There's a social anxiety and fear of being the guy that rips a foghorn leghorn into the toilet bowl when there are other people in the bathroom. And like the anxiety of then possibly having to face everybody who heard your performance is not good. Welcome back to Privy. Privy is a podcast about toilets recorded right here from my toilet. I'm your host, Hunter Hoover. I love toilets. We've been here. We've done this. We've talked about it.
But this week, we're going to acknowledge that maybe the toileting and the bathroom making experience isn't as joy-filled for... Everyone as maybe it is for me Or maybe I just get much joy. knows? But yeah, this week has been uh fun. I did eat Taco Bell a couple times. And I'm kind of solving the Taco Bell puzzle. And the puzzle is this.
If they have put any sort of amount of any sort of wet material in there... food items, then it's going to cause some negative effects later on in my own personal life. And so, wet, bad, uh dry, good in the Taco Bell realm. Potatoes are back at Taco Bell. Woohoo, good job. Taco Bell found the potatoes. They were in Idaho the whole time, so I don't know why this was so difficult, but they did find the potatoes. And they're back. They have reintroduced potatoes into their burritos.
So uh if you didn't want just more carbs in that, now it has it. So it's just for you. Taco Bell. Yeah, man, that stuff, the wet will fire you up. They have that chipotle sauce. It's spicy. It's too much for me. So that will grade what level of spice coward I am. The chipotle sauce from Taco Bell is like for alarm, it's getting there. Like, I'm not feeling good after that. Yeah, I'm a spice coward. I'm proud of it. Here it is.
Also, looks like they're breaking ground for Chipotle here where I live, so that's fun. And if you're hearing that and you're like, good lord, that must be in the middle of nowhere, it's not, but yeah, I'm running into it. This week, to kind of transition, I said that we were talking about maybe folks who going to the bathroom is not as much of a joy-filled experience.
And to share one of my greatest fears when it comes to the bathroom is that I'm going to sit down to poop and there is going to be a pee stream that comes out through that section of opening between the actual toilet bowl base and the seat itself and that like the pee stream is going to somehow sneak out of that hole and outside the bowl to where it hits like the back of your pants and you're gonna just have to deal with pee spot on your pants again. I mean for the first time.
And as I'm thinking about that and starting to explore some of the bathroom phobias, I don't technically have these phobias, but I think everybody has had them in their brain or maybe has struggled with something of them to some degree at one point. My thing is more of a fear of embarrassment, I guess, or just a fear of having to deal with it. If you accidentally get pee on your clothes, it's not productive and it is gonna cause you to have to stop things.
On privy, today we're talking about fear. What are you afraid of? And we're gonna talk about fears specifically related to the bathroom and the privy space. And we're gonna look at two distinct areas and different types of phobias today. First, these are like toilet and bathroom phobias, and these include paruresis. So real quick, these are like medical diagnosis or like mental health diagnosis terms, so I'm probably gonna say them wrong. And just, yeah. Paruresis and parcapresis.
More on those in a little bit. And then the other thing, so those are like general phobias of actually going to the bathroom. And then we're also just gonna talk about just basic germaphobia ah and how that's gonna play into the bathroom. So we're gonna talk about these things for the most part, specifically in the context of public restrooms.
Because I think it's best to do that in the sense of public restrooms because most of the anxieties that a person is gonna have are gonna be turned up to 11 when they enter a public restroom. You you might have those when you're in your personal space at home. But when you're out and about or out in a boot, uh you're going to have an increased level of anxiety in public restrooms, as I understand it.
And again, folks who might struggle with these things, whether it's paruresis or parkapresis or whatever, they're likely struggling with them in any bathroom situation, but the public aspect is gonna help us to explore and gain empathy in these areas because that's the one thing I want to leave you with is like this is a real thing that people go through and it might be fun to make a couple
jokes along the way and uh discuss what's going on but at the end of the day like there's people that actually have this so we're gonna have be light-hearted and have fun but yeah here we go so the first thing we need to do is we need to talk about general toilet phobias And in the worst cases of toilet phobias, people are literally afraid to use the toilet. they won't, they can't do it. Like, they're afraid of the actual toilet and the experience of going toilet. But here's the thing.
