Psychogenic Impotence or Performance Anxiety

Yeah I’ve experienced this. It’s quite irritating that when you care for a girl it’s harder to perform, at least sometimes (hello Oeidopus!?). To be honest, the best sex I’ve ever had was with a girl who’s opinion didn’t matter to me at all. I couldn’t care less if she thought I was good/bad in bed, if she didn’t like my penis or whatever and I guess that made me relax and I was able to really enjoy it. It’s not a very healthy attitude towards sex and I hope I’ll get over it in time.

Another good advise for anyone suffering from performance anxiety:

If your past medical history does not include asthma, take 10-20 mg of Propanolol at least one hour before the time you think you might have sex. It is a beta-blocker, one of the oldest available, it is not cardioselective (thus it cannot be taken by someone with history of asthma) and it has some particular properties that make it a very good anxiolytic. It does not cause sleepiness, it does not blunt your thoughts or desire and it won’t cause erectile dysfunction unless you have peripheric atherosclerotic disease, which is very rare in young adults.

If taken together with a low dose of Viagra or Cialis, results tend to be great.

The effect of propanolol lasts around 8 hours. This drug is sometimes taken by young people with palpitations or even by doctors before oral presentations.

It decreases your heart rate and blood pressure a little bit, but if you are taking 10 mg only, the decrease is practically insignificant. 10 mg is really a very low dose for this particular beta-blocker.

I don’t know if it’s because I read and posted in this thread recently but it happened to me tonight. I was on the forth date with a girl and we were on her couch making out and stuff. At first I got a bit hard but then I started to think about what would happen if I wouldn’t get it up/stay hard if we took it to the bedroom. How embarrassing it would be and how she would tell all her friends about it etc etc. After a while she started to grab my cock and I was soft. I don’t know if she thought too much about it but I thought it was frickin embarrassing and a few minutes later I told her that I had to get back to my place and get some sleep because I had a paper to write in the morning (which was true).

I could tell she got a bit sad/upset but I tried to reassure her that it had nothing to do with her and that I just really needed to get back home because I felt stressed about my paper. She probably thought that I didn’t think she was attractive or something. But I stayed a while and after some light kissing and reassuring she seemed better.

This all sucks though because next time I’ll definitively think about it which won’t make it any easier.

Is Propanolol not prescription only?

Yes, it is.

In my country it is. Probably in yours too.

I’ve been dealing with ED issues for 10+ years. Taken all three of the pills with Viagra probably being the best (when it works). Anxiety is a major problem and once it grabs hold of you I’ve found it almost impossible to defeat. I finally went to the next and in my opinion the ultimate way to put my ED issues aside. Injectable medications. Once you get over the fact you have to inject into your unit (which really doesn’t hurt at all) you then don’t have to worry about performing.

Once you tweak your dosage you can be rock hard for 30 minutes upwards to 3 hours. You don’t want to cross the 4 hour mark because it would mean a trip to the ER but there are methods to counteract the medication and help deflate your unit. I’m happy with the results and so is my girlfriend.

Hmm, my first post, placing it directly in an anxiety topic seems a bit odd, but hey, we all do what we’re here to do aren’t we :) .

I’ll skip the introductory part for another topic and keep my answer related to this topic.

The mind is a powerful tool, I had it happen to me every once in a while, but in the end if your ED is triggered mentally, by anxiety or something else, then there is nothing else to do than put yourself over it.
I know this isn’t an easy thing to do because when it happened once, and you won’t let it slip your mind, you’re surely gonna think about it again and that’s where it starts.

You go like: “f*ck, I hope I’m not gonna go soft this time!”
Unit responds: “yo dude, I’m going southwards”
You go: “no no! Please don’t go!”
Unit: “bye bye!”

Point being, the TS summed it up alright, and I could so well relate to the things he wrote, cause I’ve been through them all and it really is about putting your own mind at ease.

When it happened to me I was always trying to pump my PC muscle to get my unit pumped up, which resulted in a fatigued PC muscle and an even limpier ( :) ) dick.
Sometimes it still can happen but I have past the point of constant worrying about it and me and my wife talked it over, she understands it, and when it happens she doesn’t take it personal which, overtime, gives me less anxiety because I never want her to feel bad or take things personally when MY unit doesn’t point north.

