Posted by Mike T on 17/8/2012, 5:07 pm, in reply to "Re: Hi"

Hey Rick You're welcome mate. Yeah if your bladder is full then there's more riding on the outcome. Part of the problem is the minds obsession with being outcome oriented as opposed to being process oriented. The author Eckhart Tolle calls it the anxiety gap. Dread, worry, anxiety, trepidation, phobia... they're all psychological fears. They are the fear of what "might" happen, there not a fear of something that is actually happening now. We can't deal with what might happen, we can only deal with what is happening now... so let go. Sounds counter intuitive but I find that if I say, "ok, well, I probably wont be able to pee, but I'm going to the toilet anyways." I used to stand there with my phone and commit to standing there for 5 minutes, time moves slowly when you're watching the minutes, usually by 2 minutes I'd get a stream going. Does your girlfriend know about it though? it's crazy sometimes, if I had a girl over and she didn't know about it, in the morning I used to brush my teeth and point my penis into the toilet at the same time then I could go, mad isn't it?! Distraction techniques aren't the best though because you can grow too reliant on them. But they've worked for me as a backup. Recovery is all about attitude. You've got to be more committed to possibly feeling a bit foolish than you are to dwelling on miss fires. You have to be more committed to saying, "oh well, so what," when you have a miss fire, than you are to beating yourself up about it. "I can't see myself being one of those people!" you say... If you weren't capable of recovering then you wouldn't have even found this site and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Words are very powerful and we have to be mindful of the things we say to ourselves. There's a book that helped me that covers this in more detail. It's called 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway' by Susan Jeffers. It looks like there will be a beginners workshop in London 2013 - details are usually posted at the top of the forum message board. Can you make the Manchester workshop in October? I live in Manchester, I could meet you in town before it starts for some moral support if you want. Best wishes, Mike T

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