Posted by alex on 26/5/2009, 4:44 am, in reply to "First time user!"

Hi Sally, I acted a consultant to channel 4 on the embarrassing illness programme about paruresis. I surmised from your post that you would have an extreme form of this debilitating condition. That’s the bad news The good news is that things can change and this must become the start of your new thinking about yourself and your life. It’s not what happens to you that is important, it’s what you do with what happens to you that counts You have made the first step in taking control of your life and posted here and in this way you have already made a change in your life. Then the willingness to seek help is the next step There are many things you can do even on your own, like get Carols book and also McCulloch’s “Free to Pee” Also get Baz Chalabis’s book (full details from the parcopresis web site) a great book with frank personal stories and full of humour. (If I remember correctly when Andrew and Baz and I appeared on the R&J show it was the first time Baz had ‘come out’ and spoken about his problems; now he has written his book) From these sources try to understand that there are two events. One is the shutdown that seems to be neurologically driven, but we still don’t know how this happens. (A recent paper in the literature confirms this) So its any bodies guess at present why this happens. The second is the several aspects of this condition related to the secondary processes that are psychological driven These can be changed essentially by changing the perceptions of what is happening and refusing to become a victim and getting into negative cycles of thinking. I see you and your friends can laugh about this. That tells me you are not afraid to share your fears and also that you are still able to laugh (Laughter is a very important part of many therapeutic processes on my opinion.) So you are already a long way on the road to getting control of this compared to some people I treated the guy who featured on the TV show and in a very short space of time over two days he was able to undo the negativity of years. We laughed quite a bit. On my advice he then went to a workshop to continue the processes. (His post about his story may be still on the board somewhere) So take heart Sally things can change You will get, as you have seen, lots of encouragement from this web site. Keep posting, try to get to a workshop and mostly keep valuing yourself Alex

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