Posted by Simon on 12/9/2012, 7:26 am, in reply to "Some coping strategies"

Hi Geoff Yes you will find those coping strategies will transfer to a urinal very quickly. I used to only be confident using cubicles (and at times struggled with cubicles) but now I often prefer to use urinals. Mostly this is due to the coping strategies I learnt on the workshops I attended, and also through a lot of practice (I found going into busy urinals - e.g. large train stations, service stations etc) and standing at the urinals for one minute was enough to reduce and eliminate my fear of them. I do still tell myself 'the cubicle is always there if need it' - which is usually enough to get a flow going at the urinal (funny I only noticed that after reading your post!)..... To reiterate, getting a flow going is not the aim, atleast at first... first aim is to stay at the urinal and observe your anxiety, and calm it down. Only when there is no anxiety can you think about peeing (a lot of people end up peeing almost by accident when stood at the urinal 'faking it'). Hope that helps.

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