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What do you do when you have a setback with shy bladder?

I hear people use that word a lot.

Things have been going pretty well.

You’re practicing.

You’re making progress.

Then you set a pretty lofty goal for yourself.

You try it…

And you have what the International Paruresis Association calls a misfire, or what I like to call a nonjudgmental no-go.

And immediately we think:

I’ve had a setback.

I totally get that.

For years, I would have done exactly the same thing.

But I’ve started to wonder:

Why do we call that a setback?

Is it really a setback?

Or did you set a challenging goal for yourself, go out and try something difficult, and this time you didn’t achieve the goal?

How is that going backwards?

Think about other areas of our lives.

We set goals all the time.

Sometimes we achieve them.

Sometimes we don’t.

And sometimes we don’t reach the goal we originally set, but we can still look back and appreciate the journey.

What did I learn?

What did I accomplish?

How much further did I get than I would have before?

But with shy bladder, we can be really quick to make one difficult attempt mean something.

I’m regressing.

I’ve lost my progress.

Something’s wrong.

Maybe I’m back where I started.

What if we just noticed that?

Not try to change those thoughts.

Not replace them with positive thoughts.

Just notice the story we’re creating about what happened.

Because what actually happened?

You set a difficult goal.

You attempted it.

And this time, you couldn’t pee.

That’s it.

And maybe there’s something else worth noticing.

Maybe six months ago, you wouldn’t have even tried.

Maybe simply being willing to put yourself in that situation is evidence of how far you’ve already come.

So what do you do after a setback?

Maybe start by getting curious about the word setback itself.

Did you really go backwards?

Or did you try something difficult and have a nonjudgmental no-go?

And then your next attempt is simply…

your next attempt.

It doesn’t have to prove anything.