Posted by Andrew on 6/7/2017, 10:55 am, in reply to "over coming paruresis"

Hi Dylan Anxiety due to the fear of being seen not urinating is a common part of paruresis. We positively encourage people to practice what we call faking: that is doing everything as normal except deliberately not peeing. This technique is useful for the following reasons: a) it helps in graduated desensitisation, when the next step is too big a jump. Faking allows you to get used to the situation, without the added pressure of trying to pee. b) It allows you to visit every toilet you come across, without needing to pee, so you can get used to being in one, and used to all the different layouts. c) And finally, it gets you used to standing there not peeing, and realising that no alarms go off, and no-one cares. That way, you become comfortable with the delay between being ready to pee, and the flow starting. So it’s not a case of “someone seeing you not urinate” because they are not looking, and they are not interested. Its about you becoming cool about waiting for the flow to start. Guys who do not have paruresis can also find they have to wait a while, when they find themselves in an unexpectedly pressured situation e.g. a very busy toilet. So if they happened to be aware of your delay, they would only recognise it for what it is, something they probably have experienced as well. BTW one guy decided to test out how long he could stand at a urinal not peeing to see what would happen. He gave up after 20 minutes out of sheer boredom. Hope that clears things up Andrew

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