I have this fear too... It seems to be very common. I'll be sitting in the bathroom waiting for a a person to leave and she'll sit there in silence on the toilet too! Then we'll wait to see who will give up and leave first. This is why I don't like public bathrooms.

I have the same problem too. I wish public restrooms played some really loud music so no one can hear each other's excretions hitting the bowl

More people have that same problem than you'd think. I do

One of my roommates in college would turn on the tap so she could feel that no one would hear her...Or maybe it was so she couldn't hear anyone else... Anyway! You can always take on the environmentally unfriendly method of preemptively turning on a tap whenever you enter a lavatory :D

I had the same thing , a big reason why college sucked for a while.

I have the same problem too. I'm getting better with it though. Mind over matter. It took me 6 years to do a #2 with my husband anywhere in the house. Lol. It's silly but true. I'm over it though. Just have to do it and fight the embarrassment. Im still embarrassed at public restrooms but again I just ignore my embarrassment. I physically feel better for it anyway. All this will sound crazy to people who don't have this irrational fear but I think a lot of us do.

Turn the tap on to drown out any noises!

Like a lot of people, I'm a private pooper. However, you were where you were supposed to be, they were not. I would've let it fly in hopes of embarrassing them so they wouldn't start another convo in front of the bathroom door.

I like the music in the restroom idea.

I have this issue. I always turn on the sink while I do my business, or if I'm planning on showering, I'll turn on the water (bonus points because then the water warms up while I piss and I don't have to wait as long). My sister turns on the fan (but then she forgets to turn it off :l) and like some people suggested, you could drop some toilet paper in there and that will muffle it as well. edit: One other thing, try listening to music in your headphones. Other people will hear you, but you won't hear yourself and it has helped me before because it gives the illusion that nobody can hear but then you finish and get up and it's like, there could be a million other people in the bathroom but I don't know. People may have heard me but I don't know if they did, but I'm still alive, didn't die or anything. It helps me, at least.