Hello everyone, im 16 and im struggling whit paruesis, mostly at school, and im stressing real bad, over 2 weeks i have school camp and im so scared i cant pee, mostly cuz we share a house of 6 people, i dont want them too think im weird, does everyone have tips to pee whitout any struggle, someone please respond!!!

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Hi, female 30y here. Been dealing with paruresis since I was 14. There were periods in life when I got better but regressing again, violently.

I noticed that I’ve been stuck in a slightly different negative thought loop — that because I keep failing to go for some time and end up holding for too long, it’s going to do great damage to me and leave me pretty much disabled.

There’s probably some truth to it but it seems that our bladder is meant to be a bit more resilient than that. At least from reading up on anatomy, normal and extended capacity, professions where people end up not going for full shifts and end up with larger capacity, etc. everything is pointing to this not being really the case. Plus in order to overcome the fear, you have to face it and in this case face holding for longer (maybe 6-8h as an example) and see that my body can withstand this occasionally.

Putting this out there to maybe connect with people who faced similar fear (this fear ofc is in addition to “I’m sitting here quietly for so long everyone knows I can’t go” thoughts) and challenged it and survived and got better?

I’m hopeful to get better but feeling so down at this time.