big thanks for your post. strangely enough, i was browsing through wikipedia the other day and ended up on the article on borderline personality disorder (bpd). started reading it and was realising i could relate to a fair number of the traits and symptoms. in fact, i ended up thinking, "damn, i'm so predictable!".

...and also thought,"i wonder how many other people with shy bowel feel that they might have bpd (or avoidant personality disorder) if they read through the list of traits associated with it?


anyway, here's a couple of links for anyone else interested to see if it applies to them:

on BPD:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder

on Avoidant personality disorder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant_personality_disorder

thanks again for your post. you're definitely not hijacking the messageboard and i think you may well be on the money. shy bowel may well be part of a much bigger problem. feel free to post any further thoughts on this. hope the therapy's yielding some results for you (am going through some intensive psychotherapy myself - difficult terrain but hopefully making some headway.)