How Important Is Community In Your Journey?

[DLJeff52]

One of the greatest discoveries I've made in life is that I'm healthiest when I'm transparent and when I'm in community.  Setting aside for a second the debate over if technology is a net good or net bad, one of the "goods" is that it has provided this forum for people like myself who have gone through seasons of feeling like "we are the only ones on the earth with some form of DL / untraining desire" or like "I can't be transparent because my desire is seen as taboo by so many".  I'm sure there are other aspects that people like myself faced alone or in isolation that forced us to not be transparent with ourselves or others around our desires related to training and diapers.  

Community and transparency have helped me more than hypnosis or any other external aid I can think of that tries to facilitate my untraining aspirations.  To come to a forum like this or others validates that I'm not alone, that I'm not the only one with these desires and that, as a result, I can be transparent with where I've come from and where I'm going.  I'd like to thank the creators of this forum, those who regularly contribute and those who just come and peruse.  Each of you is helping create a community that fosters transparency and the sense or reality that we are not journeying alone.  

So my question is essentially, would you be where you are at in your DL / untraining journey if you didn't have a community like this to visit, invest in, or learn from?  I, for one, am quite sure that my almost 8 month journey of 24/7 and my resolve to finish out the first year (and likely more) of my goal would have crumbled weeks or maybe a couple months in had it not been for the presence of this forum and those I've had the honor of engaging.  How about you?  How important relative to other contributors has community and transparency been to your exploration and journey?

[cathdiap]

What a great question. I am almost certain that DD did not change the course and speed of my stent development. Before I became a member here I was already making progress towards what I am using and doing now.

However, I think it is great to have at least one community that doesn't disapprove on talking about incontinent desires. I think it helped me a lot to realize that even though I am a little weird in trying to become incontinent it doesn't necessarily make me a bad or crazy person. It is wonderfull to read all your personal stories about the origin of your incontinent desires about how you try to cope with it and sometimes even about how you try to become incontinent. 

So to answer your question.... I would have been where I am now without DD, but it is great to be able to be transparent about it and to share our experiences on this very special topic. It definitely helped to fully enjoy my special kink and also helped preventing a lot of negative thoughts about myself. 

[oznl]

An interesting question.

Denied insight that I was part of a cohort, would I have been able to face alone the headwinds of unrelenting spousal pressure and the ever-present threat of social sanction?

I don’t know for certain but I suspect not.   Eventually, my beloved would have succeeded in convincing me that I was sick and deranged and either succeeded in jamming me back into her normative box with associated endless depression or railroaded me into some kind of unwanted psychological intervention.  If I truly believed I was alone, I’d have to weigh far more heavily the opinions of others and so these outcomes may well have come to pass.

Instead, I started blogging partly as a morbid fascination in dispassionately documenting an aspect of myself that I fully knew to be bizarre and partly because there’s so much BS on the internet, I wanted to try to re-balance things with some real-life content that was as accurate and bipartisan as I dared to be.

As a bonus, I decided to use all of the words AND punctuation.

I found a lot of similarly-minded people along the way.  I was immensely relieved to discover that they were for the most part, nearly normal.

I was a bit late to the self-acquired-incontinence game: that was something I gradually came to understand about myself in no small part due to the ability to converse with others.  In understanding others, I came to better understand myself.

It must have been difficult and bleak being one of us before electronic communications enabled us to overcome geography and time zones to collectivise and obtain some kind of critical mass.

[FretaBWet]

I too probably would have ended up where I am regardless of this community due to lifelong bladder issues and a what I feel was a subconscious desire to be in diapers full time. This should in no way minimize the positive impact and support this forum and site provide.

Am I the only one to notice the average level of intelligence of the denizens of this forum. @oznlyour posts are not just well written, they are thought provoking. The same can be said for @Little Sherri, @DLJeff52. The same can be said for several others who post here regularly, you know who you are. The creativity level of @cathdiapin creating stents is another fine example of intelligence at work. We may all have our own flavor of crazy but we're not dumb. I'll take crazy any day.

Hugs,

Freta

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, DLJeff52 said:

 I, for one, am quite sure that my almost 8 month journey of 24/7 and my resolve to finish out the first year (and likely more) of my goal would have crumbled weeks or maybe a couple months in had it not been for the presence of this forum and those I've had the honor of engaging.

I 100% agree with this. I’ve used this phraseology before but I’ll dip into it again because I think it illustrates my experience: as a kid, and for a good stretch of my adulthood, I thought that I was alone on a deserted island with this strange fascination of mine. Then one day I walked over a distant hill that I hadn’t looked past before, and I found a city. 

Were it not for the encouragement and practical advice I’ve received here, and if I didn’t have this place to vent about the very real issues that navigating life from inside baby pants occasionally presents, I don't think I’d have made it this far. I might not even have started the journey.

