upworthy

anxiety disorder

Canva Photos

Lighting a candle? That's basic compared to these advanced tips.

Poop anxiety isn't the most heavily studied medical field, but some estimates say up to a third of people suffer from some kind of anxiety around going to the bathroom in a public place or another person's home. On the low end, they can feel ashamed or embarrassed. At the higher end, they may avoid social functions, public events, or leaving their own home entirely. This phenomenon also tends to affect women more than men. For some people the worry gets so bad that they constipate themselves or refuse to eat, all because they're worried of what people will think of them.

But you don't have to have extreme "shy bowel" to know the uncertainty associated with feeling a rumbly tummy while you're a guest in someone's house. There are a lot of unknowns to manage. How good is their soundproofing? Does their toilet actually flush properly? Will someone be waiting to go in right after me? Some people anticipate these worries and come up with elaborate rules and routines to leave as little evidence of their go as possible.

A guy took a simple question to social media: Should you always courtesy flush when you're a guest in someone's house? The answer sparked a huge debate about the secret etiquette of public pooping.


poop, bathroom, dancing, funny, humor, toiletThis dancing poop says pooping can be fun!Giphy

In a thread on the subreddit r/NoStupidQuestions, the OP asked: "My mother tells me that at other people's houses, when going to the bathroom, it's expected to do a 'courtesy flush'. Is this a real thing?"

For the uninitiated, a courtesy flush is when you flush halfway through your "go." The thinking is that it helps get rid of odors before they build up. Not only that did the poster's mother advocate for courtesy flushing, she insisted on a very specific ritual when visiting other people's homes:

  1. Always carry Poopurri and spray before you go
  2. Flush halfway through your session
  3. Flush at the end (obviously)
  4. Clean toilet bowl with wand... every time!
If it sounds a little extreme to you, you're not alone.

However, some commenters were extremely pro-courtesy flush.

toilet, bathroom, home, hygiene, cleaning, etiquetteWhite ceramic toilet bowl with cover. Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

"I’ve done the 'courtesy flush' thing for years… mainly to help minimize lingering odors more than any other reason."

"That’s good advice. First flush on delivery, second flush with clean up. Reduces odor and skid marks."

A few people noted that the courtesy flush is common in jails and prisons, of all places. Due to the tight (extremely tight) quarters, inmates are encouraged to repeatedly flush while they go. I don't want to know what the consequence might be for violating this code.

Others claimed the courtesy flush was a waste of water:

"Flushing twice seems very wasteful in my opinion. I would not like a guest to do that."

"No, please don't waste my water. But do make sure everything goes down."

"If someone did that at my house I'd be low key annoyed at them for wasting water."

Experts agree that the effectiveness of the courtesy flush is very much up for debate. Does it mildly lessen odor? Maybe. It's also a gigantic waste of water. Older toilets can use up to six gallons per flush—yikes! An extra flush is also questionable at best when it comes to sanitation—flushing poop with the lid open is known to spray bacteria all over the bathroom. Yuck.

"Everyone poops, I don't want my guests worrying about it," wrote one commenter. "Crack a window if it's like, lethally stinky, I guess. If you clog the toilet, the plunger is in a plastic tub right there. If you need help, cool, now we have a funny story."

The courtesy flush, however, was only the beginning of the OPSEC tips for pooping in public.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Some commenters were on board with OP's mother's idea of using the toilet brush if it's available:

"If there's some brown stuck to the porcelain after I flush, and if there's a toilet brush on hand, I give it a quick cleaning and a second flush. But not if things look clean otherwise," someone wrote.

Another commenter had an even more advanced idea: "You can also float a strip of toilet paper on top of the water before you poo. Gets wrapped in paper as you drop off your delivery and less likely to leave skid marks in the bowl."

Of course, commenters in threads all over the Internet sing the praises of Poo-Pourri, or even carrying a lighter with you at all times to burn up some of the stinky oxygen. And how's this for a pro-level tip?

"Tip for the courtesy flush.. if one who finds it hard to poop in a public bathroom because you don’t want people to hear you. Flush just right before you push and the sound of the water will cover the sound of gas etc and it will go right down with the water so very minimal smell."

