| effective, enhancing logical, practical strategies for empowerment, control, relaxation & hope |
| dr. j's head-cleaners shrink rap & shrink think for practical, powerful healing & hope |
|
Performance anxiety is a term used to refer to self-consciousness and anxiousness about the quality of one's performance that actually decreases the quality of one's performance. Sexual performance anxiety is a form of performance anxiety. It's the pits when it hits Anxiety about sexual performance is an awful pit to slip into -- and one that is, unfortunately, very common and politically correct in that it can happen to anyone, any gender, any age, any personality type, any IQ. It messes with one's sense of self esteem and self worth and can spread into other areas of performance, causing general and wide spread problems with confidence. Sexual performance anxiety can be caused by even a very brief simple event -- even in very stable, emotionally healthy individuals. The whole dilema is much like being in a very slippery-sided pit -- the speedier and more frantic you are, the slipperier you make your problem -- the calmer and slower you move in escaping, the more likely you are to escape. A good thing gone bad. Anxiety is intended by "Nature" to be a system for warning us of dangers and threats. A twig snaps behind you and your mind goes into anxiousness mode -- your brain becomes hyper-alert for danger. Your hearing and vision become acute, your muscles prep for running or battle, your digestive tract and the complex thought parts of the brain shut down to standby mode. That's a good thing if a lion is about to attack. Unfortunately, because we are complex critters that do a lot of complex thinking, sometimes we can get anxious about something very complex (e.g., sexual failure and the social consequence of sexual failure in our sex-obsessed society) that is actually more likely to become a problem if our primative warning signals alert us that it might be a problem. This is a self-fullfilling fear. So a guy whose brain warns him that it might be a problem if he can't get erect, can't get erect because of the warning. Often performance anxiety comes with another problem Often it is another problem altogether that causes a difficulty in sexually performing which then in turn causes anxiousness about whether there will be further difficulties in sexual performance. The initial problem can subsequently be invisible and not even noticed -- and can invisibly support the anxiousness without ever being recognized. For example, if a guy starts on a blood pressure medication that caused problems maintaining an erection and then goes out on a date with a very close girlfriend and the date progresses to the first opportunity for intercourse and there is a lack of erection which he interprets as a catastrophic crash of his sexual system -- he may then find himself having repeated difficulties which seem very much related to anxiousness about performance. In such a case, working on the anxiousness will not fix things -- even though the performance anxiety is very real -- because the problem began with and continues to be coincidentally caused by a medication side effect. Just a simple double-binding, paradoxical, self-perpetuating, self-fullfilling fear -type problem with roots in thought processes in the unconscious. This is basically the problem in all the kinds of performance anxiety -- anxiousness about performing optimally causes an increased self consciousness and a reduction in performance quality, and when the individual recognizes the reduction in performance quality, this in turn causes an increased anxiousness and self-consciousness that reduces performance quality even further. And round and round and round it goes, reinforcing itself. Once anxiousness and negative self talk -- and self-fullfilling prophesies get into play, the fix is to have a reasonably good experience or two so you can realize that sometimes anxiousness gets in the way and that is no big deal -- especially in the context of a good relationship. This is usually a matter of a) making sure that you are engaging in sexual relations in the context of a good relationship with a sex partner who is loving and supportive, b) giving yourself permission to be human and c) letting go of fears and then letting your body and mind do what comes naturally.  what's the fix? So how do you stop automatic mental mechanisms from their appointed rounds? The problem here with performance anxiety in general and sexual performance anxiety in specific is that we're speaking of better controls over mental mechanisms that work appropriately for us most of the time. Sometimes it's hard to shut them off even when engaging in the most positive, logical thinking. It's sometimes tough to moderate them because we're dealing with automatic mechanisms that are usually not under one's conscious control. The issue is convincing yourself deep down that it's okay not to be actively concerned. Sometimes this is easy and sometimes hard. Hypnosis is often utilized when logic and reassurance aren't sufficient to get those inner thought processes convinced because hypnosis is designed to speak to those inner, more primative areas of thinking. Attitude and Strategy Dealing with sexual performance anxiety takes planning, altering how you think and strategy, strategy, strategy.
