Oops..I had an accident...

Ok I am just wondering and if it is too personal then don't reply however I was thinking maybe some people won't feel so alone if it happens to others. Or atleast me anyway. I am just wondering if anyone here has PTSD or C-PTSD and when working on somethings in therapy or just when they are stuggling on their own sometimes wake up to find that they have had an accident and that they have peed or wet their bed.

I know I am not alone but sometimes feel like I am because this is all sort of new to me and I never had any bedwetting as a child so when it started happening I panicked and went to my doctor who ran a bunch of tests but found nothing wrong. Next I told my T...Telling my T was the most embarassing conversation of my life. She was really nice and supportive about it with me and says she can see how all of this would be embarassing for me. She says that this is from trauma but it is usually the kids with PTSD that have bedwetting, rarely the adults. well...feel free to reply, comment, or ask questions!

I just wanted to add that the first time it happened was a few years ago when I had been admitted to the psych ward at a hospital and they had given me some ativan to help reduce some of my anxiety. In the morning i discovered to my horror, that I had peed my bed in the night! I asked the nurses to please not give me anymore ativan and they didn't so it didn't happen again. It then started about a year later and I had no changes in my meds at all. Just thought that I would throw that out there as well...

I know it's late and this thread hasn't been on here too long but I would really appreciate it if somebody responded to it,.Thanks guys.

I used to struggle with bedwetting as a child, up to about 9 or 10 years old. Then I suppose I "grew out of it." When I first started opening up to my T at age 20 about my childhood physical/emotional abuse, my alters started coming out and I got dx'd DID. I had a really sudden regression where a little alter came out a lot. I started wetting the bed again, just like I used to when the abuse was going on. My T told me that that is a pretty common symptom of people who have been childhood sexually abused, but I had not been CSA. But he said it was different for everyone. When talking to my T about it, he suggested the "release" of the urine, was just like a release of emotion, when you are vulnerable, or asleep. Your body is so tensed up during the day, that when you finally get rest, your body actually relaxes too much, allowing the accident to occur. I am 22 now, almost 23, and the bedwetting has really gone down in frequency as I have been dealing and healing from the abuse. These days, I only have an accident maybe every few months. My live-in boyfriend struggled with bedwetting in his childhood and early adulthood around my age, and he like never does it anymore, but he understands so he makes me feel better when it happens. He helped me pick out a waterproof mattress cover, to protect the mattress in case of an accident. I hope this has helped.

Thanks Krisakira, that makes me feel a little better. It started for me at 27. I had not been CSA but was raped at 22..maybe that is a cause for it?? I don't know. Luckily right now I am single so I only sleep with my cat, my waterproof mattress cover, and some protection.
Thanks Krisakira! How did your boyfriend stop?

i am not sure, he grew out of it, or it just dissipated.... not sure... i was raped too at age 21 and that caused me to have more frequent accidents after it happened, i think cause i had night terrors of the rape happening. and using those muscles... yea.... But yea, T also said it is not AS common in child physical and emotional abuse, but just that it was more common in those who were CSA.... so its possible just like with you and me. in fact though my T kept asking me if i really had been CSA cause i had all the signs of it. but theres no memory in my head of it happening. so its jsut from the physical and emotional abuse. also, my dad used to be really strict on me leaving my room after 10pm when i was a child, cause he needed sleep for his job. so after 10pm i could not go out of my room to the bathroom to pee. it made me worried about having to go, and not being able to. so i guess there was a lot of attention and focus on my bladder. enough to manifest itself in bedwetting. i guess i have many factors that caused me to bedwet...

oh and...

I think that you are right, Mne got REALLY bad -everynite it was happening after I remembered what had happened 6 months after the fact and told T wat had happened to me. She had suspected it but was waiting for me to remember myself. I also had the night terrors of the rape and it was always worse when it happened. Now i don't have the dreams so often but it is still happening regularly. THAT makes me feel like a little kid. I mean how could it not when you go to therapy and your T asks "So did you have a good sleep last nite? Were you wet or dry?" And she wonders why I appear to act like a child at times, -Sigh-

oh and to you too!!

