It’s fairly common for someone get the urge to use the bathroom, when feeling nervous- this is something that most people are familiar with, and it’s nothing serious or out of the ordinary. However, when a person suffers from serious anxiety issues, partial or total loss of bladder control may occur, which is a highly frustrating and embarrassing symptom. If you can relate with such problem, this article will provide you with some general information that you can use to start managing your condition, and improve your quality of life.
Even though this isn’t a subject that people tend to discuss openly, truth of the matter is that stress and anxiety can easily lead to bladder problems. Fortunately, the correlation between the condition and this symptom is normally psychosomatic, meaning that anxiety doesn’t really cause physical damage to your bladder. What it does do is affect your perceived ability to control your bladder; if your anxiousness is severe, you may get so convinced you have bladder problems that you might actually materialize those fears.
There are simple strategies which you can adopt to change your perception regarding this problem, in order to keep anxiety from interfering with your bladder function. In a way, you should think of yourself as a child, when you feel that you really have to go to the bathroom but you simply can’t hold long enough. In other words, you have to learn how to re-educate yourself and distract your mind in those critical moments. If you keep focused on the idea that you have to use the bathroom but you simply won’t be able to hold until you get there- well, needless to say you’ll just be setting yourself up for inconvenience and (relative) disaster.
To this effect, there are several techniques you can use; to begin with, you want to place your focus outwardly. As much as possible focus on your surroundings, and observe everything outside you in as much detail as you can. Focus on a single object that you find pleasing and let your mind wander anywhere but towards your bladder. Avoid thinking of water or liquids in general, and come up with strategies to distract your thoughts: recite the alphabet backwards, name all the players in your favorite team, recite poetry from memory- anything that takes your attention from your bladder will be tremendously useful.
The real issue with anxiety and bladder control is not as much that anxiety physically compels you to empty your bladder; it’s more that your anxious mind will sometimes get caught up in a loop where you’ll increasingly fear the consequences (social embarrassment) of wetting yourself, to the point where doing so seems unavoidable. The best way to keep this cycle from building up is through distraction. You need to take your mind off how badly you need to use the bathroom, until you actually can use it. It may sound excessively simple, but have you tried this approach? When you do, you’ll be positively surprised with how effective it can be.