|
|
Hypnosis Tapes/CDs That Can Help Nothing in life is one-size-fits-all but hypnosis can often be very helpful in dealing with fears and anxieties - performance anxiety, especially. Hypnosis accesses unconscious processes. Because most fears and anxieties are rooted in mental mechanisms that are generally considered "unconscious," nobody can just consciously decide that a fear or anxiety is counter to their best interests. However, hypnosis operates by focusing conscious mental processes in a way that allows access to and communication with many unconscious parts of the mind - especially those that decide what is important to pay attention to and/or be anxiousness about and fearful of. Hypnosis is a time-honored intervention, used since before written history began keeping notes on human behavior and perfected in the 20th century by medical professionals who recognized the enormous untapped potentials when using hypnosis in a permissive, health fostering manner. It can foster a form of relaxation that allows for positive emotions and attitude and optimal physical and mental performance. It is very successful in calming issues of self-consciousness and critical self-talk that are common in issues of performance anxiety and - because of its focus on unconscious mechanisms of thinking - it can foster uncomplicated, straight-forward sexual performance, sexual enjoyment, female orgasms and male erections. Recorded hypnosis - effective, empowering, less expensive and under the listener's control. Recorded hypnosis is not a "next best" form of hypnosis. It actually has many pluses compared to "in person" hypnosis. Recorded hypnosis can be listened to again and again whenever and whereever the listener wants. Recorded hypnosis is less expensive, portable, and is much more a guided self-hypnosis, thus avoiding any complications and conflicts of the therapist-patient relationship. Because of modern indirect hypnotic techniques, recorded hypnosis can be effectively designed to help the listener feel that any and all reactions to the hypnotic experience is both correct and helpful to the therapeutic aims of the hypnosis session. The Head-Cleaners recording, Performance 2 is especially designed for all kinds of performance anxiety. It fosters an "in-the-zone," optimized performance that occurs naturally and smoothly - and without self criticism. The Head-Cleaners recording Performance Perfected is also designed for performance anxiety and also is created to foster optimized performance. It is different from Performance 2 in that it has greater emphasis on self-confidence, relaxed but attentive readiness for action (combat or sexual) and optimal male sexual responsiveness. One-size-fits-most. The Head-Cleaners hypnosis recording design is specifically non-specific so that suggestions are interpretted by the listener's mind in the most personally helpful, individualized way possible - fostering optimized sexual performance in those listeners who are concerned with sexual performance, optimized athletic performance for atheletes, optimized combat performance for anxious soldiers and optimized other performance for those listeners who have other performance anxiety issues. Fears, concerns about hypnosis. For some individuals, the idea of hypnosis sounds silly. For some, it sounds powerful and frightening. You can read customer feedback here. As far as concern that they might not be helpful, or not serious, Head-Cleaners are designed and spoken by a clinical psychologist with over two decades experience and they are money-back guaranteed effective. If concerned about what you might be listening to, a complete transcript of any recording(s) can be had by simply emailing a request for the transcript(s) you want to look at. It is also possible to listen to - and read - an excerpt of any of the Head-Cleaners recording. performance perfected focuses on reducing or eliminating self-conscious, self-confidence-shaking thoughts and on optimizing readiness and reactions. This recording is specifically designed for performance anxiety. It is designed to help the listener feel confident about performance, eliminate self-critical self-talk, and be "in the zone" during any kind of performance, including sexual. This recording has a somewhat greater focus on optimal performance readiness and performance than "Performance 2". (This recording focuses on making changes that are noted during but not between performance situations. For longer, lasting changes that are also a bit more gradual, other Head-Cleaners recordings are more appropriate.) performance 2 focuses on reducing or eliminating self-conscious, self-confidence-shaking thoughts. This recording is specifically designed for performance anxiety. It is designed to help you be "in the zone" during any kind of performance, including sexual. This recording has a somewhat greater focus on eliminating self-critical self talk and feeling "in-the-zone" than "Performance Perfected". (This recording, too, focuses on making changes that are noted during but not between performance situations. For longer, lasting changes that are also a bit more gradual, other Head-Cleaners recordings are more appropriate.) self to self partnering focuses on optimizing one's relationship with one's self when dealing with struggles in life. It fosters optimized handling of frustration and failure experiences, stress, expectations, demands, responsibilities, self-discipline, self-control, self-image, self-confidence and self-esteem. This is a very helpful recording that tends to optimize the effects of any self-improvement effort. to be comfortably confident focuses on fostering a sense of increased self-confidence via images and ideas that are woven to gently un-knot fears and stimulate real changes toward a much more positive, practical and realistic attitude of self-confidence without arrogance or silliness. The focus is on real, lasting change. letting love go to dizzying heights focuses on optimizing and increasing one's sense of bonding and relationship with one's lover. It is designed to also reduce anxieties and mistrust. (This recording is only for committed lovers.) who and how you hope to be focuses on promoting real and lasting changes toward being the person you would like to be – behaviorally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Focuses on increasing the frequency of certain thoughts, urges or feelings that you want to experience more and focuses on reducing thoughts, urges or feelings that come to mind that are not wanted. healing tree 2 focuses on fostering a sense of resiliency and self-confidence in the face of struggle, stress, worry or fears of inadequacy. nightmares to nice dreams focuses on fostering empowering, powerful, positive dreams in order to foster a more positive feeling and attitude during waking hours. Is intended to foster empowering dreams and/or also for stopping anxious dreams or nightmares and for soothing out anxiousness about sleep and dreaming. (Not just for the problem of nightmares.) allowing one's self to get past it focuses on helping the listener to "get past" thought and issues that might be contributing to performance anxiety and sexual difficulties -- feelings of guilt and other lingering psychological side-effects of a significant hurt, wound, shock, trauma, mishap, loss or upset. Intended to reduce or eliminate intrusive unwanted, unhelpful, unpleasant memories, thoughts or feelings of anxiousness, distress, hurt, loss, guilt or regret that linger on without protective, health- or happiness-promoting value. (Not intended to relieve feelings of anxiousness or unwanted thoughts that actually may be providing a protective, realistic warning.) now to how to soothe out angst focuses on soothing out angst (a persistent, gloomy, anxious feeling) that is basically the opposite of feeling confident.. For establishing a sense of hope and a sense of faith in one's self and one's life -- for establishing a comfortable, comforting sense of self-confidence. relax... relax focuses on general relaxation and a fostering of relaxation skills -- both of which provide physical and emotional relaxation without diminished alertness. This is especially designed for individuals who are anxious about the idea of relaxing or individuals who need to be mentally alert and attentive while physically relaxing. a tool to aid with panic and fear focuses on establishing a positive state of mind & the development of a "trigger" -- a word, idea or image -- that, when thought of, triggers physical & emotional changes that calm & soothe the experience, severity, duration & frequency of fears, panic & panic attacks and increase a sense of self confidence in stressful situations. |
|
some ED resources, articles, etc.
