Anal Retentive
If you know me, you might think that I'm particular. Some would say a little OCD. Others might say obnoxiously inflexible. And yes, I've been branded anal retentive a time or three.
For those not familiar with the term, "anal retentive" originates from Sigmund Freud's early 20th-century psychoanalytic theory of psychosexual development. It stems from the "anal stage," when infants learn to control their bowels. Freud hypothesized that harsh or early toilet training could cause fixation, resulting in an adult with obsessive, rigid, and orderly traits.
Growing up in the 70s & 80s, anal retentive was just tossed around loosely for anyone being stubborn, sensitive, or uptight. We busted each other's balls with a variety of harsh insults – you know what I’m talking about. Times were different back in the non-PC days of my youth.
Yet today I learned that the taunt from my childhood was actually a reality. Clinically speaking, I am anal retentive. What started as an emergency room visit in early January because I couldn't pee for two days morphed into a scare that I had an enlarged prostate causing acute urinary retention. But it wasn't until a proper urologist — I kid you not, named Dr. Wang — busted my virginal rectum cherry that I learned my prostate was just fine. "A teenager might have a 21cc prostate," she told me, "and yours is only 29cc — no more than a walnut."
What I am experiencing is a condition known as CPPS, or Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome. As with many things in life, more widespread that I ever could have known, until it impacted me. And as far as I can tell, this makes me literally anal retentive. I can’t pee because the muscles in my pelvic floor are dysfunctional. For some reason, on January 10th, the whole system collapsed. Six weeks later. Now that I knew what is happening, I started to dig into why it is happening.
I practiced yoga consistently for many years. It was my thing. I found deep comfort in the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits it offered. It was always a practice, though — you never quite master yoga, you just keep showing up and practicing. At times I would soar, pressing from impossible arm balances into handstands. Other times I would just lie on my mat and breathe. It's all yoga.
Nearly two years ago, I went too far. I was practicing a lot of yoga during a long stay in Mexico — surfing and swimming too — and I over-worked my elbow, injuring a tendon. I tried to power through but eventually it took me out. I had to stop the hyper-extension exercises and let the thing heal. A few months became a year, and then became nearly two. About six months ago I started to feel whole again, and while I kept up with other activities that didn't stress that elbow — paddling, foiling, hiking, skiing — my lapse from yoga was palpable. I missed the connection to my body and my mat. What I didn't realize was that something else was quietly falling apart.
What I didn’t consider was that Yoga does a lot of work on the pelvic floor and hips. Happy baby, child's pose, supta baddha konasana, pigeon, malasana — these poses aren't just stretches, they're maintenance. Add a consistent breathing practice on top of that, and you're keeping your insides supple in ways you'll never notice until they're gone. Without these things in my life, multiple times a week, my nether parts just started getting tighter and tighter — until they were basically choking me out.
I stopped yoga to heal my body. And that choice quietly created a new problem I didn't see coming until I was sitting in an ER at 2am unable to piss.
There's a life lesson in all of this. The past couple of months have been genuinely hard. I lived with a catheter for six weeks. Six weeks. I couldn't leave the house much. I felt like I was facing an epic battle with my own body — my aging, increasingly uncooperative body. And while this is no cakewalk and I have a long road ahead, I was relieved that it wasn’t the prostate, but now I have a sign can’t battle to rehab and take control again. You really just don’t appreciate a good piss until you can’t do it.
All of this is an important signal: at 56, I can't be careless with this vessel. The practices of yoga, meditation, healthy eating, and real movement aren't optional extras. They're load-bearing walls. Let them go and the whole structure starts to sag — or in my case, seize up entirely.
Your body will tell you what it needs. Mine screamed it.
As I mentioned, I have a detailed plan. I’m easing back into yogic stretches, I have regimented breath work and meditation schedules, I have planned some time away to relax, reconnect, and focus on wellness before my summer season starts. By using the latest AI tools, I aggregated resources that I believe would have eluded me in other times. I’ve got a plan to get this under control, which alleviates some of the fear and stress that can reflexively double down on the issue itself.
And it's not lost on me that I'm taking a figurative anal retentive approach to mapping out my recovery from a very literal case of anal retention.