Shy Bladder Syndrome and AS

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I'm wondering how many others suffer from this. I know it's considered a kind of anxiety disorder. Starting sometime around puberty, I developed a serious problem with urinating in public. It relates mainly to the sound. For some reason I don't like other people to hear me peeing. why that is, I really don't know. There are some environments where it seems impossible for me to actually go. For a while, this was very bad and led to awful frustrations which no one else could understand. They'd say "I don't get it -- why can't you just go?" lol. I've gotten better but it's still fundamentally there. if others on here experience a similar thing I'd like to discuss more, but if not, then probably this thread should just drop off given that it's sort of unhygienic or something.

I have the same problem, and it did start around adolescence, but it may be related to a medication I was taking at the time. Honestly, it is better now, but I am very fearful of peeing (and pooing) in public restrooms. It's really a pain! I don't know if this relates to Aspergers, but I'd be interested to know!


-Mallory

Same here. But for me its backwards, the sound of other people walking around. I can be mid stream and if someone walks in to the bathroom im done.

Yep! I have a much harder time when others are in the room! It's very embarrassing!



-Mallory

Yep, it goes the other way for me too -- but I have less trouble when I know I'm not making any noise. I also stop mid-stream if someone walks in. If the public restroom is especially large with a nice background noise like a fan or something then I can sometimes pee in the stall even when other people are in the room. This embarrasses the hell out of me, and friggin' no one understand it! I'm guessing autistic people would understand it better than most, even if they don't have the problem (and it looks like at least a handful here do).

I have this problem too. It's mostly avoidable except when I have to do urine tests. I've discovered that they will let you take the cup home and bring it back though, if you don't mind the extra trip. XD

Yet another weird thing I didn't know anyone else experienced!

I don't have AS, but I have had paruresis for many years.

I went to a conference for suffers a while ago, and everyone had different struggles. Mine is single stall bathrooms, so on planes, buses and trains I can't go on my own.

I went to a local urologist and had them teach me how to catheterize myself so that I could travel freely.

I have the same challenge. If I am urinating in a public bathroom, and someone walks in...I often shut off and have to wait for them to leave. When in a public restroom that has a tendency to be busy, I will go to a stall---not a urinal. The only thing here is that the urinating in the urinal is quiet---but I don't want people seeing me. But in the stall where there is privacy, you can here the process of urinating in the toilet bowl water. I think for us men we need private stalls with urinals.

I don't have this so much with peeing, but I do somewhat with pooing. Though I don't have trouble with either if I know I'm alone.

Now if someone comes in and gopes into the stall next to me, then I can't continue with pooing until I know they are gone. This especially so if there are little kids, because the little kids aren't shy about asking questions or making remarks, and I don't want them to make a snide remark about how 'the bathroom stinks.' Plus little kids tend to wander around, and I don't like when they sometimes peer into the stall next to mommy to see who's in there.

So I wait until I'm alone.

uhm, no.

sounds like an extension of social phobia and nothing Asperger's related unless it's bathroom-noises that bother YOU and not about other people's perceptions.

yes...public restrooms are just too open! I feel like everyone is listening to me and it makes me uncomfortable.

I wait until someone flushes, then I'm able to go pee.

I worried about flatulence in the restroom. I don't have a problem with it anymore. No one in the restroom knows who I am, so I just go into the stall, urinate, wash my hands and leave as fast as I can. It doesn't matter if anyone can hear you or not because they don't know anything about you and won't know if you were the one making noise because you are in the stall where they cannot see what you look like. So, they won't know who it is making the restroom noises.

Not sure if it's consciously about other people's perceptions. I can't rationally see how it would be. That's the reason why when someone uses an argument like "what's the problem? no one else cares about the sound of you peeing" I say "I know no one else cares -- it's me that cares." So it is the noises that bother me. I don't think it's Asperger's related per se because non-aspies are going to have this too, but it looks like plenty of people here do also suffer from it. I'm thinking it's others' presence somehow which makes it difficult to relax. A social phobia to some extent, and how is Asperger's not correlative with social phobias? Okay, here's an interesting thing. If I don't know there is someone else in there; i.e. if I can't detect them through sense perceptions, then I can relax. So I think there is some sensory overlap. That would also make sense why background noise like a fan, etc., drowns out the distracting other people noises which make it more difficult to go. Anyway, not a big deal since I've learned to work around it, but I mainly started this thread as a kind of support for anyone who does suffer from it and feels distraught over it.

Exactly. I'm not consciously worrying about it. It's pretty silly to worry about it when anyone else there is doing the exact same thing that you should be doing. I only start worrying if I'm there too long not doing anything, then I start to worry that people wonder what I'm doing.

For me it seems like other people don't need to go as badly, since for them it comes easily. It's like they take it for granted and it causes me all this grief. It's just one more reason to feel like a freak. Not surprisingly, the "handicapped" stall actually seems somewhat helpful given that it's larger and feels more private. Some bathrooms are good with stalls that go to the floor, etc., and those are also very nice. One thing I loved when I traveled to Italy was all their public restrooms were like that; the stalls were much more private compared to the US.