Ok well I need to go to sleep and hopefully have a "Goodnite" I hope when I come on here in the morning I will see some more replies to this thread. Sweet Dreams from the West Coast!

Oh yea, one last thing to add, because I am so afraid of this happening it takes me literally FOREVER to fall asleep!!!

i have never had accadents as an adult but it was a huge problem untill my teen years. when i was a kid i use to hate to go to the bathroom.i would wate and this wpuld often result in accadents and a ragefull mother.i think i hated using the toilet because the mother would often flush my head in the toilet as a punishment for saying something she didnt like.i think i found it gross to go to the bathroom in it.i think it is cool that you can talk to you T about this i dont think i ever would be able to

Yes, been there done that and suspect there is more of it in my future. I can also think of 3 other adults off the top of my head. There are more of us out there than people think. For me, peeing itself can sometimes be a trigger so as soon as I start I tend to switch and stop... but not in time to save the sheets. I suspect that as I get farther with massage T we will go through another round of it. BTW I was 30 the first time it happened! Not on any meds at the time either. I had a (crappy) T who was single handedly destroying my world and the stress kicked up all sorts of stuff.

My brother wet the bed until he was a teenager.....and even at 28, it happens on the odd occasion. He doesn't have PTSD, but his pdoc suspects he has PDD, or pervasive developmental disorder (along with bipolar diagnosis and ADHD.....) which is basically being quite immature and not socially/emotionally developed as he should be for his age.....
It was/is terribly embarrassing for him....so I understand how you might feel about it, PTSD!
I always wait too long to go because I hate to interrupt what I am doing to go potty so sometimes I have small leaks.....I should learn to just go when I have to!

this is not uncommon, hon. one of my friends who works in defence recruiting says this is one of the standard questions they ask all applicants, and that there are about 5-7 people who will admit to this each week. fully grown adults, not kids. some have a medical condition, but most don't. maybe your T needs some education about it so she doesn't see it as something that you should've grown out of by now?

I would sometimes lose control of my bladder during abuse as a child, I did wet the bed a few times as a teen and into my twenty's. Then it just disappeared. My biggest fear is that it might happen during the processing of the abuse with a T.

Maggy Jo

This sounds really distressing for you. I'm sorry that it upsets you.

It also sounds like you don't like how your T addresses it? Do you think that your T treats you like a child?

Thanks my T knows that I never wet the bed as a child before so that this is fairly new...

It's not so much what she says, I just find it embarassing. I don't know what other way she could say it without it still being embarassing...

LOL, now you sound like a little kid poetgirl! Yes, you should stop playing and get up to go pee! Lol.

(((((((((((HUGS!!)))))))))))

I just read your other thread related to this and you explain that she just wants to bring everything to your attention, like mirroring you back to you, it sounds like. This is good for awareness but yes, if we are uncomfortable with ourselves we will be squirming with this mirroring back!

What do you think it will take for you to be less uncomfortable about you?

I had a problem with bedwetting as well until 9 or 10, like krisakira. Once I had a bad accident right in class (I was in 4th grade), it was pretty humiliating. I only got around to telling T about this incident recently. I think it was the severe anxiety I had as a kid, I was already shy so that made me doubly susceptible to any kind of trauma. I never was abused though. I haven't done it since I was 10 though, so almost 20 years. I would never judge anyone or think less of them if it happened to them in adulthood. I used to beat myself up about it a lot because it was something that's "supposed" to only happen to the very young and very old.

Oh WOWY, that must have been so embarassing for you at school! (((HUGS!!))) Thanks and you are right, I guess it isn't "supposed" to only happen to kids. I was constantly telling my T "But i'm not a kid! I'm too old to pee my bed!"

Thanks. Yeah, it sucked...it was a big mess. The principal had to clean me up in the bathroom. The reason it happened was because we had this batsh!t insane teacher who yelled at us if we asked to go to the bathroom outside of a "scheduled" bathroom break. My dad got her fired the year after!