Posted by Andrew on 7/9/2009, 2:17 pm, in reply to "Social anxiety & paruresis"

Hi Phil Shy Bladder used to be classed as a specific social phobia, but is now seen as a specific social anxiety. By that is meant: 1. a performance is impaired by anxiety and 2. the anxiety is triggered by other people (actual or virtual) and 3. the result is a strong avoidance behaviour pattern. Specific is as opposed to generalised. If specific, only one aspect of public performance can be impaired e.g. peeing, public speaking, public eating, acting; otherwise more than one aspect is impaired. A proportion of those who attend our workshops say they feel awkward socially, and so tend to avoid social situations. The therapy for shy bladder is CBT: both graduated exposure to get used to performing i.e. peeing; but also cognitive aspects are looked at i.e. what goes on in your head e.g. negative thoughts. We also have done a little bit on how to handle conversations with strangers, which has been well received. There does seem to be a vicious circle involved: shy bladder can knock one's self-confidence: then the lack of self-confidence makes the shy bladder worse and so on. If you have social anxiety on two or more aspects, then they can feed into each other, and so they all need to be dealt with in a therapy. We find that a workshop can start a turn round towards a virtuous circle. What you achieve on a workshop boosts your self-confidence, which then helps with other aspects of life. I hope this helps: do not hesitate to get back with more questions and/or discussion about this here, or by email cheers Andrew Chairman

425