Posted by Andrew on 5/1/2011, 12:17 pm, in reply to "How Living In China Became A Daily Nightmare"

Hi Mark You HAVE had a tough time of it! I do hope you can consider attending our beginners workshop. The beauty of it is that you would be in control of the graduated exposure, starting at a level that you deem totally "safe", then moving up in small increments, chosen by you. The other advantage is that you would benefit from our long experience of such graduated exposure. Your CBT therapist is correct in saying that you need to get as much exposure as possible - however how you do this is critical. Diving in at the deep end would only link more anxiety to the situation. You are right in saying "So it's back to the drawing board, practising going at home with people around, getting out to public toilets every day and trying to relax and feel comfortable in that environment. Very slow, gradual steps forward are the order of the day". Do read our website page http://www.ukpt.org.uk/first_visit/first_visit_Components_of_a_CBT_Based_Approach.htm The fluid loading with the 3 sec pee enables you to have repeated goes and so make faster progress. When tackling a new level of environment, get used to being there first by going in with no need to pee, and going through all the motions. This is described in section 19 Faking it on that page. Self-cathing: yes this is useful as an insurance policy - you know you will always be able to drain off and so a lot of the anxiety evaporates, to the extent that you may not need to use it. GPs vary in their attitude to such a request; get back to me if you want to go that way. Self-consciousness: underlying all this is the belief that others are watching, judging, taking an interest. You have to start arguing back against these false beliefs. Take it from me, peeing is so low on the radar of interesting things that people really are not interested. They would only take an interest if you make it one e.g. by looking shifty instead of confident. cheers Andrew

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