To the people who became incontinent, what was the regression from continent to diaper dependent like?

[as_a_fox]

Just out of curiosity I'd like to know what it was all like for you, and do you miss having control? This is for people who had medical problems, and for people who trained themselves!

[stevewet]

7 hours ago, as_a_fox said:

Just out of curiosity I'd like to know what it was all like for you, and do you miss having control? This is for people who had medical problems, and for people who trained themselves!

For me it started with damp spots in my underwear and then my bedwetting came back, occasionally at first but within a few months it was most nights.Within a year I had very little bladder control day and night and was soon in nappies 24/7. I soon realised actually I quite like this and am now unashamedly DL and profoundly urinary incontinent and love it

[joemama]

Very much the same here.  Wet underwear after using the toilet, to damp all the time, then spurts when I would stand up, to pullups.  Within a year or so I was looking at tabbed diapers.  I can still sort of control things, but many times I will just start peeing and feel the warmth in the diaper around my bits and realize what just happened.

 

[little dragoniusrex]

it was hard in the beginning but knowing i wil never be potty trained ever again i just go with the flow these days. have to admit i even love wearing diapers now.

 

[Enthusi]

Slow.  Painfully slow.   I have been 24/7 going on 4+ years and actively unpotty trained using a mix of behavioral techniques (classical and operant conditioning, hypnosis, guided meditation, etc).   The thing is, as slow as it’s been for me, my response is quite remarkable compared to others. That just goes to show for many people it’s even slower than my experience! 

Take night time for instance. Initially I would wake up in the middle of the night and wet my diaper and go back to sleep. With time that morphed into waking up and wetting in a twilight phase.  With more time I started to have dreams where I would pee and I’d wake to find my diaper wet. Gradually I stared wetting during other phases of sleep so that I had no recollection of peeing. Also for the longest time I would sleep wet once a night and wake up with a full bladder.  At some point during the last year or so I started wetting a two times then three times at night.  These days I have no idea how many times I wet and usually I my bladder feels empty in the morning.  Again, I can’t stress how this was a very gradual process over 4 years.  

As for daytime control, at first I set a timer and made relax my bladder muscles every 30 min or so. And I also practiced relaxing my bladder muscles whenever I noticed they were tense. After a while my body just started doing that on its own.  That set off a slow but gradual cycle where my bladder muscles lost some of their strength which meant I had to rely on my diaper more and more.   

Also, I don’t know exactly when it happened, maybe 1-2 years ago I started to notice my bladder and pelvic floor felt more comfortable in “relaxed mode.”  Again it was a slow progression. These days my bladder muscles are defaulted in the relaxed position. This means that I have to actively think about holding it in for me to have any hope of holding in my pee. The second I forget to hold it in my muscles go back to relaxing and I pee myself.   Obviously this also means my bladder muscles don’t get exercised and they are even weaker than before.

The gradual process continues. A recent development has been the relief I experience when I change to a fresh diaper. It’s like I’m thankful that I don’t have to worry about staying dry or leaks.  It’s a hard sensation to describe.  It’s a feeling of relief that is super-imposed over my enjoyment of being diapered. 

Another recent development is that I’ve noticed I’m getting worse at predicting when I’ll need a diaper change.  I’ve had a sharp uptick in leaks. My guess is that either the frequency of wetting is getting more erratic, or I’m wetting more than I realize.  I’ve started to keep myself on a regular diaper change schedule rather than based on how wet I think I am.  To be honest it’s been messing with my head that I can’t trust fully trust my bladder sensations or memory of wetting when deciding if I need a change.  

The other important piece is accepting that you are incontinent. For me that happened about 6 months ago when I did hypnosis. Even though I’ve had real accidents for several years, for the longest time I felt like I was faking it.  I think people underestimate the psychological barriers. It takes time to see yourself differently, such as seeing yourself as an individual living with urinary incontinence. 
 

For the most part I don’t miss being potty trained.  Though my life certainly would be a heck of a lot easier if I wasn’t incontinent.  There’s so much planning that goes into everything!  Especially trips and outings with vanilla friends and family. Even so, this was still the right choice for me. 

[oznl]

Around 2.5 years of 24/7 and I've lost control at night but I'm still continent during the day.  This seems to be a reversal of accepted wisdom and I can't explain it.  It seems like @Enthusi may have followed that same trajectory though.

