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Thread: Fear of Toilets

  1. #21

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    Hi!

    I'm someone who can actually say that most of the time, I've gotten over this. There used to be various different toilets that terrified me. I totally agree that the high cistern and chain ones are a nightmare. Especially my grandma's really noisy one. Also the ones that used to have more than 1/3 water in the bowl; as I child I was afraid I'd fall in, or as I didn't know how they worked, was afraid they'd overflow. Also the ones at school had the cistern above head height, and pipes from the cistern pointing over the toilet bowl, so I was always afraid of an imminent spewing of sewage as I was using it. On one occasion the pipe was pointing at me as I walked in and I froze and stopped breathing.

    The way I got over it might not be a practical solution for everybody though!

    How it happened with me was:

    1) I went to Houston airport. Absolutely terrifying!! I don't know how seriously obese they were expecting people to be, but the toilets were **huge**!!! What's more I had just finished perching on the edge when I heard a rumbling in the distance, which got nearer and nearer and the toilet started flushing! I was so terrified I literally threw the toilet paper at the toilet and cowered in the corner, sweating, shaking like a leaf with my knees knocking together. When I came out the people I was with said how pale I looked but thankfullly attributed it to the altitude! After that, nothing ever seemed so bad...

    2) I spent an extended period in South America. Here quite often a toilet was a hole in the ground, sometimes one in a slimy-sided cubicle that you needed to pay for the privelege of using. Some I had to pour the water down to flush, and many times taking the back of the cistern off and reaching in to fix it was needed, which I was quite apprehensive of, initially, I got to know how they worked, which helped a lot. Also, in Bolivia, there was a town toilet-bush, insufficiently large, that those who couldn't afford a slimy cubicle would use. So all in all, by the time I got back I was so grateful for a clean, shiny toilet that I could flush loo paper down that it rarely occurred to me to be afraid.

    So while you can't necessarily do that, my advice would be take the back of one if you can, stick your hands in, lift things up and see what's connected to what. It's a bit like shining a light under the bed so you know there's no monsters there. Once you know how they work your rational mind can explain to the irrational part why nothing bad can happen. And like others have said, expose yourself to the fear as much as you feel able to, and if possible, give yourself a good scaring. When you survive you will know the thing you're afraid of wasn't that bad.

    Hope that helps!

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Posts
    931

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    I just read through this thread and found it really interesting! I used to have such a phobia of toilets when I was little.. Caused because when I was 5 years old I used a toilet which flooded over while I was sitting on it!! Traumatic for a 5 year old! And the school toilets were disgusting which reinforced my avoidance of them.. Its gone now though, unless it's an old, dirty toilet.. Exposure to new and different toilets is the only way I got through that!

  3. #23

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    I'm so glad I'm not the only one that's afraid of toilets. So many people around me find my fear weird. I admit it sounds weird but I am. I'm afraid I'll clog a toilet, I'm afraid of the sounds they make especially if it's an unfamiliar toilet. I hate using the bathroom at school but sometimes it's unavoidable, the longer I avoid it, the worse it is when I have to go. Does anyone have any useful coping strategies? What I do currently is open the door, flush, then run out to a "safe place" as soon as I can. Help would be much appreciated

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Posts
    772

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    It's not a weird fear at all. I remember as a child being terrified of our Victorian high cistern toilet. It had such a powerful noisy flush it scared the hell out of me and the bowl was so large I feared I would fall in and be sucked away! I was late giving up the potty basically becaused that thing scared me to death! Even after flushing the noise as it refilled was deafening and seemed to go on for ages in alternating loud angry screechy bursts of water pressure.

    I'm well over that one now, but still prefer toilets I know. Public toilets can be so grotty and private toilets in peoples houses can be another source of embarrassment. I hate having to number 2 at peoples houses in case something goes wrong, the flush doesn't work properly or I produce something that Niagara itself couldn't get rid of! I always remember at a friends house going in after another visitor and they'd left something in there that wasn't going anywhere and I thought 'oh hell, they'll think I'm responsible for that!' I was mortified!!!!! Another friends house had water pressure so low you had to wait ages inside for it to fill if you'd followed after someone. If you judged it wrongly and flushed too soon, you'd waste the water that had built up as it just trickled through and you'd have to wait for it to fill from the start again! You could end up stuck in there for ages wondering if people thought you were really ill or something. Nightmare!!! That's before I've even started on foul smells and germs etc.