You gotta use the toilet. Like, you do have to. And by that I mean, there are other options, but those other options are like, more public. So like, there's always, like, we are privileged in... American society where we are now to where it's moderately easy to get to a bathroom where you are the only person in the bathroom. It's not too hard to do that.
You know, if you're afraid of the actual toilet itself, you know, I think there's some sort of like cognitive behavioral stuff that you could maybe work through to try to become less afraid of the actual like porce piece of porcelain that is the toilet. But you got to use the toilet diapers are an option, but As we talked about in the space episode with the NASA super diaper, it's diminishing returns. Like eventually, you do have to not go into a diaper. So there's that.
Yeah, adult diapers, I wouldn't recommend um maybe some cognitive behavioral counseling or therapy, whatever. I'm not a counselor, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a medical professional. TM, not TM, disclaimer given out. um Some of us might hear that. and hear, hey, people are afraid of toilets. And if you're listening to this and you have some toilet phobia, you might wanna just skip ahead a bit because if this is your first episode of Privy, welcome to Privy. Thank you for being here.
I love that you're here. But if you're somewhat afraid of toilets, my God, you have picked a bad podcast to listen to because that is essentially what we talk about. episode to episode. Like, if there is a golden thread that binds privy together, it is toilets and our love of them. So. You've been warned. ah We hear that, we think of these stories where people find like live snakes in their toilet bowl.
That cannot help this situation where the snake has like crawled up the pipe and is now like chilling in the bowl. That is not the type of fear that we are talking about. That is a fear of snakes. Specifically snakes being where snakes should not be. But these phobias are like the fear of the thing itself, the toilet itself. So I'm sorry if I just introduced a new snake-related phobia to the entire toilet equation. That's on me. Statistically, you're not gonna get a snake in your toilet.
That's all I'm gonna tell you. You're good. How sorry can I actually be though? I did it and I didn't edit it out. Whoopsie poopsie. People report holding their need to go to the bathroom for hours, hours, hours, until they get home for... They would rather do that and hold it all day long than use a public facility. Hours. For me personally, I think my urge to purge would disappear in that time.
if I have the need to go mostly poop, but sometimes pee, if I give it like a half hour, maybe 45 minutes, it's gonna go away unless we're in emergency territory. And as I noted, I did have emergency territory. only once this week because I'm gonna blame Taco Bell and I had to run into my parents house because it was closed. But I made it. No new Hunter's Anecdotes for you in that front. There's this basic toilet phobia, which is the actual name of it, toilet phobia, because there's no name.
It's not like uh herbertobertophobia. it doesn't have one of those, it's toilet phobia. And so, you don't wanna go to the bathroom in a toilet, specifically in a public toilet, and we're gonna talk about why in a little bit. But this notion stems from two places as far as I can tell. There is social fear and there is germ fear. And we're gonna take a look at both of these, but we're gonna look at social fears first.
And if you hear the term social fears and you think to yourself, man, That sounds like every time I talk to anybody. You're in good company. So social fear and germ fears. Socially, a person might experience toilet phobia in the way of what is called paruresis. So paruresis is the fear of peeing in front of someone else, publicly or otherwise. Another more common name for this is being pee shy or having a bashful bladder. I like the idea of a bashful bladder.
I think of a bladder um with like the little bashful hat from the seven dwarfs and he's like kind of shy and hanging out inside your tum tum or wherever your bladder is. I don't know. yeah, bashful bladder makes it seem a lot more cute than I'm sure it really is. And this condition, paruresis or P-Shi or bashful bladder, classified as a real and actual medical and mental health condition. It's considered a simple social phobia.
And the thing is, the only treatment is like therapy or like cognitive behavioral therapy wherein you challenge yourself to work beyond your fears. That's like the only way through this noise. ah Which is kind of whack if you think about it, but here we are. The idea is you cannot pee in the presence of others and it's estimated that this condition affects anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of adults and it is more prominent in men.
