Posted by C on 22/4/2008, 6:14 pm, in reply to "telling people!"

Hello Mike, I have had this, like most people, since I was about 12 or so (I am now 28). Where do I start..I never really worried about this until I discovered this web site accidentally. All through my teens and early twenties I just accepted that I had to be alone when pissing. No problem. I never missed out on anything because of it. When I discovered this site about a year ago I decided to attack the problem. I attended a workshop and it helped but I cannot seem to completely shift it. Sometimes it is there, sometimes it goes off. I have made a decision that I really don't care about it. I went through a stage of really stressing about it when I was having trouble de sensing. But now I just feel like it is not worth even spending another minute of my life worrying about it. When I am going through periods where I am really trying to shift it, it gets worse. When I say **** it, whatever, it gets considerably better. The stress of worrying about it causes it! The analogy you gave about the spider can be looked at as: Having AP is like being scared of spiders. But you are not scared of the spider itself, you are scared of a bathroom full of massive, dangerous ones that are going to attack you, crawl all over you and bite you. Because of this, you avoid the bathroom. But all you really have to worry about is possibly seeing a big spider. It will never touch you or even come near you if it is there at all. The more you worry about it, the worse you think it is going to hurt you. Do you get what I mean? What is the worse thing that can happen in any bathroom? You have to wait for a cubicle or, at worse, pop outside for a piss. One thing the last year has taught me is that life is too short to miss out on anything. Especially because you are worried about pissing. Believe me, life could end tomorrow for any of us. It's only as big a problem as you make it. Hope this helps

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