impotence / ED - always-healthy.com articles on Levitra - always-healthy.com articles on Viagra - always-healthy.com http://www.always-health.com/impotence.html
an email question:
Okay, so what can be done to deal with this problem? Several things to think on and check out and strategize. How much of the why can you figure and fix? Did this just start or has it been for ever or has it been a gradual thing? Have you had a physical and had medical problems ruled out? If it just started, what was happening along the lines of recent stresses, illnesses, changes in diet or medications? Have you had this situation checked out by a physician? Could you be masturbating and expending yourself (might it help to refrain from the one and see if there is a "build-up" for the other)? Could you have too much libido built up and you become overcharged at just the wrong moment (e.g., have you masturbated prior to a date to see if this helped)? Are you on medications that cause sexual problems (i.e., antidepressants, pain medications, blood pressure meds)? Are you constantly munching on stress all the time (if so, might a reduction in stress for a time be the place to be focusing creative thinking)? Are; you having these difficulties because of the partners you pick (e.g., do you worry about STD's, excess entanglements, poor hygene -- or have you had experiences of frights or disturbances during lovemaking)? Do you drink a lot of caffeine drinks, drinks with alcohol? To avoid complicating complications: keep on hand a collection of "public relations statements" When things go poorly in the process of sex, a lot of self-esteem issues, stupid attitudes, anger, confusion, upset and fears can come into play. The big, high intensity question is: "what does this mean?" What does it mean when a partner's arousal suddenly takes a turn to some other, poorly defined place? What explanation is there for this?
Speak to a physician A physician can be a good resource in two ways. First, you can discuss possible problems with medication side-effects, possible physical problems or diet and sleep problems that may be contributing. Second, you can discuss the possibility of Viagra to give your system a bit of a physical boost that might get you past some of the anxiety about past problems. Performance anxiety is lessened by a recent series of successes. Practice creative, alternative love-making techniques
The most obvious, difficult problem associated with performance anxiety is the negative consequences to the male erection. But love making does not strictly require an erection. Alternative love making strategies, utilizing fingers and hands, feet, lips and tongue can be very effective in bringing a partner to orgasm. It is not the case that you must get your partner used to sex without erections. Performance anxiety does not need to be more than a temporary problem in any relationship if both parties approach this with patient understanding. Alternative techniques for providing your lover with satisfying orgasms will result in a very patient, supportive partner. There is no need for performance anxiety in the wake of multiple orgasms.
Find peace with your problem Ironically, the less you worry about sexual dysfunction, the less you experience dysfunction. This isn't usually the whole problem -- though in some cases it is -- but it certainly can help a great deal. The more you can be patient and accepting with yourself and your difficulty, the less complicated the difficulty will be to deal with. Having faith, for example, that if you have trouble with sustaining an erection, it is a challenge or a cosmic message or something -- or no big deal because you can handle things one way or another -- will limit the impact that dysfunction on one day will have on subsequent days. When it goes well, don't panic if there's a reversal A big concern in getting past hurdles in life is how you handle it when things go bad. Things don't always go badly after they've improved, but they do with sufficient frequency to call it normal. When things go well, that means that there is every reason to expect them to go well again and again. But if things go back to bad, it doesn't mean that it is a permanent reversal -- though it can be if you decide it is. Having a positive attitude and an expectation that if you got things going in a good direction once, you can do it again will limit the length of reversals, relapses, set-backs, etc. The best of all possible worlds In the best of all possible scenerios, a guy might take a shotgun approach to such a difficulty -- trying a lot of things at once. Working on the attitude that everyone gets challenges of one sort or another and there's some sort of good Purpose for this one would help. Limiting any sexual activity at all to a very wholesome love relationship that has a future might help. Working on an understanding with the sexual partner that erections are only part of a larger effort to make love in all sorts of ways and that lack or loss of erections is a silly dysfunctional thing that absolutely does not represent true arousal or enjoyment levels will help. Speaking with a physician to check out physical problems and get a prescription for an "aid" will possibly be very helpful. Listening to a hypnosis tape/CD or visiting with a hypnotist to foster better performance with less self-consciousness can help -- as can also getting some help with positive attitude, hopefulness and self-esteem. And then when things go well once, not having an absolute heart attack worrying about the next time will help -- and when things have gone well for awhile, not having an absolute negativity attack if things go badly once or twice will help.
