TW- childhood anxiety

As a kid I was always so afraid of public restrooms. In preschool they would make me so anxious that one day I broke down crying to my parents asking them if I could stop going to pre-school. I remember the reason I was afraid is because there was always older kids in the restroom and for some reason that made me so anxious. My parents ended up letting me stay home the rest of the year.

In kindergarten it didn’t get any easier, and I wet my pants a lot because I was afraid of using the restroom. This happened all the way up to elementary school. I have a very distinct memory of wetting myself in the computer lab in second grade because we were only aloud to use the nearest restroom to the lab, which is the restroom the older kids usually used since it was near their classroom.

I also think this might just be an anxious kid thing, but I would have constant and vivid nightmares almost every night. After one nightmare I’d force myself to stay awake because I knew I’d have another if I went back to sleep

Another weird and strange (and embarrassing) thing I did as a kid was one night in summer camp in 3rd grade, me and the rest of the girls on my team were in the bathrooms getting ready for bed and my camp counselor (an older lady) had a bra on and I grabbbed her breasts. I remember I hadn’t made the concious to choice to do that, I just automatically did it and was weirded out by myself. I didn’t know about the sexual connotations, I still don’t know what came over me, I’m not attracted to women or boobs


I always chalked the bathroom fear up to me being a weird anxious little kid. I’m starting to wonder if there was something more going on that I’m not able to remember. What could have happened that made me so terrified of being in the bathroom with older kids? I’ve just been thinking about this lately