So men struggle with paruresis or being pee shy more often than women do. uh I have a theory about that and I think I'm probably wrong but as we discussed in the sound episode when you stand to pee You make a greater sound. There is a farther distance for the yellow splash to go before it hits the bowl and hits the lake of Lake Toilet.
And that sound, it breaks down really quickly when you start thinking about a urinal and how there's not as much sound there and people who stand to pee experience this even for a urinal. But I think it's part of it. And there seems to be something about the presence of another person that is a barrier. Just the mere presence of another person is this social barrier and the thing is to me, I don't get that because like to me everybody pees and so there's no sense in being shy about you pee.
And so I reached out to a friend and uh at the point of recording I do not have permission to share this person's name. So we're gonna call them Satchmo Maximilian. Yeah, let's do that. So Satchmo Maximilian, I reached out to him and you know, I know that this person is P-Shy and I was like, yo Satchmo, like tell me what's up on this. Like what's going on? Cause I ain't P-Shy but I know you are. And so I'm.
They just shared the story about like their discovery of pee shyness and that like in high school, when they were like at a urinal public restroom again and they were getting ready to pee, like another guy walked up behind them and it was, the person to my knowledge didn't do anything to Maximilian. It was just the mere presence of a person who could possibly be waiting to use the urinal that they were using. was enough to give the person anxiety and thus cause the peen not to be able to flow.
And then every time from then on, so there's this one somewhat traumatic experience, but then every time if there's a person nearby or waiting, it just stops, they can't go. And if you wanna know, Satchmo Maximilian reports that it has gotten better over time, but ah Yeah. And so you can imagine like adolescence. It's already a time when you got too much hormones and like chemicals and you're like a little cocktail of stuff. And then you have to also add the anxiety of like bathroom anxiety.
It's not good. It's no it's not good. Nobody wants that. But yeah. And the pressure to wrap up his we in time for another person who is waiting was enough to instill this ongoing concern. And I want to acknowledge the care and other-mindedness of my friend Satchmo Maximilian. Like, thank you for being mindful of other people's time and space in the amount of time and space you are taking up in going pee. You should be credited for that.
The other, maybe we could say more stanky step-cousin to being pee shy, is being poop shy, or having dookie fear. This one kinda makes more sense and goes back to, again, the sounds we make in the bathroom, or in... in another related and someday to be covered section, the smells we make in the bathroom. this one just kind of makes sense. There's this social anxiety and fear of being the guy that rips a foghorn leghorn into the toilet bowl when there are other people in the bathroom.
And like the anxiety of then possibly having to face everybody who heard your performance is not good. And so, The social anxieties abound here and then there's the sound of the plopping and the splooshing. It all stacks up and I kind of get it. I'm broken in other ways. Like I have other stuff and actively just don't care less what bodily sounds people hear come from me, especially in a restroom. that's another problem. It's a me problem. As I noted, um poop has the smell factor.
something else that we've talked about and in folks interviewed who recorded having parkapresis or this dookie fear, there isn't just the notion of having to deal with the smell in the bathroom. They record feeling awkward about having the smell stick to them and follow them out of the bathroom. ah I don't think I've ever had this happen. Maybe I have and maybe the people around me were like, goodness, that guy really made a stinky stinky. But I don't think so.
Like, I've never smelled my leavings when I leave the bathroom. I've smelled them while I'm in there, but like, how do they, how does the smell attach to you? I'm not sure if this is a real thing. Maybe it is, but this doesn't mean that it's not a fear that people have. And so, people have this fear that when they poop, the smell then goes with them out of the bathroom. for what it's worth, both of these conditions, P-Shy and Poo-Shy, can have ties to feelings of shame.
And there's this view that the things we do in the bathroom are shameful. But here's the thing, they're only shameful if they're intentionally not performed in the bathroom where they should be performed. To me, if you are getting your waste in the correct spot, which as an adult means that you've done it in a toilet, or some other approved receptacle, there is no shame in what you did. You did the right thing. The smell might be awful. The sounds might be abysmal.
