Hello, I am from Germany, and mostly by chance I found about this disorder, that I am used to more than 10 years. I didn´t really know, that it is a real disorder and that there are others who also suffer from this.

My problem now has raised that much, that I am really down. I did a CBT and also two stationery stays in a psychosomatic clinic.

It started really bad about more than 12 years. Up to that time, I thought that everybody has this problem, to cannot go to toilet when there are others around, even my parents or my sister. But I managed it, because at the age of about 19 it started that I "organised" to go to toilet, when the family is out, or are at breakfast... and it worked, at gave me a good feeling and the kind of freedom but also security that I needed...
Life was ok, sometimes I had problems although, specially when there was a kind of anger at work etc... But the stressy situations and the relaxing ones stayed agreeable.

But when my sister was 18 years she took a young boy at home. He was a real stranger to me, and in my feeling he "fell into our house with door" (german expression for something negative surprising...) And with his presence, and in the first days he was present every minute. My world was lost, I couldn´t go to toilet, (my sister and me had a bathroom that was upstairs and mostly to be the quietest one with 5 persons at home). And this "location" was in my feeling "robbed", I felt very angry and upset in this few days. I told my mother, and she said, go here on this floor, a floor where every ten minutes someone steps in and out; for me not an alternative.

And that was the real problem, that in this for me catastrophy, there was no alternative, because I was used to a special room and to have enough silence and relaxing mode.
I got very angry and was very aggressive, I even told my sister and the guy, and we had a lot of conflicts... At the end, after about 8 months in the last weeks he didn´t come, i think because of me... and their relationship ended, because he fell in love with another girl. And I thougt, ok problem is gone and first felt better... But after a time, my sister told me that there was a contact again, and that really made me fear that I couldn´t sleep any more, took aware of seeing or meeting him, because in this situatiuon my body felt not only the stressy feeling "I cant go to toilet any more" and was very very stronger, like a wave of fear through my body and I couldn´t forget it, the time months and years later I was scared to meet him everywhere, that my sister could have an relationship to him again, he could be there and there... and from this on, I suffer a lot from this feeling "the body closes, the gut is not active any more, and I was very cramped... I could say that this made me suffer without end, and that intensively, and the feeling to find no end or to do something which can help me... So up to this day I have fear, cramps, my head broods without ending, and I couldn´t find a way out. My parents, my husband couldn´t understand this anyway, they told me I am unnormal... I read the book shy bowel, and it helped me a little bit, but didn´t solve my problem... kind regards, judith