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Mar 2020
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    6,057

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    I don't have a toilet phobia per se, but I dislike black seats intensely, especially older ones that look like they are contaminated with white stuff (on both sides) and the top side surface that often feels a bit textured like blunt sandpaper.

    I hated the downstairs toilet in the house we lived in when I was a little boy between the age of 1 1/2 and 7 3/4 as not only did it sport a black seat (it was a council house when and where in those days black toilet seats were pretty much de-rigueur) and the (low-level) cistern used to emit a horrible creepy whirring sound during its refill cycle. All the pipework in said toilet was exposed, which I felt a bit creeped out by when sat perched on the loo alone at the age of 2-3 years old and surrounded by them, as parents didn't seem to supervise their little ones as much some 40 years ago to the extent that they do today, though I came to no actual physical harm. From about the age of 4 onwards I always insisted in using the upstairs toilet in said house whose pan, seat and cistern were absolutely identical to the one downstairs, but almost all of the pipework in the bathroom upstairs was hidden behind ducts and underneath the floorboards, and of course, the upstairs toilet in the bathroom was much lighter due to the large-ish window, more spacious and less enclosed. Also the sound of the cistern refill was much quieter and less scary than that of the downstairs toilet.

  6. #26
    Join Date
    May 2018
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    1,076

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    Everyone's got something they are afraid of, I'm not afraid of toilets but have my own fears
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  7. #27
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    Dec 2014
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    3,229

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    Quote Originally Posted by Lencoboy View Post
    I don't have a toilet phobia per se, but I dislike black seats intensely, especially older ones that look like they are contaminated with white stuff (on both sides) and the top side surface that often feels a bit textured like blunt sandpaper.
    Sounds like the old black Bakelite seats; the Bakelite was mixed with a much coarser filler.

  8. #28
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    Mar 2020
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    6,057

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    Quote Originally Posted by Pamplemousse View Post
    Sounds like the old black Bakelite seats; the Bakelite was mixed with a much coarser filler.
    Perhaps all plastic toilets seats (not just black) manufactured today are specially treated with an anti-fungal solution during production.

    Those 'open-front' type toilet seats (that kind of resemble a horseshoe shape) also used to freak me out as a little kid, as they were installed on the childrens' toilets at the local nursery I attended when I was 3. It was mainly the look and shape of them that gave me the heebies as they obviously looked odd and unusual, particularly to a little 'un like me at the time. I often used to have nightmares about them during that same time period (late 1980-early 1981). Fortunately I never needed to do a number 2 whilst at said nursery. Also, I don't think a lot of anxieties that children had (especially the more trivial ones) were particularly well understood back then, as such children were often ridiculed and mocked by their parents, teachers, etc and told to grow up and stop being so stupid. In fact, one of the teachers at a primary school I attended back in 1982-83 had the temerity to call me a 'poof' due to my fear of using a specific toilet block in the school that had no windows and the other boys often used to fool around in there turning the light on and off and never seemed to get reprimanded by staff for it, it was always me that seemed to cop it for my being fearful of using said toilet block.

    I then moved to an Educational Assessment Centre in the autumn of 1983 as I had many other 'issues' at the time. Soon after I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and then moved to a residential school in early 1986 (more on this in another thread) and used to come home for weekends and school holidays.

  9. #29
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    Mar 2020
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    6,057

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    The UK's foremost sanitaryware manufacturer Armitage Shanks, offer a range of plastic toilet seats under the trademarked name 'Bakasan'. Not sure if this is related to Bakelite or if it is just a special manufacturing process that protects against bacteria, fungi, etc. I think that range of seats is probably aimed at the 'commercial' sector, as they include both 'open-front' and conventional 'solid-front' types, and are available in multiple colours (I think).

  10. #30
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    Dec 2014
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    3,229

    Re: Fear of Toilets

    Fascinating, Lencoboy thank you. The old radio manufacturer E.K.Cole ('Ekco') invested heavily in Bakelite presses in the 1930s and were most famous for making a range of circular-bodied radio sets. To maximise the revenue from this investment, they used to make toilet seats as well. I believe some plastic materials used to make socket outlets nowadays are naturally anti-bacterial?

    It seems unbelievable now to read about what teachers used to get away with back in the 70s and 80s in terms of both verbal and physical abuse towards pupils, isn't it?

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