www.incontinentsupport.org

Hi All:
I recently got back from my week+ trip and wanted to give a little update about how the rest of the trip went after telling my friend about my need for diapers. As I mentioned above I never actually used the word "diapers" as I felt it would be more info than was really needed and could produce an immediate negative or repulsive reaction from my friend. Of course when he mentioned "Depends" I took it from there and told him about my needs. I quickly realized that due to fairly wide-spread advertising that is what virtually everyone thinks of as diapers. And that was OK with me as advertising really pretties up the realities of wearing protective garments and tries to portray them as just regular underwear, which is what has stuck in most peoples minds and obviously in my friends mind. OK, now the rest of the story...
Telling him turned out to be a great decision and it immediately lowered my anxiety level, but I still wondered how it would actually work out? The only word I have for that is EASY! No hiding my diaper and PUL pants if I had to change clothes and no hiding the inevitable diaper disposal bags, which I double bagged just to make sure there was no unpleasant odors. Although my friend saw my diapers/PUL pants numerous times he never said a word and acted completely normal. I have to mention that my hotel roommate is one of my best friends so I was hoping he would be cool about this and he was. That's about all there is to tell, and I would advise anyone that may find themselves in a similar situation to consider being upfront about their issues and lower their anxiety. I realize that this approach may not work for everyone else but I know it sure worked for me.

Excellent! Those of us who are incontinent and wearing "protection" for whatever reason seem to be conditioned by our society to think that this is something we should be ashamed of. It's not.

I have been incontinent 24/7 and have had to wear adult diapers since a radical prostatectomy in November of last year, (although for the first couple of weeks I had a Foley catheter.) I was ashamed and embarrassed by this condition but, like others here, found encouragement in learning how not alone I am in this situation. I have now progressed from trying to hide my problem - and restricting my social and family activities - to being quite open about it. I have even posted a diary on Daily KOS about this and have been amazed at how many hundreds of people have been supportive about what I thought I needed to hide. Here it is:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3 ... t_69685520

For me the embarrassment problem was made worse because of my chronic bed wetting well into my teens. I hated that when it was part of my life and I went out of my way to hide this from my friends and schoolmates. I couldn't even discuss it with my brothers and sisters though of course they all knew about it. After I decided to stop being ashamed of something I have no control over now I even discussed it with my older brother who shared a room with me when we were kids. I asked him if the reason he never had friends sleeping over was because he was ashamed at having a little brother who wet the bed and who had to wear diapers as a teen. He responded by saying, "No, that's not why. The reason I didn't have friends stay overnight wasn't because I was embarrassed; it was because I didn't want you to be embarrassed." He protected his little brother and that means a lot to me.

I'm glad you told your friend. If he had laughed at you or mocked you then you would know that he really isn't your friend, right? Now you have confirmed that he is.

Congratulations!