But at the end of the day, you did it right. So good on you. You deserve to be... Don't worry about the things that went on in there. You have done better than some others have done. Everyone pees and everyone poops. And if you're doing it in the correct spot, you're a hero to society. Here on Privy, we applaud you for doing it in the right spot. And I know there's folks that hear that and they still have pee shy and poo shyness. I just want it to be said, but why do people have social fears?
Like, why? When it comes to bathrooms, why is there any social fear at all? And I'm not a scientist or a psychologist. We're 20 plus episodes in. If I haven't proven to you... that I'm not a science man, I need to do better on that. So it seems to be tied, this why do we have social fears in the bathroom? It seems to be tied to this feeling or desire to not want anyone to know about what you're doing in the bathroom. A notion this podcast goes ardently against on a weekly basis.
Episode by episode, we stand in belligerent denial that we should be discreet about what goes on in the bathroom. No. In fact, we're gonna drag our personal computer and electronics into the bathroom once every week or so and just talk about bathrooms. yes. These might think that no one uses the bathroom and anxiety is an interesting beast. That's what I will say. If you take one thing from this, it's knowing this, anxiety is an interesting beast.
And really, single-stall bathrooms kind of solve a little bit, no one's, because no one's coming in there to where you are, dwell where you quell. Like nobody's coming in. Single-stall bathrooms, and I'm not talking about a bathroom that has multiple stalls, I'm talking like a bathroom where you go in and you lock the door and there will be no one else coming into the bathroom behind you. That is the bathroom that I am speaking of.
Single-stall bathrooms won't solve all of your bathroom fear problems. because you still have bacteria and different bacteria that can be found in the confines of the bathroom, particularly in this case on the toilet seat. We've already talked about the freaky things that grow on your moist towels, moist towels. So you can go back and listen to the towel etiquette if you want to hear about all the creepy little buddies that are on your towels.
But the toilet area, particularly the seat, it's estimated that it's gonna get wild here in a little bit. It's estimated that the bathroom can contain upwards of 77,000 distinct types of bacteria. That's a lot. That's a lot of bacteria. That's a concerning amount. Some of those are airborne and some of those are on surfaces.
To give you a perspective though, the air you breathe, so Tony Attenborough rolls out of his house, 7 a.m., he's on his way to his car and he just gets a big drag of that morning air. He's just getting a big huff of it. He... that air at any given moment could have contained about 1800 distinct types of bacteria. That's outdoors. Don't get me started indoors. Don't get me started on COVID-19. That, no. So the air has plenty of bacteria.
And so bathrooms, like 77,000 distinct types, that sounds like a lot, but like you're taking a dump there. Like we should know that there's gonna be more. The other thing you have to understand is if you clean the bathroom, It is mostly reinfected with bacteria within an hour. And I share that to remind you of this. Cleanliness in a bathroom uh is a user experience. And unless you are cleaning it after each use, there's going to be an infection problem.
And so just remember, if it looks clean and it doesn't smell and it doesn't have like wiggity-waggities all over it, it'll suffice. You don't need to be cleaning your toilet every day. Or, and if that's what you need to do to quell the anxiety, I say go for it. yeah. So we're building a case here. What we've started to do is we've started to build a case for why germaphobes have their phobia.
And some of the bacteria that can be found on a toilet seat at any given time are, and now I'm going to list the bacteria. Fegal bacteria, that's poop bacteria. That's bacteria that comes from your poop. Influenza, we know him. Oh. We are well acquainted with influenza. We know about this guy. Son of a gun. Streptococcus. I think that's related to strep throat. I'm gonna tell myself it is. Bad news. Don't like strep throat. Thumbs down. E. coli. I think that's the chicken thing.
