Reply: Is sitting down an avoidant behaviour

Hi David

We use Avoidant Behaviour as what you do to avoid having to pee in a public situation. So strictly speaking sitting down is not an avoidance behaviour because you are actually out there .

So as part of you day to day life, sitting down is fine, as the aim is to empty your balder.

What you can do is to plan a desense session where you practice peeing standing up in incremental stages. Firstly go in a cubicle and stand there as if to pee but don’t pee. Stay there for one minute (use your watch or phone). Zip up and leave. Repeat this until you find it less anxiety-provoking cos you come to realise that nothing happens: i.e.no alarms go off 

Then fluid load and when ready go in the cubicle and aim to pee on the porcelain (so its quiet); take your time, there is no law about how long you should take. If you don’t pee after say a minute (or two), no worries, zip up and leave. Retry this, as you are desensing to trying to pee standing up. When you do get a flow, stop after 3 seconds, tt maintain a need to pee. Zip up and leave. Return and repeat the exercise till you are reasonably comfortable doing it.

The next step would be starting on the porcelain, and then moving into the water to make more noise.

Next step is peeing straight into the water.

Final step when you are comfortable is making patterns in the water Playtime!

Hope that helps

Andrew

Is sitting down classed as an avoidant behaviour as you’re doing it to hide the fact that you’re peeing and if so should it be avoided as I find it a lot easier to pee when sitting down as I don’t feel as much time pressure. Thanks, David