Posted by Chris on 3/3/2013, 8:37 pm, in reply to "Re: Feedback on the February London Beginners workshop"

In brief: I would recommend the workshop to anyone with paruresis. Of the workshop I found positive thinking and the knowledge that I can overturn paruresis to be invaluable, the practice effective and the environment friendly. I am 22 and have had paruresis quite severely since I was about 14(and less severely before that). Aside from some painful experiences involving not being able to pee somewhere, I have come to realise how much I've beat myself up by having this condition. I will always think in advance of going out anywhere what the toilets will be like and if I will be able to cope. I have found myself deserting friends and running between bars trying to use every toilet until I finally manage to go. I have camped out in places, and run to isolated forests on the horizon just to pee. Having to take such extreme measures has made me think of myself as not normal, and different from just about everyone else. If I have a full bladder and I'm out with friends, I can have a misfire and come back feeling really sorry for myself. I start to hate myself, look at all the normal people and retreat from social situations. After having a particularly painful experience involving not being able to pee at new year, I decided that I should do something about paruresis. I made my paruresis quite public(I received only amazingly positive feedback from this), and decided I was going to come to a workshop. Even though I had told people about paruresis, I still didn't feel comfortable talking about it, or with myself. I still felt quite shameful and beat myself up a lot. This is where I feel the workshop was rally useful. I was nervous about meeting other people with paruresis and attending the workshop, but also quite excited. The weird thing about the workshop is that it's an environment especially designed for people with paruresis. It felt weird thinking about that because I realised I had never really been in a situation before where I completely didn't have to think about whether or not there would be safe toilets when going somewhere new. I was really nervous on the Friday before the event had fully gotten started. I felt kind of uncomfortable being with a bunch of guys with paruresis being the thin binding us. Because I have found paruresis a really uncomfortable subject to talk about. I thought I would feel uncomfortable talking about it. I didn't. Everyone there was really friendly and interesting. There was no desensitising done on the Friday evening so the pressure was immediately taken off. And all the guys there were completely normal. Of all different backgrounds and ages, and different stories to tell. It became clear that paruresis was a really annoying thing to have, but that's that. It's not like some neon sign that you have to hold over your head and try and hide from, like it has felt like to me sometimes. Andrew, Peter and Ryan were all very friendly and supportive. I cannot believe the amount of effort that they have put into the UKPT. They made us come to understand our paruresis and start to think of it differently. They advocated positive thinking, focusing on where we had been successful. They very quickly made any embarrassment that I had paruresis go away. And that itself is hugely rewarding. To desensitise and practise we slowly varied how far away people were and other parameters, and there was no time pressure, no judgment and it never mattered if you did have a misfire, because that happens. It was focused on what happens in the real world, not in our heads.The world where no-one could give a damn about someone peeing. We learned just how little non-paruretics actually think about the process of going to the toilet. Andrew and Peter helped me realise just how impressive making progress is and how it doesn't matter how long you take over it. Slow steps forward mean steps towards improvement. They also taught how it doesn't matter if you go downhill occasionally. That if you focus on success and not the failure then you will improve in the long term. Thank you to everyone who was at the workshop. I had a good weekend, feel better for it and will hopefully be attending a follow up workshop soon. Chris

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