I mean, all you can do really is clap at the social-anxiety-fueled ingenuity on display. The experts seem to agree here. Even Healthlinerecommends carrying air purifier spray, lining the inside of the bowl with toilet paper to absorb sound, and flushing several times to reduce anxiety worries.

The general consensus is that, when pooping at someone's house, basic etiquette applies. Clean up after yourself to a normal degree, but remember, as the saying goes: Everybody poops.

Some people are really protective over the bathrooms in their homes, which is their right. But if that's the case, they really shouldn't be having guests over and expecting them not to partake in normal human biological behaviors.

Some of the advanced tips shared by anxious-pooers might help, but try not to send yourself into a tailspin trying to cover your tracks. In extreme cases of bathroom anxiety, experts say cognitive behavior therapy or even antidepressants may be needed. But the rest of us might just need to read that world famous children's book again.

Health

Scientists have just discovered the ‘anxiety gene’ and what turns it off

This could completely change how we treat anxiety and depression.

A young woman struggles with anxiety.

Living with an anxiety disorder can feel like a constant battle against an invisible enemy. People with anxiety disorders feel constant, excessive worry, restlessness and irrational fears, often accompanied by physical symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, tightness in the chest and difficulty breathing.

These overwhelming feelings cast a shadow over daily life and make it difficult to focus or enjoy simple pleasures. Anxiety disorders can also feel isolating, as the sufferer may struggle to communicate their feelings, making it hard to receive support and understanding.

Anxiety disorders are among the most common forms of mental illness and studies show that an estimated 31.1% of U.S. adults experience an anxiety disorder at some time in their lives. Around half of all people who suffer from anxiety disorders go into remission at some point.


The interesting thing about such a common mental health problem is that the cause of anxiety disorders is currently unknown. But they’re believed to stem from a combination of factors that are developmental, psychological, environmental and genetic in nature.

However, all of that may soon change. Researchers at the University of Bristol have identified a gene responsible for driving anxiety symptoms in mice and learned how it can be suppressed. The research was first published in Nature Communications.

To gain deeper insight into the underlying causes of anxiety, scientists restrained the mice for 6 hours to elicit a stress response and then examined their brains at a molecular level.

The researchers realized that the stress response resulted in elevated levels of 5 microRNAs (miRNAs) in the amygdala, determining which genes in a cell are expressed and which are not. The amygdala is the brain's integrative center for motivation, emotions and emotional behavior.

Most importantly, the researchers noted that the gene Pgap2 caused behavior associated with anxiety and miR483-5p worked as a molecular “brake” to prevent the feelings of anxiety.

To put it simply, researchers have determined the gene that creates anxiety symptoms and the gene that puts a stop to them. This revelation could lead to new medications that target and suppress the specific cause of anxiety in the human brain. It may also completely change the current trial-and-error approach that doctors use to treat anxiety through medications.

“miRNAs are strategically poised to control complex neuropsychiatric conditions such as anxiety. But the molecular and cellular mechanisms they use to regulate stress resilience and susceptibility were until now, largely unknown,” Dr. Valentina Mosienko, one of the study’s lead authors said, according to Neuroscience News.

“The miR483-5p/Pgap2 pathway we identified in this study, activation of which exerts anxiety-reducing effects, offers a huge potential for the development of anti-anxiety therapies for complex psychiatric conditions in humans.”

The findings are exciting to many people who wouldn't mind having their anxiety gene turned off right about now.

The next step for researchers is to see if further research can be validated in humans.

This important development comes at a time when anxiety and depression are on the rise across the globe. According to the World Health Organization, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a 25% rise in anxiety and depression worldwide.

Last weekend, I went to a speed-dating event. Just walking up to the door made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I like to think of myself as a social, outgoing person. But when it comes to anything related to dating, I can be painfully shy.


A speed dating event in the U.K. Photo by Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images.

As I got closer to the building, I started to feel like there was some horrible, inaudible, invisible static in the air that only I could sense. To anyone else, I'm sure everything looked perfectly normal — the bar was nice, all the people I met were very lovely ... but I couldn't help but feel that static playing across the back of my neck.

I was, in other words, anxious.

Everyone gets anxious sometimes, and that's OK.

Image via iStock.

In fact, anxiety is a normal and evolutionary biological response to stressful situations. Our brains are really good at linking bad experiences (like awkward dates) and stimuli together, mostly because it keeps us safe.

