I've fallen off the desensing wagon - any suggestions?

Posted by Conor on 23/11/2014, 10:31 pm

Hi all. I went on a beginners' workshop in January 2012, and a follow up in November 2012. I found both of them amazing, despite being especially nervous before the first one (irrational imaginings, etc.) and not great in myself before the second one (due to having 'fallen off the wagon' desensing-wise about three months after the initial workshop). Those of you who've attended a workshop will get what I'm saying, I imagine. (Btw, if you haven't attended, I'd urge you not to allow your shame or anxiety around this thing stop you from attending one.) My experience was that the free peeing I managed over those weekends (which I was NOT expecting to be the case, trust me) was one of the greatest highs I've ever experienced. Up there with all those exciting firsts of adolescence. I'd been putting up with all the avoidance rubbish for thirty years (I'm 47 as I write now) so to be free for those 48 hours or so was, as I said, amazing. There was a funny end to the weekend on the flight home that catches the whole thing. I had loaded up, but too much. And, because I no longer had that all-powerful fear, I had a different problem - that I might actually wet myself! When the - delayed - plane finally landed, I rushed to the nearest toilets, where I found the two outside urinals of three being used by two burly lads who had been on my outgoing flight too, as part of a stag party. In other words, one of my worst case scenarios. Before the workshops, I would have sat in a cubicle, peed silently and waited for them to have gone before emerging, lest - horror of horrors - they realised I had gone into the cubicle for a pee and was therefore less of a man, etc, etc. (Nonsense.) But without a thought I went straight in between them and proceeded to just... go. I even said aloud, 'Expletive hell, I thought that plane would never expletive land.' As I left, I inwardly laughed at myself - in the good natured sense of that phrase - because the experience I'd just had was so not me, so not-in-my-wildest-dreams, and yet had just happened. I could go on, but instead I'll get to the point. (If you're interested in more on my immediate post-workshop experiences, just go through the pages here till you get to postings by me in Jan, and then Nov, 2012.) The point is that, despite the best of intentions around desensing, I just haven't managed to keep doing it. There were various acute moments of personal difficulties (bereavements, job stuff, etc) that didn't help, but such things will always be a part of life, so they aren't the reason. For me, the very success of the weekend has become a double-edged sword. I try to cast off my fixation on success (i.e. to shrug it off as no big thing if I can't go) but, having been able to go every time bar once on that second workshop (out of about fifty attempts!) I find it really dispiriting, not to mention inconvenient, to freeze when I want to pee. Which is what I do virtually every time now, when I actually go for it. Today, for instance, I didn't. Because there was a guy at one of the urinals, I just went to a cubicle and peed - silently, unfortunately. I am better off head-wise than before (I no longer emasculate myself around my shy bladder, thanks to Andrew my understanding is too clear for that) and have even 'come out' to some of my male friends, which was supportive and empowering, but the fact remains that I am, as I've said already, still mostly either inconvenienced or dispirited. Has anyone else experienced this dip in fortunes? Does anyone have anything helpful to suggest? Just get back on the desensing horse, I hear you say. Yes, but two things in relation to this: 1) I find the headaches I get from loading up really difficult. I have to write off the rest of the day, nearly. Which is often not on around wife and kids. 2) I find the alternative - holding on to a slow buildup from a normal intake of fluids - really uncomfortable. I tried this at work, desensing on the way home, but my work-performance was affected. Anyway, thanks for reading this long post; any suggestions would be helpful. Conor.