Posted by Cpt. Capricious on 10/2/2012, 12:15 am, in reply to "Outing myself..."

Hey All, First off thanks for all your replies it honestly means allot to know that there are people out there that can relate to the sinister comedy that is going the bathroom in public! Apologies for such a long wait on a reply I have been very busy as of late. I'll be honest I have my good days and bad days and it seems 04/02/12 was a bad day. You'll be happy to know that I'm not usually so bleak. Of course it goes without saying that everything I wrote was true enough at the time and will be again on many occasions in the future. I suppose that will all ways be a large part of me as long as this is a problem.It's a constant reminder that my subconscious is p***ed off at me; but for some thing only it knows...I'm sure I don't need to write the joke here. It's molded me into a Dr.Jekyll-esque character who's moods are as irrational as the same condition that causes them. This to my relief is a good day! I have just finished my first week in a new job. Yes...Three day weekend the toilets there are not the best in the world but there are a damn sight better than allot of places. First there is a coded door I enter which takes me into a small corridor that leads to only one other brown wooden door.The corridor is filled with tin filling cabinets. Files and various bits of stationary piled up high on the top of "cold storage" boxes overflowing against the glass partition wall that the door sits inside. Once in the corridor you face right (its a small corridor) and walk through a standard wooden door that leads into the locker room. The locker room is filled wall to wall with lockers that look like they are from the 1920's and made of the same tin as the filing cabinets. It's a horrible grey. Dull and tarnished presumably by the many years they could have been stood there. The absence of windows and only a small lamp in the ceiling has resulted in the shadows here taking a firm hold of this tiny box room. This is not a place like to spend time. I already love it. Hidden between the lockers is a white door that leads into a cupboard of a room that barely fits the toilet inside it. Its completely covered in small white embossed tiles and if it wasn't for the much appreciated small window (not frosted but high up on the wall) this room would almost look like an enamel padded cell. I know the place meticulously and almost felt like a spy or assassin assessing the room. Looking for surprise points of entry, counting to see how long the pause was between footsteps outside the window where and waiting inside the cubical to ascertain how loud others voices where when talking near the door. [I'm going to try and lead this back toward a more relevant topic now.] I only mention the wait inside the cubical because I have found through various experiments that noise is a big factor for me. Its a mixture of: 1) Feeling uncomfortable about urinating while I can still here noises that just don't really fit. I really can't find the best way to describe this other than most of the sounds that don't fit; would in a living room. I'm sorry. I'm well aware that makes no sense. 2) Other people hearing me or rather not hearing me. During awkward silences, when the the internal monologue running starts to become relentlessly cruel and the war between yourself and your body starts to reach its peak time suddenly swallows me whole and seconds become eons. Does anybody have any ideas on how to combat this? Is anyone suffering from the same thing? Is that a stupid question to ask? If I'm honest. I'm not sure. There are loads of things that I would like to write down here and it doesn't really feel like I actually said anything yet but sadly its nearly midnight and I would like to sleep before tomorrow. Andrew - I would like to say though thanks for such a swift response it's nice to know how committed the ukpt are. TeeJay - Thanks for your ideas I have had a few of them my self but often find allot of them easier said than done. Its very hard to just walk away from my friends at the start of the night with out them inquiring where you're going. Usually so they can grab me a beer if I'm heading to the bar because "I haven't seen friend X in ages!" - because of the obvious. I think I may do a personal survey of all the pubs in town hopefully there is one that I can persuade the group to move to that has fairly adequate bathrooms. Simon - Mate you are a genius i have been so wrapped up in hoping people don't notice that I am frequenting the bathrooms so often that it never occurred to me to just say i have a weak bladder. Just been able to take the heat off a little seriously helps. It's only sad that on the other end of the spectrum a bladder that doesn't hold urine well enough is completely socially exceptable. Roy - I can see where you are coming from with the catheter idea. If I knew I could all ways go then I might just be able to go anyway. However if I'm finding that the pain is becoming unbearable I will normal sit down on the toilet. I'm not sure why but I have much higher success rate with this. At the moment this will suffice. This early into the journey of trying to rid myself of Paruresis to use a catheter would feel like defeat. However already I can think of thousands of occasions my day could have been saved so simply. Mark L - As above i agree that catheters should be a last resort but i don't think its one I will turn towards in the near future...although who knows. As with the first post thank you for reading all the way to the bottom. Its your free time. L

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