If something bad happens and then you're in a similar situation in the future (like, say, having to talk to nearly 20 strangers in five-minute increments), your brain holds up big signs to help you remember to stay safe — signs like that prickling feeling on the back of my neck.

Other signs can be mental symptoms, like hypervigilance or intrusive thoughts, or physical ones, like a racing heartbeat or feeling nauseous or dizzy. And these can sometimes be really, really hard to ignore.

"[Anxiety is] a whole-body, a whole-mind, a whole-person experience," Dr. Michael Irvine told Upworthy.

Irvine is a clinical psychologist who knows a lot about anxiety. He's worked extensively with combat veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis that, at its heart, is about anxiety.

“It’s not just battling your thoughts. The work isn’t just trying to convince yourself not to be scared. Anxiety is a reflex."

Irvine explained that fighting off anxiety isn't as simple as just ignoring those anxious feelings.

“It’s not just battling your thoughts," said Irvine. "The work isn’t just trying to convince yourself not to be scared. Anxiety is a reflex."

And anxiety doesn't just affect our bodies and minds; it can actually affect how we see the world every day.

An anxious job applicant, circa 1940. Photo by Rondal Patridge/National Archives/Wikimedia Commons.

An experiment from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel showed clearly that having anxiety can affect our ability to process sights and sounds.

Researchers from the lab set up the experiment by training volunteers with specific sounds. They taught them that some sounds had good outcomes (gaining money), and some had bad outcomes (losing money).

Then they played the good and bad sounds, plus some benign and neutral ones, back to the volunteers. And what they found was fascinating: The volunteers with anxiety were more likely to identify benign sounds as bad sounds, too, even though those sounds were neutral.

Why? It wasn't a conscious decision. Instead, the anxious volunteers' brains had automatically overcompensated. In trying to keep them safe, their brains had changed the way they perceived all the sounds, not just the bad ones.

This might sound like an odd scenario, but it helps to explain why the speed-dating event was so weird for me. To outsiders, the event looked like a couple dozen young people enjoying themselves. But to my brain, through the filter of anxiety, the event was suddenly attached to bad dates of years past and uncomfortable social interactions. What might seem benign to everyone else actually looked much worse to me.

Sometimes, though, our brains take it too far.

Anxiety is normal — especially after a bad event — but, similar to how an overactive immune system can give us allergies, our brain's natural protective response can sometimes overcompensate. And when anxiety progresses to the point where it disrupts your everyday life, that's when it becomes what psychologists would call an anxiety disorder.

The U.S. Army now requires soldiers take suicide awareness classes. PTSD, an anxiety disorder, may be associated with higher suicide rates in soldiers. Photo from Chris Hondros/Getty Images.

About 1 out of every 5 adults in the U.S. is affected by an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders come in a lot of different forms, too, ranging from social anxiety disorder to PTSD.

I don’t have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, but for folks who do, the symptoms can be really paralyzing. Those intrusive thoughts and physical symptoms can keep people with anxiety disorders from leaving the house. The symptoms can make them struggle at work and seriously affect their quality of life.

The stigma of having an anxiety disorder can be just as tough as the symptoms, too.

Image from iStock.

Even though 1 in 5 people struggles with it, people who are living with anxiety disorders often feel like they should be able to fix themselves alone — to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In a 2007 survey, only 25% of people with mental health symptoms said they believed people would be sympathetic to their stories.

But in reality, anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of; it's just your brain working extra hard. Plus, talking about your struggles and looking for treatment early are some of the best strategies for managing it.

"The earlier we intervene on the timeline, the more likely an individual is to get a better outcome," said Irvine.

So biologically, it's not too weird to have a prickly-neck feeling or an upset stomach while meeting a bunch of strangers.

But when your brain is dealing with anxiety, especially an anxiety disorder, it actually functions differently. Things that might be benign suddenly seem scary. Meeting potential dates might make you really sweat. An overwhelming feeling of being unsettled might come over you just as you enter a new place that reminds you of an old place.

That is OK. Because even though we can't always control how our brains see the world, or what warnings signs they throw in our faces (needed or not), we've got nothing to be ashamed of when we start to feel anxious.

And if you ever run into me at another speed-dating event, I hope you'll cut me some extra slack.