U.K. PARURESIS TRUST: Re: Question

Hi Charley:
I hope you find this board useful: many folk have. I have suffered with this since I was 6 (now 57) but have got to stage where it is manageable for me and no longer places any real constraints on what I do. I do however look at the board quite often and chip in very occasionally if something strikes a chord with me. I think you posting is worthy of response as I feel that you may be suffering something of a double "whammy" as regards suffering from AP and also some insecurity concerning disasterous outcome, whther imagined or bourne out of some real episode(s).
My own obsevation is that it is extemely rare indeed for an AP sufferer to ever end up having an "accident" as the inhibition not to urinate other than in a "safe" place by definition means the sufferer wiil "prohibit" himslf from relieving him/her-self inappropriately. They almost have a re-inforced inhibition: Someone without AP will normally be conditioned to not allowing themselves to gain relief in a way/situation that would cause accute embarrassement and that is outside any social "norm". For an AP sufferer, that is overlaid with an extra control that would not allow them the "permission"to do it even if they wanted to! Hopefully that makes some degree of sense.

However, I think (and speak from personal experience) that if the on-set of the condition is at an age where it is not totally unacceptable to "have an accident" then that person may find that they had had an episode where they have given in to the "inevitable" on at least on occasion. And I believe that just one remembered episode where this is the case will (a) add a futrther degree of anxiety overlaying the fundamental anxiety surrounding AP and (b) be sufficient to have opened the door to the possibility that 'in extemis' that individual might find themselves giving way to the persistence of the "need" and find that much later in life they might indeed let it get to the "accident stage".
I have, ages ago on thus board, told my own story of realising I had AP from age 5-6 which meant I resigned myself to not being able to urinate during the school day. As I went home for lunch, this was not often too much of a struggle although I was acutely aware of feeling "odd" and also was a bit envious of being imagining all the others nicely relaxed after playtime, whilst I was sensing at least some need to "go". However, I guess with some inevitability, an emergency situation was bound to arise at some point, and it did indeed arise during the last lesson of one afternoon when I was in Junior school.The fundamental reason I did not even ask to go out to the toilet was that I felt so predisposed to "failure" that I would only return to the lesson still desparately needing to go. I knew really that there were 2 possible outcomes (i) I would manage to hold on (= GOOD) or (ii) I would have an "accident"( = HORRENDOUS). If (ii) occurred AFTER I had gone out to the toilet, then my secret might be known, or at least there would be some perplexed and puzzled pupils and teacher. SO i just sat there and said nothing. But things got so bad that I had to allow the "accident" to occur because I could not out up with the discomfort any longer. I knew I was a tad too old to be "wetting myself" but there had been one other "accident" in my class that year, so it was not totally unheard of. That episode has etched itself in my memory quite vividly. For me at that age, there was an element of "going in my trouser" being "safe" as opposed to the complete anathama if going at the urinals; the knowledge of the socially unacceptability of wetting myself had not yet jelled in my psyche, and the knowledge that abnotherr boy had made a puddle in class quite recently sort of legitimised things to the extent that "accidents do happen",
Moving on from that afternoon, there was now, for me. the added real possibility that faced with future degrees of "need" then I might find myslf similarly "defeated". As it happened, I grew to be better at holding as I grew older and such a serious situation did nor recur, but I still continued to reegard it as a REAL possibility and thus was an extra layer of anxiety.
I have gone on at quite great lenghth, but I feel able to share this in the context of my own personal "slant" on the condition, even though I will be in the tinyest minority. Best wishes