A final note about anxiousness during sexual relations: By the time a woman is 18 she has a 25% chance of having been sexually imposed on and by the time she is 30, she has a 30% chance of having been sexually assaulted. Most women with any sense begin to gravitate to somewhat anxious, sensitive guys. Being self-conscious and anxious about performance is not the worst thing to be struggling with as far as most women are concerned. Trying hypnosis and medications and other possible strategies is fine and may indeed work and solve all problems. However, even if nothing else helps, all that a guy needs to really do with any woman with a brain between her ears (e.g., any woman who is not simply out to see how thoroughly she can be "f---ed") is to establish a level of love-making performance that is satisfying to her. At that point there is no further reason for performance anxiety -- as long as the guy himself can just accept that level of sexual performance so he isn't pressuring himself any further -- and any aspects of performance that have been sort of lagging behind will begin to enter into the sexual experience format naturally. I can't say this emphatically enough: this is one of those irony-laden problems that goes away when you and your partner accept dealing with it it and work your life around it. If you're involved with a woman who is pressuring and demanding you perform better and thus making it tough to get past this, keep looking for another gal (or six). They're out there in droves looking for a more anxious kinda guy. |
| (These are my best ideas but use at your own risk and discretion. - Dr. Johnson) |
|
I'm a mid-twenties male. I had an experience years ago with a woman who was "out of my league" absolutely beautiful, and I had performance anxiety. I couldn't perform. Never happened to me ever. I was so ashamed, embarassed and humiliated. On top of this I have OCD, so I tend to ruminate on things like this. This happened years ago and it still effects me to this day. Some times I cant perform because I say to myslef "thats gonna happen again" -- a self-sulfilling prophecy of sorts. I'm so depressed and angry. I need help. Which disc do you think will help me and can you recommend and text or book? answer I don't have any recommendations as to books but you might look through the articles on my site. It sounds like your experience with the woman that you say was out of your "league" was an experience in mismatching, misinterpretation and self-fulfilling prophesy. A very common tale. You mismatched with a woman and couldn't perform "studly duties" and decided that rather than it being a simple situation of mismatching, it was some sort of inadequacy on your part. This is a very unkind thing to do to yourself -- adopting this interpretation of events -- though it is how many, if not most, guys react. In actuality, all that has happened is that you have discovered that you can't be some sort of performance penis. You may have to face never make a living in the porn industry. At least not as a star. And you may not be a hit with the women you might pick up in a bar any Saturday night. You may be forced to be sensitive and anxious and you may even find yourself thinking of alternative ways to make your lovers feel loved the first night or first several. You may find that you will only be attractive to sweet women who want real and rewarding relationships tethered to their sex lives. Or, with a little hard work you can work through this and work on being the performance penis that many guys like to dream of being -- having dozens or hundreds of women and risking their health and their happiness for the sake of sexual intensities. But I don't recommend it. Having a James Bond sex life is simply unrealistic in this day and age. Everything has two sides (at least). Being anxious is not the worst thing in the world. [Being OCD to some extent is a two-edged sword, too. Nobody very successful isn't OCD. It's the stuff that success is almost always made of. But it also messes with the level of happiness when turned toward things that don't make a lot of sense consciously, like sexuality or relationships. If you find it getting in your way in major ways, there are good meds that can keep it at bay. Most of them, though, mess with one's libido.] The side of the situation with that girl that was out of your "league" that you looked at was that you couldn't perform. Another side was that you guys were mismatched and your head could not get on the same wavelength with hers. If you had been more of a stud you might have had much more of a nightmare now than being anxious that you might not perform sexually. Becoming a love machine is probably just a matter of working on insensitivity. However, if you want to work on being a better lover to someone you love, I would suggest that you trust in love and your body and brain. A level-headed, practical, supportive woman that is attracted to the idea of a real relationship with you 1) will be happy to help you relax with lovemaking, 2) will see it as sweet that you have performance anxiety (especially if you make her feel like it is her beauty and sexuality that is overloading you), and 3) will fall in love with you if you make love to her -- just focusing on making love to her -- focusing on making her feel loved, desired and worshipped, using your mouth and your fingers, your moans and your breathing. If you decide you're going to be okay without an erection and your erection will come along in its own good time and you will find you do fine. This performance anxiety thing gets a lot of guys but you don't see the population numbers hurting from it. Ultimately just time and probability will sooner or later have you in a situation where you will find yourself surprising yourself with performance. Hypnosis recordings -wise,. you can help nature, time and probability with the recording focused on performance anxiety (Performance 2 or Performance Perfected), which focus on helping natural stuff happen without thoughts getting in the way. You can also probably benefit from Self To Self Partnering, which focuses on having an optimal attitude toward yourself in dealing with challenges. Healing Tree 2 focuses on establishing an attitude of resiliency in facing challenges in life. Who And How You Hope To Be focuses on reducing negative thinking and increasing positive thinking. To Be Comfortably Confident focuses on increasing