That might be salmonella. What do I know? Hepatitis. Methicillin resistant. Staphylococcus. MRSA, yeah. uh Gym mats. You get that one off of gym mats. I know that one for sure. Salmonella. Hey, there's our chicken friend. Shigella. I have no clue, I've never heard of that. If you know what Shigella is, send me an email, shout at us, privy cast. And norovirus. Norovirus is a tum tum virus, I do know that. The school district I work in had a fun little norovirus thing last year.
But here's the deal. The toilet isn't the worst area in the bathroom. And you're gonna hear that and you're gonna go, impossible. I put my bare rump on that toilet seat when I splash brown into the toilet lake. Impossible, you say. Obviously, Hunter, it has to be the worst because, bare rump. no, it's not. Because, listen, the sink, our water dispensing friend, he's right there. God bless him. The sink is estimated to contain over 300 times more bacteria than the toilet seat. 300 times.
That's a lot of bacteria. The sink is the worst. It's dank and moist and stingy. And all the bad guys from Osmosis Jones are chilling over there. They're hanging out in the sink. Sink, bad, thumbs down. Toilet seat, generally speaking, is dry and has fewer of these osmosis buddies. But. You don't really have to touch your bare skin to the sink.
Under any circumstances, like you physically do not have to come in contact with anything at the sink except for the little like hand turning on thing, the knob, that's the word knob. I'm not gonna say the word knob anymore. You don't have to, under most circumstances come into contact with the sink. And for germaphobes, the bathroom is wrought with phobias. There's germs everywhere. See the previously mentioned 77,000 distinct types. That's a lot.
Germs here, bacteria there, and if you suffer from germophobia, you get it. You're like, no joke, Captain Cuckoo. We already know that. That's why we have this whole thing. But this too can cause fear when using the restroom. So germophobia is not limited to the restroom, but it comes to play in a big way when you start entering a restroom. And you're cool with it to a point because you're going to wash your hands and then get scootin'.
But when you put bare cheek, bare ham to porcelain the germs there on that cold surface, come in contact with your skin. And there have been records of people contracting illness and disease from coming in contact with toilet seats. This is an outlier. I can't stress this enough. Like, statistically speaking, this is not gonna happen. It has happened. For the most part though, you're gonna be fine. If you're concerned with your germ state, with booty hitting seat, you have a couple of options.
We are familiar, here at Privy, we're familiar of those ridiculous, literally paper thin beehole shields that dispense from behind the toilet. They have been called poo gaspits, run at it again. They've been called poo gaskets and I'll never go back. Butt gaskets. And as a person who has never once.
As a person who never regularly attempts to ever think about laying one of these down when I brown, you'll be happy to know that it wasn't until I looked up a bunch of stuff for this episode that I learned how to actually apply one these toilet seats. So, me, here, I'm 27 years old, I'm a grown adult, I have two children, I'm in charge of like... helping teenagers have some of the skills that maybe they need one day in society and in their lives.
And I just learned that the way to put one of these down... is it's supposed to hang down into the water. Now I did not know this. When I ripped it out, I would just tear away that center thing, because I'm like, that's foolishness, get that out of here. And then it would just be only touching the seat. Now, I'm always afraid, because the reason I rip it off is I'm always afraid that my poop is going to hit the paper and then get, and then retransfer to my butt somehow when I shift.
These are thoughts of someone unwell, but I digress. The second is, that hangy downy flappy thing, if you are unlike me and you don't just rip it off immediately, the thing you gotta know is that goes in the front. Insanity, unheard of. You could have given me 40 different tries to figure out the correct way to do this and I never would have put that in the front. But here we are.
I always, the handful of time I've attempted this, have put that noise dangling in the back until I went, this is dumb, and I ripped it off. And then eventually I went, this is dumb, I'm just not gonna use these ever. Thus the fear of getting poop on it, and also the fear of it getting on me. The poo gasket serves as something to alleviate people's fears of having bare bum touch toilet seat.
But the thing is, with the data that we've gathered about the other surfaces in the bathroom also being dirty, I'm not convinced that the area, like the... that the area really, they're really doing a lot in the realm of keeping your ham clean. But there's another method, one pulled from the annals. of legend annals. uh The legend of the floating dump.