The descent into bedwetting was remarkably similar to @Enthusi's.  It went something like:

1. Get very comfortable with wetting in bed and learning not to leak

2. Wake up / wet / fall back asleep

3. Wake up a few times / wet a few times / fall back asleep a few times

4. Have "pee dreams" about needing to pee during the night

5. Have serious pee dreams culminating in what was possibly a wetting incident

6. Start noticing that my night nappy is wetter than I can recall making it the next morning / pee dreams disappear

7. Start noticing that my bladder is always empty when I wake up

8. Try skipping a nappy at night and wet the bed without knowing / realise I'm not continent at night anymore

Daytime, I have urgency issues, limited range, very slow drippy/dribbly voiding and some post-void dripping but I am still continent.  If I need to come out of nappies for a while I can, but it isn't comfortable and I don't like it much.

23 hours ago, Enthusi said:

Also, I don’t know exactly when it happened, maybe 1-2 years ago I started to notice my bladder and pelvic floor felt more comfortable in “relaxed mode.” 

This is JUST starting to happen with me.  I can very easily drop my pelvic floor (I will drip or spurt if I cough) and its getting to the point where it feels much more comfortable dropped and its easier to leave it in that state for longer periods of time.  If I want to avoid IC, I probably need to intervene soon.

[Mindylou]

I've been 24/7 for just over a month now. I've been wearing at night for much longer though. Daytime wearing is becoming the norm for me and wetting and sometimes messing in my diaper second nature. I don't think I could ever go without diapers again especially in public. My anxiety would go through the roof. I'm too used to the comfort of going whenever and wherever I want. I'm at the beginning stages of all the things these people mention here. I know for sure I'm on the right track for voluntary incontinence. 

September update: I think at #6&7 of @oznl list .. I did have to quit for a couple of months but Ive just started back this weekend and it was like I had never stopped! Just pretty much picked up where I had left.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Mindylou
Update

[Rob110]

Mine started over 6 years ago with damp underware and quickly progressed to dribbling and full floods, I am now experiencing bowel accidents from time to time and have accepted the fact im back in diapers for life.  I do miss having control but I do not dwell on it as I cant change the the fact I need diapers so why stress about it.

[Enthusi]

On 5/30/2021 at 4:03 AM, Rob110 said:

Mine started over 6 years ago with damp underware and quickly progressed to dribbling and full floods, I am now experiencing bowel accidents from time to time and have accepted the fact im back in diapers for life.  I do miss having control but I do not dwell on it as I cant change the the fact I need diapers so why stress about it.

I’m curious was there also a medical cause or is your process entirely from unpotty training?

[Rob110]

Its a medical issue one urologist diagnosed and OAB and my second urologist said I now have an oversized bladder he just kept saying there was a lot of pee in my bladder then he did the reverse fill when the used the camera to check my bladder

[Little Sherri]

My trajectory has differed somewhat from others here, lately. I felt I was more or less on the same path as @Enthusi or @oznl, in terms of nighttime continence, but then my "progress" (or decline?) slowed down considerably. I had been waking to go, then, sometimes, only vaguely remembering having done so. On occasion, usually after a few high-octane IPA's, I would have no memory of having done so, but, the wet nappy offered mute testimony. However, I moved about 7 months ago to a house a bit out in the country, which should, theoretically, make no difference what-so-ever, but almost immediately, I began sleeping through the night almost every night - IE, not waking up to pee, and, not peeing. Maybe it's quieter out here, or maybe it's the threefold increase in property maintenance tasks. 

So, the "untraining" process I thought I was going through at night has halted, although I have had a couple of perplexing dreams lately - one in which I thought I had wet my bed over the top of my diaper, and I actually physically acted on it, getting a towel and laying it out on the bed, because I didn't want to disturb my wife with actually changing the bedding. Then I woke up in the morning, and realized that everything was bone dry - except my diaper, which had seen a small amount of fire. I also had a dream last night that I had wet my diaper, but when I woke up in the morning, there was no evidence of it. 

My history of having been an inveterate and accomplished bedwetter as a child doesn't seem to offer me any advantages, other than being really comfortable sleeping in diapers. 

During the day, I would say that I'm in the "often-relaxed" phase of pelvic existence, although things don't happen on their own. Once I say "go", though, there is no stopping it - that's one capability I have definitely abdicated. My cruising range has notably declined;I could go 30 or 45 minutes if I had to, though it would get uncomfortable. But if I had a surge of urgency, and reflexively relaxed, as is my current habit, there would be no reigning it in, so, wearing a diaper is definitely the safe option, and, in any case, the one I prefer.  

[jeremy12312]

On 5/26/2021 at 10:50 PM, Enthusi said:

A recent development has been the relief I experience when I change to a fresh diaper. It’s like I’m thankful that I don’t have to worry about staying dry or leaks. 
 

I’m way behind all of you in the untraining cycle (just about a month of intensive focus after 8 yrs of 24/7), but I’m already finding this part to be soooo true. I’m a worrier in general, so it’s like, for the first half hour after a change, it’s finally something that doesn’t need a lick of mind. Sort of meditative, in fact.