a general sense of realistic self-confidence. Nightmares To Nice Dreams focuses on increasing positive attitude. For what you say, you probably don't actually NEED any of them and certainly you shouldn't need all of them. Just the first one might do. You can use your own judgment (use the Force, Luke) to decide which other ones you might want to try. If you don't find yourself feeling more hopeful after listening to one one or two times, just return it/them. Again, though, the situation only seems threatening and disheartening. The best catches are the women who have discovered that an anxious guy is way more likely to be sensitive to their needs and discomforts. Sexuality being more complicated actually makes it much more likely to work. A guy with some anxiousness about performance tends to think more, tends to appreciate a girl who is sensitive and supportive more, and tends to be less likely to stray. We guys are generally total idiots with respect to relationships. Being anxious isn't all bad. This is the real fix, the real cure -- realizing it is okay to have been anxious and finding a way to have faith in yourself, your body's wiring and life, and maintaining a little anxiousness that if you aren't careful, you will not perform for your lover as optimally as you otherwise might. If you can't get your head there, try my hypnosis recordings. If that doesn't do it, then ask around for a recommendation about a good counselor and go spend two or three hours having him or her discuss where you get stuck. If you don't believe me, ask a woman you trust. Show her this email and ask her for her reaction. Good luck. Dr. J |
|
another email
Q: If the Performance 2 CD works for me, will I need to use it forever? A: You should need only listen to it once or twice -- or to be certain, maybe three times over a period of three or so days before you want to test it out. When you have had a success or two without anxiety, you shouldn't need it except for future situations where you want to calm yourself down about self doubts. Performance anxiety usually happens because you start thinking, "Oh my, what if I fail?" You have to ask yourself how often you have to be successful to stop worrying about things like that. And, when you do have that thought cross your mind, remember to remember that life is full of glitches and goofs and you generally carry on fine afterward without performance anxiety. We males get ourselves so worked up about sexual performance -- and it is actually just a worry about being erect. Most women -- other than "business ladies" -- want to be made loved to more than they want to be "shafted," "speared," "pistoned" or pounded by penis. Use the CD and use this advice: when one system fails, remember that it is her arousal and pleasure that a gentleman with wisdom should be attending to, and not his own. Take care of your woman's arousal and she will take care of yours. Take care of your own and you will quickly be all alone taking care of your own. You have all sorts of body parts (i.e., fingers, palms, lips, tongue) to use and she has all sorts of places of arousal starting at her earlobes and working down to that area between ankles and heels that you can target. All sorts of things can get in the way of a man's erection -- drug side effects, alcohol, stress, lack of sleep, distracting thoughts. Performance anxiety happens when you stress yourself out with a crisis of faith. The human race is like a virus on the planet. All things in life -- penises included -- fail to function as expected now and then. We wouldn't double in population every few decades if our penises didn't generally function, in the long run, overall, very consistently. - Dr. Johnson |
|
another email
Q: I have recently started a new relationship with a fabulous, attractive girl. We have had sex about 8 times, but every time I worried about getting hard (just nerves about someone new) but got it up enough to get inside her and then I had no problems. Recently, I failed on two occasions and then it got worse. We only see each other on weekends and the last two weekends I could not even get a halfie. That is all I have been thinking about lately and it is killing me. This girl really means a lot to me, and now I feel I may lose her if I dont perform. In a way, I feel one positive out of this; If this is the girl, this would not end our relationship. But, the negatives tend to stay in my head. My previous girlfriend and I had the same difficulty at first, but got through it, and then it never happened again (we looked back and laughed at it). Now, it is like I have no sex drive, because I fear the worst happening. I have not even got an erection since our last good encounter, except druing sleep. I know it is all in my head and I think she knows that as well. Sometimes, she thinks she is the problem, which I know is not the case. She even gave me oral sex and I somewhat got it up, but it did not feel like a normal, all out erection, but I still reached orgasm. What are some ways I or we can deal with this, get over it, any help at all would be greatly appreciated. This is seeming to lessen my worries about it just writing this to someone. Thank you A: It's normal to have such things happen sometimes but there are some things that can make things more likely to work and more likely to not. First off, your explanation to your girlfriend is obviously going to be important. You obviously care a lot about her so your best explanation to her will be that this is happening because she is so important to you, so fine, so pretty, so perfect for you, that ironically you can't seem to make it unimportant enough to relax and let things happen. You are so nervous about failing that your physiology is affected. Second, have some faith in yourself and have some faith in life, luck and the hope of a higher power. The best you can do is the best you can do and what will be will be. Don't be telling yourself that if this can't work out it is a major loss -- because it isn't. If there is no purpose to life then ultimately you and all your experiences get erased. If there is, then have some faith that what will happen is part of a plan and you have to be a good soldier and just follow orders. Third, you can visit your doctor and get a little help if you want -- viagra, cialis, etc. -- and maybe have him go over you for any physical causes. All you probably need to do is get over the hump (so to speak) of