It’s the unvarnished reality, which many of you have been so forthcoming in sharing, that keeps me coming back. That is more interesting to me than ABDL fantasy stories (not that there’s anything wrong with stories). I see myself and my own struggles in your anecdotes. And, to @FretaBWet’s and @oznl’s points, it is comforting to note how normal and smart and well spoken and well written many of you are. This is no den of depravity. I’d happily have a lot of you over for a beer or a cup of tea. I’m not sure that holds true for very many places on the internet. 

[spark]

Great question.  I'm young enough to remember when Tommy was on Phil Donohue and I realized there were others like me.   But without that- I might have held this tight, but given what I've gone through- I might have been a statistic.   I think this would have been part of me, and if I still thought that this was isolating- it would have been too much.

Even afterward, and I didn't have DD, I  might have been missing something in my life.   In real life, I'm a fairly open person, but I still hold this pretty tight  I was kind of put off by a question that I was asked in this forum in another discussion.     But I think it's becuase of where I started.

It's been key.  So I owe you guys a lot.

[Hannah YMS]

I was ABDL before I knew of DD, and given my natural curiosity for getting into kink and exploring it, I'm sure I would have ended up in similar fashion.

But having a central community for the untraining journey, or incontinence desires in general, has been priceless. I would not be as far along the journey without a central forum such as this one. Thanks to you all.

[Stroller]

I really couldn't say where I'd be if I hadn't hooked up with the ABDL community.  It all started so long ago, in the 80s I think.  I was already wearing nappies intermittently, full of guilt and binge/purge cycles, and I'd found some DL girlie magazines such as Rubber Life.  Then I stumbled across the DPF, and Mummy Hazel here in England, and found my second home.  If I hadn't made that connection and gone to Hazel's parties I'd probably have been a lot more confused for a lot longer.

More recently, after 20 years in the closet raising kids I wanted to reconnect so badly, and found this place.  I've now been full-time in nappies for over two years, nearly four years including the 18 months in nappies during the day only.  Yesterday evening Mummy fed me a bowl of brownie and ice cream.  Would I have been in the same place without this forum?  I think not.  I think the destination would have been the same, but I'd have been on a much slower train, and probably not a full-time wearer yet.  It was the people like me on this forum that taught me I could do it, and it could work.  There was a contributor on here, no longer around, who showed me the way.  His name escapes me now, as many do.  Then it was made a lot easier by oznl and Little Sherri riding much the same train as me, and all three of us seemingly getting to where we always needed to be, and thriving on it.  Many thanks to both of you!  And everyone else too of course.

[DLJeff52]

@Stroller @oznl @jonbearab @spark @Little Sherri @FretaBWet @cathdiap

I'm actually a pretty emotive person and was very moved at all the comments that have been shared here.  Can't thank everyone enough for taking the time to reflect on this and encourage one another...it is true that this is a VERY unique internet experience and I truly treasure it.

Thank you!

[Hannah YMS]

1 hour ago, DLJeff52 said:

@Stroller @oznl @jonbearab @spark @Little Sherri @FretaBWet @cathdiap

I'm actually a pretty emotive person and was very moved at all the comments that have been shared here.  Can't thank everyone enough for taking the time to reflect on this and encourage one another...it is true that this is a VERY unique internet experience and I truly treasure it.

Thank you!

/fist bump

[Enthusi]

Community is critical.  Wanting to wear diapers is bizarre enough, and to then want to be diaper dependent is even more bizarre.  And let’s not forget how difficult it is to intentionally lose bladder (and bowel) control.  I can’t see how this can be done without support from people who “get it.”

[dlnoir]

8 hours ago, Enthusi said:

Community is critical.  Wanting to wear diapers is bizarre enough, and to then want to be diaper dependent is even more bizarre.  And let’s not forget how difficult it is to intentionally lose bladder (and bowel) control.  I can’t see how this can be done without support from people who “get it.”

This exactly.

[Craig]

I identify with so many of the experiences, discoveries, and emotions here that I’m overwhelmed. I sincerely appreciate this community and not just the willingness to share, but the eagerness to support each other in what is, admittedly, an unusual lifestyle — although one that I really believe can be quite healthy.

I’m a life long bedwetter who suffered more from my father’s outrage than from the problem itself. Maybe I didn’t try harder to stop something I couldn’t help to spite his criticism of my predicament? Maybe I decided to like the whole thing for that reason — which really wasn’t much of a hassle in the morning anyway?

I’m a long way from diapers to fit me as a teen, to where I am now with a dizzying array of cloth and disposable products available. From being convinced I was the only person in the world with this fascination — to my shock at finding I was not via the internet — to communities like this — it has only encouraged me to find much comfort with being around those in diapers for whatever reason and how that connects with me.

Just given the explosive growth in the colorful and babyish designs of adult disposable diapers, their increased thickness and absorbency, and the number of companies offering them, there must be a lot of us to make all that profitable — which it apparently is. 

The excitement that comes from wearing diapers has worn off a bit from doing so consistently for so long. But the experience never goes away.

Obviously, I don’t write much here as I’m not sure what I’d add to the discussions — those here cover so much ground.

But thanks,

Craig