My Illness

I hope this is the right place to post this. But I just wanted a place to share what I'm going through in the hopes of finding someone going through something similar. It all started in middle school. One day, while playing video games and raging, I accidentally stumbled upon a weird way to relieve myself. (Sorry if this is inappropriate or too much.) It allowed me to experience instant gratification. And I fell into it, doing it fairly often. Maybe multiple times a day. But this somehow messed with my body. And my stomach began to make noises. And not the typical noise everyone experiences from time to time. But pops and loud groans. Which is very embarrassing in school. And these noises were more pronounced and frequent the more I used the odd method of relieving myself. But instead of telling someone and reaching out for help on all this, I googled and searched on the internet for answers. I read that the noise in the stomach comes from water in the intestines. So I started to avoid drinking water. After a certain time of night (7pm I think), I'd stop drinking water until the next day when I came back from school. I even went to the point of not swallowing my saliva. Obviously stupid, especially given the fact that I don't think it helped. But I was scared that it would be even worse if I stopped this idiotic routine. I was panicking, not knowing what to do. But this water fast led to problems with my throat. I really don't understand what happened, but I ended up developing difficulty swallowing. My memory is bad so I don't quite remember the timeline. But I don't think it took very long for this to develop. This was another annoying and embarrassing thing to deal with. Again, I did not reach out for help. Eventually I developed the most perplexing symptom of all. And the one that makes me even write this. In the hopes that I'll find other people who're going through the same thing. And we can support each other. But the symptom is odd. It is similar to the yawning phenomenon, where people who witness or hear you yawning end up yawning themselves. It's like a social phenomenon. Except in my case, instead of causing people to yawn, I cause people to cough and clear their throat excessively. It's also weird how this progressed. It started in my first job working in a warehouse. I triggered this response in my coworker when I would strain to lift something heavy. All day he would be coughing when he passed by me. It's stressful and hurtful to know that you're causing someone to be so uncomfortable. But this is how it started. At that time, I could still be around people pretty normally. My difficulty swallowing made it stressful to eat with people, and odd stomach noises made me scared of quiet places. But if we weren't eating, and we were in some place with a good amount of noise; I could act normally. And in the beginning this coughing response seemed to be something that was only triggered in special situations where I strained to lift something heavy. My family still acted normally around me. I only triggered a few coworkers. But eventually this changed. I started triggering everyone, even just doing nothing. Not exerting myself at all. I believe it started with other coworkers, then my family. And it evolved into what it is now. Where if I'm around someone there's something like a 20% chance that I trigger this coughing response. Seemingly no matter what I do. The reason this hurts is because the people who are triggered are very uncomfortable. And want to avoid me. They even seem scared of me at times. But this is where I'm at now. Idk, maybe someone could relate. Regardless I wish you all the best.