being successful a few times and you won't need the pills. Fourth, if you are mixing alcohol and sex, cut out the alcohol. Some medications can also do this -- antidepressants and several others. if you're taking medications of any sort, ask your doctor or pharmacist if they can cause trouble in getting an erection or in being comfortable or confident. Pharmacists often are willing to explain medication effects without face to face contact if you are embarassed to ask. You can also find out a great deal online. Fifth, a wise man focuses on his lady's pleasure and doesn't get hung up about having a hard penis unless she is -- and if she is, that may be part of the problem. The fact is, most women have better experiences with a guy when he can't get hard and focuses on her orally and with fingers. This is better for women than when he uses his penis because orgasm for guys is like a sudden bucket of cold water hitting them which is a major love interruption for women. In case you don't know, women like lovemaking to go hours and hours with a gently, gradual, gradual slow down -- which is something they don't get when a guy has an orgasm and flops to their side and falls dead asleep. Having performance anxiety that interupts penile functioning can actually result in that penis's owner being a much better lover than he would be if his penis was performing per potential and preference. Get your mindset adjusted so that a) her arousal and lust is the primary target and b) no penis penitration will be involved. Further, you will actually be likely to find yourself a) appreciated and bragged about (much more relationship security there) and b) unexpectedly encumbered after lovemaking with an unrelenting erection. (Always expect Murphy's Law to thread into things. The more you want an erection, the less likely you will have one. The more you focus on making love without one, the more likely you will have one to deal with.) Sixth, if your lady is unable to be patient or understanding, then perhaps she was not the perfect match you thought she was. There is no logical, easy-to-articulate explanation for why sex does what it does to us, but you can find yourself head over heels about someone -- and THINK that she is the absolute, absolute, absolutely most perfect person for you for the rest of your life -- but then find that after a few months being together you can't stand her another minute. Intelligent men can find themselves drooling or falling over office furnature, promising things that they want to duck out on, breaking promises, lying, cheating, making fools of themselves -- you name it. It means very little that a woman feels right after just a few weeks. If she feels right after three or four years, however, then maybe you have something. Seventh, and somewhat along the same lines as the sixth, if you can't let yourself relax enough to make love, then maybe YOU are missing something consciously that you are unconsciously aware of and anxious about. It is quite common for a person to lie to him or herself if sex is invovled and conditions and situations are such that it is more likely that sex will be more involved if some adjustments to reality are made "real." In this case, what was thought of as performance anxiety is really unconscious fears or conflict. It is possible to unconsciously recognize that a woman is not actually as perfect as you would like to believe -- and it is possible that this would cause difficulty achieving erection. And lastly, you might try my Performance 2 hypnosis recording which you listen to once or twice in the day or days before making love. It focuses on tuning out thinking and letting nature take its course -- sort of getting the listener "in the zone." It's worth a try, has a money-back guarantee and is a cool relaxation recording to keep on hand for nights when you have trouble sleeping -- or for other performance problems that might come up in the future. Also, if other things are bothering you and intruding, other tapes and CDs I offer can help you not be worried about these things. - Dr. Johnson |
|
another email
Dear Dr. J I am a 20 year old college student who has never had sex before. In fact my first sexual experience wasn't until my second semester of my freshman year of college. I was 18 when the girl I was dating at the time tried to please me and I couldn't achieve erection. We tried a couple more occasions after that but I ever achieved erection and finally I broke up with her (partly because i was so embarrassed of it) . I NEVER have any problems masturbating -- but only when I'm intimate with a girl. Ever since then i still get nervous when I "hook up" with someone, I can always achieve erection in the process of fooling around, but I always lose it or fail to maintain one if the situation ever comes down to sex comes down to sex or oral sex. . After reading some of your and other internet articles, i know now some of the reasons I have this problem -- alcohol, nervousness and stress. But even though alcohol MAY have been a factor, I still get frustrated about and think and worry about it way too much. I dont get many opportunities to have sex, so I don’t really have anyone to "practice" on. And I want to know if it is a nervous thing or a physical thing. I think it would be beneficial if I saw a sex therapist but I'm not sure on how to find one. Also, unlike most other problems people have, I've NEVER known any of my friends to have had this problem (or at least are willing to tell about it) so I also would like to know HOW prevalent this problem is among men. Or if this is common "losing my virginity" problem among men, especially at this late an age. Thank you for time and your articles have been helpful answer Twenty years old and never having had sex, you feel on the outside looking in on something that it seems your friends have no problem achieving -- casual sex. And of course, all the tv and movies tell you you're missing out to the max. And you are probably correct in recognizing that even though none of your friends admit to any such difficulties, many have had at least a bit of this kind of difficulty or will some day. It's very common to happen some time in a guy's life. It a sort of extra-especially troublesome to happen to a young man just at the moment of losing his virginity. But there is a wide range of what is "normal" and I don't that your difficulty is so uncommon that it wouldn't fit into