Psychogenic Impotence or Performance Anxiety

The Physiology of an Erection.

Your Nervous System is divided into two parts, Sympathetic and Parasympathetic.

Sympathetic is also call the "Fight or Flight" part. It’s what kicks in during stress to help you survive. It evolved millions of years ago, to help animals react to danger. If for example a Cave Man is in his cave, and a Saber Tooth tiger comes strolling in, looking for a nice Cave man snack, the Cave man sees it and the Sympathetic System kicks in full throttle. The adrenaline in released in massive quantities, blood vessels contract, heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rates sky rocket, basically preparing the Cave man to either fight for his life, run for his life or some combination of those.

After he survives the incident and feels safe again, the Parasympathetic kicks in and lowers heart rate and respiration, dilates blood vessels to lower blood pressure, relaxation sets in, blood flow opens back up to organs etc, and the body begins to recover and repair.

Skip forward a couple million years and the same Sympathetic and Parasympathetic are in humans, but now primarily result is stress and disease. Your boss yells at you, and the Sympathetic kicks in with all the same reactions, but now you don’t have the massive physical exertion needed to deal with the Saber Tooth, you just have to sit there and take it. This is what results in a lot of modern stress produced illnesses.

Now, lets take Joe Blow for example. He feels like his dick is too small and females will react negatively to it when he "whips it out" this "fear" will stimulate his Sympathetic System like his life is in danger. Same increase of heart rate, respiration, adrenaline etc. However, the problem lies in the fact that the penis is TOTALLY dependent on the PARASYMPATHETIC system for an erection!

So, you are afraid you won’t get hard, which stimulates the Sympathetic, which causes your erection to start to fade, which REALLY stimulates your Sympathetic, which REALLY kills your erection, and so on. You have now created a Negative Feedback Loop!

Now every time you need to whip out ol’ Yeller to impress a female, you immediately worry it won’t work, which stimulates your Sympathetic System…and low an behold, IT DOESN’T WORK! This just increases your fear, making it more likely that each time it will continue to happen. The more it happens, the more you KNOW it will happen again!

This is what is referred to as PSYCHOGENIC Impotence, or all caused by your mind and the panic. So the good news is there is nothing wrong with you. This is also called, "Performance Anxiety", because you worry you will go soft, so you do.

So what’s the answer? Anything that gets you to NOT WORRY about it! Of course that is easier said than done.

I suggest a few tactics;

1) First is reading this and understanding it. Once you understand the mechanism, its the beginning to reverse it. At least you can quit worrying that something is "really wrong" with you, its not.

2) Next is to begin to reverse this negative behavioral-cognitive loop that you have set up. For that a couple strategies come to mind. Learn EFT or Tapping, its simple, easy to do and effective to drain out the negative energy you have build up in your circuitry.

This is just the basics, there are tons of free videos. You can learn it in a few minutes and begin to get some good results right away. More complex emotions require more skills but you can do tons of good with it for yourself. I like to have you raise your greatest fears, AND FEEL IT AS STRONGLY AS YOU CAN, if you can make your skin sweat and stomach knot (like its actually happening) its best! Make a note on a 1-10 scale how strong the fear is, and then keeping the FEAR AS HIGH AS YOU CAN, tap through the points, VERBALIZING your WORST FEARS as you tap.

For example, (as you start tapping) "I can NEVER have sex with a girl, because MY PENIS DOESN’T WORK!" (keep tapping) "I will never have a RELATIONSHIP because I CANT STAY HARD", etc. Just bring up as much of the fear as possible and vocalize your WORST FEARS as you tap.

After you cycle through the first time, try and bring you fears up again, and again rate it 1-10. You will probably find its already reduced 50%. So, continue like this until its down to 0%. In the process other related fears might crop up, like "women don’t find me attractive anyway"…that’s fine, tap them all down to 0%.

ONCE you can no longer find any fear related to the problem, NOW you can TAP IN positive affirmations (but only after all the negative is out). You can say, while tapping, "you know, my dick actually can get big and hard, and there isn’t any reason why I can’t give this girl one heck of a shagging" etc. I like to state it like, "why couldn’t I …fill in the positive statement.

Work with this and you will find it will do a huge amount to erase this negative programing loop you have set up. (by loop I mean its reinforces itself.)

3) Realizing that its worry that does you in, don’t take fucking so serious, like a murder trial. Learn to slow down and enjoy the girl. Get naked at a fun pace, enjoy kissing her, smelling her, rubbing and teasing her, licking her etc. The more you just forget about "performing" and just enjoy the sensations and smells, the quicker you will find you are rock hard. Then when you get hard, don’t think "QUICK, FUCK HER WHILE ITS HARD" because that will just produce anxiety, right? Let yourself just kinda "fall" into fucking, without really mentally setting a goal or a start point, understand. Kinda’ like screwing when your half asleep, your LUST moves you into it, not your mind. The key to being a great lover is getting out of your head anyway, so learn it!

4) I think taking something like Cialis or Viagra in the beginning to help bridge you from fear to confidence can be a big help. It will take a semi erection and turn it into a full erection. As you gain confidence and break the negative feedback loop, you taper down the dose until you don’t need it anymore.

So, there you go, the Sparkyx prescription to reversing Performance Anxiety.

Good luck!

Link is dead.

Ok, lets try this one for EFT. Listen, if I can’t get these links to work, just go to Youtube and put in EFT and look for one on the Basics.

very nice post. Very nice, Indeed.

Don’t mean to be a dick, but it’s a positive feedback loop.

