the point where you mentally say I am not going to live like this anymore and am going to put my neck on the line a bit to help myself is the turning point. If the outlook is submission to and withdrawing from life, it will inevitably get worse. I remember starting to think of it like it was something that had happened to me, it was unfair, unlucky but like a cancer or any other disease I should fight against it. Feeling like you are just a passenger will make it that way. Because the only thing that made it better was actively doing something about it and realising I was actually in control and could change it.

There are lots of times that the problem would get worse and get a bit better and I noticed that not getting disheartened and just doing what I needed to, e.g. go to a shopping mall/ service station for an afternoon to practice.


grudually exposing yourself to this fear works. Even if you are scared of going to a workshop, do it yourself. I went to university and there are hundreds of scary places to have paruresis. Instead of seeing a dude peeing in a urinal next to two other people and getting disheartened, look at what you can do and push it by a minuscule amount. Say you can't go in any public bathroom, go to a place with 15 cubicles, so nobody will bother you and try there. nobody is going to notice you are in there for even an hour. if you can go in a cubicle but nowhere else try leaving it unlocked in a big bathroom. I think its the expectation of what will happen, say somebody does walk into the loo when you are there because you have left it unlocked, its not as if they are going to get you or do anything. If they did it would be weird on their part. what's the worse that could happen?

I also tried a lot to find things like drugs that help an issue like this and the idea of catheters etc. This was a place where I was never going to improve and was looking for an easy way out I think. This was never going to actually solve the problem and is not how you should have to live. If you are strong enough to go through the day to day stress and mental strain that this paruresis brings then you can definitely go and do the things required to combat it!