This Discussion Board is for men who
find it difficult or impossible to urinate in a public or social situation. Women should use the women's Board.
The Board is maintained and moderated by the
U.K. Paruresis Trust. Registered Charity no: 1109541.
For
further information, visit our website, or contact us at
About 15yrs ago I had to explain our problem to a urology consultant because he had never heard of it ,he was sympathetic but it was new territory to him.Yesterday I visited our local docs surgery with another problem.The GP I saw was new to me ,very young but a nice chap.I know it was naughty of me but I thought I would drop it out that I suffered from paruresis.Guess what I got the same blank look,he asked me to elaborate and I explained it was a mind over matter about peeing in public.He was quite honest with me and said he had never heard of it.Fifteen years and no further forward in the medical world ,they really seem to blank us out completely and sweep us under the carpet as an embarrasment to mankind.I'm sure with some proper funding and research some progress could be made in helping this problem.Andrew is doing a great job in highlighting our problem,but I'm afraid in the medical world nobody is listening,or is it they don't like what they hear.
Re: Progress
Posted by james s on 14/7/2009, 9:57 pm, in reply to "Progress"
i had a similar experience to the one you describe with a urologist about 9 years ago. about a year ago i went to my local gps and saw a locum - a young doctor - as i wanted to discuss ways forward with a.p. though he hadn't heard of paruresis, he was very familiar with anxiety disorders and this gave him a frame of reference through which he could quickly understand the problem. his attitude was totally different to ones i had previously encountered and i think the medical profession as a whole is becoming slowly more enlightened regarding such issues...
Re: Progress
Posted by Pete L on 15/7/2009, 9:23 am, in reply to "Re: Progress"
Hi Roy
Doctors really do p**s you off sometimes don't they. 'you'll just get over it'?!! My doctor told me exactly the same thing......arsehole!!
Anyway, thanks to this site and the help of the workshop, I've managed to come a long way in a short time..... without the help of my GP (does GP stand for GREAT PRICK?!!) Not that i'm tarnashing all GP's with the same brush!
It was a medical resercher who first made me aware that I was normal. Went to the hospital for another matter and told this guy I couldn't give a sample (not that sort sample!) unless he left the room. He then said that I probably have 'pub toliet syndrome'. A brief discussion about it followed, and a year or so later I braved putting similar words on the net. Best thing I ever did.
Just waiting for an excuse now to visit the doctors to say 'nah nah nah nah nah!!!!' That would be immature but it'd make me feel good
Pete
Re: Progress
Posted by Pete on 15/7/2009, 11:03 am, in reply to "Progress"
Roy, My experience with the medical profession is equally hopeless. About 25 years ago I spoke to a hospital doctor about my problem with peeing and he said I should see a psychologist, obviously knowing nothing about the condition. He sent me back to my GP to arrange this. She said "Go away and don't think about it and don't use public toilets", How helpful !
Recently' after discovering this website and realising that I wasn't a "prime freak" I mentioned it to my present GP who said "I've some colleagues like that and they just use cubicles" obviously not realising that some poor guys can't even do that. When I told him that, in many ways, this "thing" had largely ruined my life he just couldn't understand how this could possibly be. I suggested a notice be put in the Waiting Room to make people aware that they are not alone with the problem and that help could be found with UKPT,but he dismissed the idea completely. I was disgusted - to put it in polite language !
It seems that the medical profession has all the answers and if it doesn't "know" about something it pretends it doesn't exist.
Glad to have a chance to get this off my chest and to say "Thank God for UKPT" who have helped me in so many ways to start, in my old age, to live a more "normal" life.
Pete (a different one !)
Re: Progress
Posted by Andrew on 15/7/2009, 9:01 pm, in reply to "Progress"
Hi Roy and Pete
I can understand your frustration and your need to jump up and down. Now let me be devil’s advocate. A GP is just that: a General Practitioner, with the accent on general. It is not possible for a GP to know about every condition, and especially not the details of every condition; it is their job to know when to refer a patient to a specialist. Their knowledge comes from their training, their reading in the job, and their experience on the job.
Their training is long and arduous; seven years of long hours. Shy bladder is only one example among many of a social anxiety; social anxiety is only one of many anxiety conditions; anxiety conditions is only one of many psychological conditions; psychological conditions are the stuff of psychologists, not doctors; they may get only one one hour lecture on anxiety sometime in that seven years!
Their experience on the job depends on clients giving them that experience; in our case, we are known among ourselves for not coming forward to admit our problem. If every person with shy bladder went to their doctor, you can be sure the condition would get noticed.
Thirdly their reading: as one GP said me: “we get deluged in literature” There are only so many hours in the day, and they are under pressure to bone up on things the patients and the government shout about e.g. swine flu, infant meningitis.
So to say “they really seem to blank us out completely and sweep us under the carpet as an embarrassment to mankind.” is both a generalisation, and an example of self-consciousness: implying the GPs a deliberately targeting us – no they are not!
What is being done? The National Phobics Society, now Anxiety UK, was funded to do a PR campaign for toilet phobias generally. This resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines, and stuff on radio and TV. Those of us who have been around a long time have noticed that the term shy bladder is significantly better known than when we first got involved. I was told by the CEO of a charity for an unrelated condition that it takes ten years of constant repetition to get a term known let alone accepted.
In the last two years we have had several referrals to workshops by the medical profession; that is a major step forward, but I have no idea what specifically brought this about. The PR campaign, medics getting more Google savvy, who knows?
There is little that the UKPT can do, due to lack of serious money and lack of personnel: so we concentrate on what we do well: this forum, the website, the workshops, email support etc. However that does not stop us from thinking about what we could do on a small scale.
Sorry if this sounds like a rant, it was not meant to be; I do want you not to feel that medics have got it in for you. I think GPs have a tough job; we have known GPs that were very helpful, and others that were clueless; they are human after all.
Cheers
Andrew
Re: Progress
Posted by Roy on 17/7/2009, 7:50 pm, in reply to "Re: Progress"
I bow to your knowledge and experience on this subject Andrew and perhaps it is slight frustration that I write this but I speak as I find about the medical profession.Although I've been on your courses and very good they were too,unfortunately by trying the therapies I have found little improvement on my condition ,perhaps at 62 old habits die hard.I consider we who visit this website must be the tip of the iceberg and I feel for the poor souls below us still thinking that they must be the only person in the world that has this problem,how many suicides,ruined lives are caused by this problem?I am fortunate in having a loving and supportive wife and along with my catheter I manage quite well.Well what of the future for the minority like me who don't respond well to therapy?I think that the medical profession will develop a procedure where electrodes are attached to the prostrate sphincter to open it when a charge is administered ,this would be controlled by the patient as and when required.Unfortunately I do not think it will be in my lifetime because of insufficient funding. However we can take comfort in the fact that I have heard that the lottery grants committee have decided to allot 3.4 million pounds to investigate the mating and sexual habits of the lesser spotted dung beetle in the orinoco river area.