Posted by Andrew on 25/11/2014, 6:34 pm, in reply to "I've fallen off the desensing wagon - any suggestions?"

Hi Conor First sorry about your negative experiences and feelings. You said yourself before that "I am very good at beating myself up". Another way of looking at that is that maybe you do not give yourself any slack. Practicing fluid loading and intensive desensing is not easy to fit into life for most guys, so we have to accept that we do what we can when we can, and if we can. If we can’t fit it in, then that is life. You know that if you come to another workshop (and I am not suggesting you should), you would recapture the ability, just like you did on your follow-up workshop. You would start off at a comfortable level and move back up. So an approach may be as follows: do not fluid load, but go along with normal daily life. When in a toilet, if the set-up fits in with your comfortable starting level on the hierarchy, fake it to start with. Get used to it. Repeat faking for several occasions, just to get some feeling of control. Re-read your own feedback for the things you said that most helped you then e.g. "the single most important piece of information, for me, was that I couldn't MAKE myself pee. But I COULD just decide not to care." If the set-up does not fit your hierarchy, make it so i.e. use a cubicle, or leave and return a bit later. The set-up may have changed by then. This way you can make progress just as you would on a workshop, but obviously over a longer period of time - but time is what you have got. Once you have got onto your hierarchy, using it as it becomes appropriate, bear in mind the following. You know and I know that peeing is not a race. Guys who do not have shy bladder just hang in there till it happens. They expect to be able to go so wait for it. I tend to do that now. I just resign myself to waiting: a bit like having a dog on a lead that is sniffing the lamppost; the owner just stands there waiting for it to happen! I also say to myself that I am a slow pisser: slow to start, slow to pee. And I don’t care if I don’t go, as I will either try again later or do something to get down my hierarchy, like use a cubicle. Hope this helps. Do get back and let’s get you going again. Cheers Andrew

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