In my research and in my asking around and as posited by Weston in our chat months back, I have found and can confirm now here to almost three months I believe later his notions that there are demographics of people who when they sit to use the toilet will opt to squat and hover above the toilet. make their deposit into old First National Bank of Brown. And then they go on their way without ever coming into contact with the seat. What is found, as Weston suggested, P is pretty hard to aim.
And thus, I think maybe we're solving something here about how the folks who sit to P are able to make such a horrific mess. Like, you would think that that would be a simple thing, but Now introduce the idea that you are hovering, you're not even coming in contact with the toilet and you can see where there's gonna be some dribble and splash.
So, as a reminder, if you do that, like if you choose to hover and like do this like wall-less wall sit to take a poo-poo or a pee-pee and you get some on the seat, just a reminder and the old adage fits here. Please be a needy. and wipe the seedy, sweetie. Please be a sweetie. Wipe it up, just do it. If you're concerned with germs, don't leave a worse germ sanitary situation for the next person, just wipe it up, just do it.
Also, the fear of germs getting on you has to be so intense to be able to squat it out like that, like literally squat it out. Because I can't hold a squat for more than a minute probably, and I can't imagine trying to hold that squat and balance while I'm then also trying to expel fluids and solids from my human mass. I don't want this episode to be a downplay of what people are actually going through. I'm just baffled beyond all reason. And these are real fears.
And there's a number things that you can do to try to combat these fears. They include regular cleaning, the poo gasket. If you don't have a poo gasket, lay down an elaborate system of toilet paper on the seat, I guess. I don't know. It might get you through. The other thing is, working on it in therapy or counseling, it's fine. Like, if you need help, go get help with stuff. It's fine. There's no shame in that, and there's no shame in what people do in the bathroom.
And now, I wanna share with you a brief little jaunt into Hunter's Anecdotes to Keep Us Afloats. This anecdote comes from the time that I learned that Satchmo Maximilian was P-Shy. So to give you the layout of what's going on, I lived and used a bathroom space wherein Maximilian would have been using a bathroom space frequently. And I remember one day, like, you we were all just kind of sitting around and this is college life. So like, there's always guys around.
I remember sitting around and like talking and doing all this stuff and you know, having all these things. We're like, you know, and we could hear the peace stream going. Satchmo is relieving himself. It was totally fine. But again, it's shared bathroom. And so unbeknownst to us, this might be Satchmo Maximilian's worst fear getting ready to play out in real time. And so the peace stream is going and another human being who we were frequently with enters the room.
And I kid you not, peace stream instantly cuts off.
Instant stoppage and I'm in the I'm in the other room with other folks and you know I'm like listen to this and say dang like I wonder when he's gonna flush like I'm getting kind of triggered because I'm like I think he's done and didn't flush the toilet, but What happened was my other homie like comes out and satchmo maximilian starts going again, and I'm like well dang like what was that about and so I asked my home is like hey like Did was he done? He goes? I don't know.
He's just standing there And what we found out later is Satchmo Maximilian, like when another person come in the bathroom, the pee just stopped. Like it just quit. And it wasn't until that other entity had left the confines of the bathroom that he was able to proceed with his pee relief. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you for being here. As always, we would love for you to connect with us on social media at Privycast. Share your perspective on this.
Feel free to shoot us an email if you have thoughts, feedback for the show. uh Leave that in podcasts where you're able to leave reviews. Five star option is our preferred. Shoot us an email privycast at gmail.com. As always, we want to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of Bar Room Ballet. You can find his music at incompetech.org and it's licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. Thanks Kevin.
We'd also like to thank Pottington Bear for the use of all colors in the world as the hunter's anecdotes intro and outro. You can find Pottington Bear's music at pottingtombear.com. Thanks Pottington. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you for joining us. And now, as always, don't forget to flush. Did you know using your browser in incognito mode doesn't actually protect your privacy? Take back your privacy with IPVanish VPN.
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