So now I’m at the point where I started PE, mainly because I have long-life issues concerning my unit’s measurements, and I actually can see things change a bit already (veins more profound and even veins I have never seen) and my EQ went up too. This all adds up to a bigger self-confidence, and less “imagined ED” (sorry that I state it like this, but that’s what it actually is in a nutshell).

Being able to let go often gives you more control than when you’re trying to obtain control ;)

Sorry for the bad English, but English isn’t my native language.
I’ll put my introduction somewhere else where it’s more appropriate ;)

This illustrates how the tiny seed of “I hope it stays up”, grows into a feedback loop where the dick just will not get hard.

I think the seed needs to be “I’m about to fuck the shit out of her”, doesn’t matter if your stick is 4” to 9”, your going to do just that.

The term negative feedback loop doesn’t really make sense in the context.

Fantastic post as always good sir! Good timing for me as well. A while ago after a late night of smoking some bud with the lady I couldn’t get it up while we were messing around. This has never, ever, ever happened to me no matter the situation. But after that a tiny seed was planted in my head that my dick might not work right before sex. Since that seed was planted it has happened 3 times. Talk about a confidence killer!!!

Interestingly enough the night after it happened we were discussing parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems function in receiving and maintaining an erection in my anatomy and physiology class. And just like previously stated to receive an erection your PNS dilates blood vessels causing an erection. If you start freaking out about being able to maintain your erection your SNS senses the stress and overrides your PNS by constricting blood flow to non-needed extremeties (from a survival standpoint) and dialates vessels around the heart, eyes etc…

What I have found helps the most is to just chill the fuck out!!! You just have to know in every fiber of your being that your temporary ED was a total fluke and it won’t happen again. Which is easier said then done.

I also find that visualization helps emensely. A few nights ago I had an episode of psycogenic impotence, so I just calmed down and laid in bed naked with the wife. As we laid there I envisioned my cock being emensely huge and rock hard sliding into her. Trying to completely concentrate on the initial moment o entry. If you are visualizing this and even in your fantasy you go limp that’s ok, just keep going until you imagine your giant hard on rocking your womens world. While doing this I got hard after maybe 5 minutes of relaxing and we proceeded to have amazing sex.

It is definitely important to try and keep your confidence as high as possible if this happens and don’t dwell on it throughout the day just stay busy with other things and keep the past in the past. Well that was much longer than I intended. Hope this helps some of you out!! Also I am only 23 and in very very good physical condition so my problem was definitely physiological.

This is a great post, and a place I’m going to start with my mental PE practices.

On the pedantic posts about feedback loops, I think negative feedback loop is the exactly appropriate term. An erection is an excited system state. The flaccid state is an unexcited state. The psychogenic effect here is not amplifying the excitement it is doing the exact opposite. Perhaps we can get out of the question of feedback loops and get into negative versus positive reinforcement. We all know what we are talking about, so not sure why it had to be brought up—twice no less; but if we are going to be pedantic, let’s go for the gold.

You guys think too much. Dick goes in, baby comes out. It doesn’t get more complicate than that.

I believe a lot has to do with your mindset..

I’ve always had the mindset that I need to please and fulfill; my pleasure has always been secondary.
As much as I try, I can’t recall ever having any anxiety over sex - My only insight is that I’ve always been of the mindset; How many orgasms can I make you have, can I make you squirt, can I get your body trembling uncontrollably. Honestly, I usually approach sex with the thought of “I’m going to fu-k you like you’ve never been fu-ked before”..
I suppose its more of a dominate role.. Perhaps a shift in thinking would help some.

I suppose this could also be described as the philosophy of an an erection.

Zen hard, very hard.

I’ve always known that I’m small. Every single girl that I’ve slept with I tell her before I get it out that ‘Im not that big’. By which time she is usually so horny that she won’t say no. Lucky I find it easy to maintain wood, apart from when I’ve been overdoing the PE!