Success story?
Hey cuties!
I rarely post and sometimes comment here but I wanted to share some progress and ask y'all for what could I do to help myself further.
TL;DR on my situation - 30 (m) now, have had paruresis for as long as I remember myself due to a traumatic experience in school when I must've been 7/8. Noone to talk to growing up about these things, only became a problem in my late teens/early 20s when I moved out of home. I've generally always been okay with stalls, but going to urinals had induced bodily anxiety that would spiral me into suicidal thoughts fairly often. I started properly working on this only 3 years ago.
There's more details to this but in those three years here are the achievements I've gotten with this problem:
- can now go comfortably to urinals in empty toilets (doesn't sound like much but even this was a a nightmare scenario several years back)
- can go even when there are people around but there are those separators and it's not hella noisy around. It's difficult at times and I have to give myself some time(I still find loud men talking in the toilets makes it sometimes impossible for me to go)
Things that have worked for me so far:
- talking about it with people and my therapist (more on that in a bit). Normalising it in my head really helped as before if I didn't manage so successfully go it would bring some pretty nasty thoughts I couldn't control. Even sometimes joking about it if it comes on topic I find quite helpful. A couple of years ago I got a fun flirt because of it while waiting for a stall which did make me accept it easier for myself and didn't make me feel like I was a constant failure
- gradual exposure - I started doing it by myself a few years back. I would just try more and more in different situations, tried to calm myself down every time I got anxiety and tried my best to celebrate the 'successes' and accept the unsuccessful attempts without labelling them as failures
- EMDR therapy - this is what I'm currently working on with my therapist. She was very honest to tell me that she has no experience with paruresis and when I mentioned it to her she said it's something she's heard of but never really focused on. However a lot of the work that we do centres around shame and the habits from being brought up the way I've been brought up, so her suspicions were is that the paruresis could be a good indicator (among others) to the progress we make
Things that I still struggle with and I need help and I feel stuck:
- going to urinals that are without separators (especially those long metal ones) ,
- going out in nature (for whatever reason this is very difficult)
- going in toilets that are busy and noisy
I have tried everything for these things, breath holds, waiting till I cant bear it any more, playing music or sound patterns in my headphones, having my headphones on noise cancelling, sitting there with my penis out for solid minutes waiting for it to start, speaking on the phone and probably several combinations of these. I have not found anything that works for these situations and I feel like I'm so close to being free from this condition but also so far.
Sorry for the longer than I wanted post but trust me this is the surface of it. I would love to hear all of your recommendations and I'm super open to chat more about my case here or DM if you preferred privacy. Thank you all and all the best!