a generally normal category. It is easy to feel very anxious about what this might mean but it's probably not nearly as bad as it seems. Some of this problem is probably due to just a little glitch or two in your mind or your memory or your physical make-up. These can be dealt with fairly easily with time and thinking, and possibly counseling and possibly meds for a few months. Other parts can be dealt with but perhaps should not be. Some part of this is probably related to individual differences that that make you different from others but not any worse off. It's a challenge to be different and to miss out on some of the things others enjoy. But this is not a situation that means you cannot have a sexual relationship that works wonderfully well. It doesn't even mean that it will be harder to find a good, sexually rich, long-term relationship with a woman that you adore and find to be the sexiest woman anywhere on the earth. It only means you will probably have fewer sexual relationships -- or at least fewer erections -- along the way before you find that perfect partner. It probably only means you won't have as many war stories, war wounds and war scars to share with your buddies when kicking back at the bar. It also probably means you won't have as many opportunities to discover the wonderful stresses of AIDS or other STDs, angry women, crazies or other such crap -- that come with the ability and tendency to use an easily hard, often ready to rock, penis that erects without any discretion. First off, it is most likely that you were just so nervous about your first experience that you had trouble with achieving your erection. That's the most likely cause of all this. Then you were so nervous about that happening the first time and your girlfriend was probably also nervous ("Oh, no! I'm not a turn on for him!!") that between the two of you you didn't have enough understanding of how sex works and you both were very nervous the second time ("Oh, my God! It happened again! It's happened EVERY time!") and that made you very nervous the third time and thus the third time, too! This is simply bad luck and it happens to a lot of guys -- if not most -- at one time or another in their life, though I don't have a statistic off hand. [It happened to me with a girl I met a couple of years after my first time -- which was better luck in my case than you had. The girl was really pretty but very anxious and she was so hot that I felt inadequate and had some trouble -- which she interpretted as some sort of problem at least between us and she got very angry. It was awhile before I could even try again and even then I really needed to be with someone I really was connected to emotionally and even then it took some time -- some nights together -- before things got working right.] Sexuality is just a very sensitive area of life -- and a little anxiety can do a lot! All you know is that you had a different experience from your friends and now have a different experience in getting an erection. This just means they can be much less discriminating in who they have sex with. But being different, though it has its drawbacks, isn't the same as damaged, defective, diseased, disabled or destroyed. It just means you have different challenges. In the long run the numbers of pros and the numbers of cons is likely to add up to the same as your friends'. And, this is for sure -- you can bet if any of your friends had been a bit nervous their first time and had had a problem big enough to be a bit nervous their second time, they would feel like it was a big problem when they tried to get an erection with a girl the third time -- just like you did -- and they would be feeling just exactly like you do. They just had a bit more luck -- or, looking at it another way, you just had a bit more good luck. You've already figured out that it has something to do with the difference between masturbating versus being with a girl. You have no problems with achieving and maintaining an erection when masturbating but you do when with a girl you'd like to be intimate with. This leaves only a few possibilities and it is most likely that it all boils down to a combination of some degree of any of the following:
The trick is to work on irrational fears and make sure you don't try to "fix" what is really not broken. a) If a part of this problem is related to your physical make-up (your brain) tends to make you a bit more anxious in general than you need to be, can often fix such a problem by simply working on your attitude, using self help books and aids like hypnosis recordings, counseling or medications available through your general practice medical doctor or a psychiatrist. Physical problems can also be related to an interaction between alcohol or some medication or even overwork or stress. When the brain is over-taxed by exhaustion, chemistry or stress, it cannot do the work it needs to do to organize an erection. In this kind of situation, of course, it is a matter of reducing the exhaustion, the alcohol, the stress or whatever so that you can function more appropriately in sex. b) If a part of this problem is related to your experience or your expectations and attitudes -- that is, if you have had experiences that make you anxious about relationships and intimacy, then you have to decide which parts of these fears, expectations and/or attitudes are helpful to you and which are not. Though pretty much all fears and anxiousness are uncomfortable, many are very helpful and protective. Finding out, for example, that there is a higher likelihood of catching STDs from partners that tend to make themselves sexually available without much of a relationship or history, and then finding that you are too anxious to have an erection when you have a chance to have sex with a woman who you don't really know -- is finding out that your brain is working right. Having your brain deny you sex for your own good is for your own good (duh) though it never ceases to amaze me how many intelligent people don't seem to get that. It is not the end of the world to be a guy that has it in his head that it is dangerous to be casual about who you put your penis into. It is dangerous. Saying that you wish you were able to screw around a lot is like saying you wish you weren't so nervous about trying to surf on top of a speeding car because your friends seem to have so much fun doing it. If a part of this difficulty is due to you