I’ve done this, except for the tapping, what I realized was that what I thought was porn induced ed was actually performance anxiety. So what I did was hook up with about a 5 on the babe scale, where I didn’t worry about impressing. Was great, then kept doing better and better. Then I would up it to a 6, a 7, an 8 and so forth, to the point where I asked this girl out at my job who was blazing hot and I just felt so natural and carefree, that she actually told me you feel different (what I assumed was confidence) and when I finally hooked up with her I smashed her brains out and rolled up a blunt and chilled afterwards. It was the greatest thing I ever did. I no longer have performance anxiety. I says practice with girls you’re not that attracted to and work your way up. Great post though sparky! Thumbs up

LOL! Ok then a negative, positive feedback loop! :)

Sparky is this a process you used? Your details describes how it really is.

It happened when I was a young guy, fortunately I understood the mechanism and was able to do 1-3 (didn’t know about tapping then)and that was enough to fix it. Cialis and Viagra didn’t exist in those days or I would have used it too.

I read it all the time here at Thunders, with young guys. Unfortunately they don’t understand it and they think that their dicks are broke then really freak out! I wrote this thread for guys like that. Just send em’ to this thread, and all will be well! :)

Its very good information.

This is a timely read for me. I was going to come back onto this site and make an entirely new thread covering a vastly overdone topic about what seems to be my own performance anxiety as of late.

I joined this site a while back, jelq’d some, gained, and really stopped coming here. Occasional pop in to lurk since then but never was big on posting.

Just started seeing this girl I’ve known for a while and we’ve hit it off everywhere. As of late however, attempts at sex have been massive failures when they haven’t been in the past with a previous partner. Literally moments before insertion my guy would just deflate. The first time we tried I went from solid during foreplay to completely limp when about to enter. Subsequent attempts at sex have yielded slightly better results, with me keeping around a 60-70% erection, but hardly enough to glide anything more than my head in. It’s just soft enough to allow for no penetration but even worse, super sensitivity for some reason, ending the whole bout quickly and frustratingly.

Obviously, it’s putting a strain on what we have going and as we’ve talked about it, could potentially de-rail and end it altogether. She’s starting to feel it’s her, doesn’t know what to do, but things are obviously not as either of us would like to be. She’s repeating maybe I’m not attracted to her, or perhaps we just aren’t meant to have sex, or that I need to be true about whatever is blocking my head (I’ve said there must be a mental block there or just pure anxiety in general) but she seems to be thinking it’s her or in some way this just won’t work out for us. Terrible for our relationship and terrible for my mental well-being as a man.

I’ve known about over-thinking the issue would only make it worse, and concentrating more on it would only exacerbate the problem but it’s starting to get ingrained from the fear of.. Lo and behold.. Having it ingrained. Seriously debating going to a urologist or talking to a family member about borrowing some SSRI’s for a while just to help chill out for now. I’m even considering just drinking with her to help but am kind of fearing a whiskey dick or the same result as previous attempts which would REALLY frustrate us both. We drink, but not regular enough for some reason to fool my head into what the ultimate goal would be. I’m sure I would even get some anxiety knowing that the end goal would be successful sex, which may very well contribute to the same problem.

I know this isn’t a blog and sorry if I’m turning it into one, but I just never expected this of all problems to pop up or droop down depending on how sarcastic you want to be. I’m trying to joke, be lighthearted and keep things fun despite this happening but this is probably the 4th time, maybe 5th, that this has happened and any laughter on the subject between us is quickly fading. We’re both frustrated and seeing as how I haven’t had sex in a very long time, it only makes it more so. I’m trying not to be desperate here and keep a cool head about it, but I’d much rather know my dick was happily penetrating her then have any fatal outcomes for our relationship.

I really appreciate this post. Never heard of EFT but have done some similar, simple methods in the past for a stint. Going to have to do this tonight and the next few nights for sure. I really want this to work. I know it will I just need to overcome whatever is going on inside my head at the time. I’m good up until the point of penetration and perhaps due to inexperience, just nerves, or something else (my head feels blank but I can definitely feel that I’m thinking about it, rather than the moment) I just can’t get relaxed enough to do the things I really want to do.

Any other advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

The more important the girl is to you, the greater the anxiety involved once you get worried about getting hard. The more worried you get the greater the anxiety of not getting hard, The whole thing spins out of control and is a positive loop feedback mechanism.

Trust me, if you slept with a girl you didn’t give a damn about, you would be rock hard! So, really its just breaking the feedback loop of fear of going soft leads to going soft which reinforces the fear of going soft! It just keeps getting worse with each cycle of failure.

There is nothing wrong here except your fears and hers!!! So, really I recommend some Viagra and spend a few hours in a Motel room to just spend the night together naked in bed just cuddling and watching TV and having a drink or two (not more, just to relax). If you guys could just relax together WITHOUT any goal other than to just have a nice nite together hanging out naked or half naked in bed, it would be fine. You both would finally relax and the Viagra will help you get past the anxiety with enough of an erection to get started. Once you get started, just go slow and enjoy each other.

I find if I suck on her, it distracts me and turns me on at the same time, and just let her do what she wants to do. All you need to do is break the cycle and you will be on track to putting this in the rear view mirror! Viagra or Cialis, and a nite together of just being together and see what happens!

Super advice, sparkyx.

Sparky, the thing is that viagra don’t get you rock hard if your mind is still anxious. Tried this in the past with bad results.

Regarding Cialis, I think is kind of different as the next day I’m usually very horny and my mind is just thinking about having sex without negative thoughts.

No, nothing will overcome sheer panic…but it will certainly help with lower level panic. Its just to help you rebuild your confidence, then slowly wean off as your confidence builds.

This is a really awesome post, nice 1 sparky. I can use these techniques with other non sex related anxiety I have sometimes too.