wanting to sleep with girls that you really know are not good candidates for anything beyond a night or two of passion and a higher likelihood of STDs, you should get real about what you are doing. A sex therapist can probably help if your difficulties are very unusual or tenacious, but this is a pretty common situation and finding such a specialist isn't likely necessary. If you want to find one, start by asking your physician for a referral. c) If a part of your problem is that your values and attitudes about intimacy dictate a certain hesitancy to be involved sexually with a girl before having a very sound bond between you, then you are going to have to take a long hard look at where the discrepency is and either change your values or change your expectations of yourself. Values are often overlooked in this modern world but they can be quite engrained and they are usually there because they are meaningful. If they are irrational and silly then we aren't talking about a values issue, we're talking about an irrationality issue (as in #b above). But if deep down you really want to conform to a certain set of values and hadn't actually recognized that they were conflicting, then your brain is working properly and you need to notice what you are expecting of yourself. In your case, you said you believed alcohol might have played a part in your first difficulty. If you felt you were so nervous that you had to be drunk to have sex, you were trying to overpower your own brain's warning mechanisms. Alcohol is a very heavy-handed way to resolve conflict in your mind. That kind of conflict might mean you were feeling like you needed to push your own values out of your mind in order to get studly. That is a very unhealthy practice. If you need to dumb up to have sex, you are probably trying to have sex with the wrong girl in the wrong situation. d) So, what if your problem has to do with Higher Powers and Purpose and such? Now, I don't have any direct line that I am aware of to God or cosmic forces of any kind, so please accept comments in the area from a purely practical perspective. I have found, personally, that trying to make things happen the way I want them to happen results in either success or failure. And, when I fail, I find it is much more helpful to assume that some higher power wants me to fail. That doesn't mean I can't learn from mistakes that caused the failure -- it just means that assuming divine intervention is easier on the mind and emotions than assuming there are no Higher Powers and assuming that mistakes are just the crap of life. Basically, there is very little proof that there is a Higher Power and very little proof there is not. But it feels better to assume there is and nobody could ever find out there is no afterlife and feel remorse for wasting time thinking there was. Working on finding the right girl for you with the attitude that someone "up there" is making sure you fail at achieving an erection until the right one comes along can make this a much less frustrating challenge. What you can do and expect, I think, is work on making sure you aren't full of irrational fears and anxiousness. Then you can work on finding the right woman for a long term relationship. You basically need to just find a woman that makes you feel as comfortable, sexually, as you are when masturbating. This means you probably have to wait on trying a sexual relationship until you find a potential sex partner in the context of a relationship where you feel very close, bonded, emotionally secure, etc., and where you feel you basically have a basis for a very good, long-lasting relationship. You will have to tell potential partners that you cannot simply hop into bed without really knowing your partner very well. Not wanting to get your penis into a woman as quickly as possible will be seen by the right woman as an endearing quality. And when you finally become comfortable enough to sleep with a woman, you will probably do well to tell her right up front that you are very anxious about your performance and will need her to be very patient. This basically screens out the women who are more interested in a filling relationship than a fulfilling relationship. The kind of woman you will need to find is one that can be sensitive and patient -- who wants a relationship with all of you more than a relationship primarily with your penis. You can probably best plan to make love to a woman without your penis for the first two or three times. ( If you didn't know you could make love to a woman without your penis, we should add the problem of being very unfamiliar with sexuality techniques and issues to your problems list.) If you go into a sexual relationship not expecting to be able to perform with a rigid penis until things are just right -- with a girl you feel very good about, safe, secure, patient and loving who expects you to have trouble getting an erection -- if you become comfortable making love to her with a focus on her pleasure, you will find you can be surprisingly successful in achieving an erection -- and you will find yourself becoming hard and being inside her with a naturalness and rightness that will astonish you. With respect to the CDs I offer -- most of which are intended to deal with one form of anxiety or another, there are a few that might help you. If you find yourself getting to the point of maybe being in the position to try to be sexual -- if you are in a really very good relationship that promises to be the right one -- Performance 2 is designed to help eliminate self-monitoring and fearful self-talk, and to be comfortably confident focuses on being more self-confident. In the mean time, if you want help with anxiousness and stress about dealing with this hassle, healing tree 2 focuses on sustaining faith in yourself during hard struggles. If this has come from some event or difficulty that you believe is at the bottom of your difficulty with intimacy or girls, allowing one's self to get past it focuses on getting past things without so much remorse and guilt. If you are having trouble being patient with yourself about all this -- feeling negative and angry about you, then self to self partnering can help optimize your attitude. The part of this that is probably going to be the greatest part of the struggle is not getting yourself so anxious about performing sexually that when all other issues are resolved, your fear about not performing results in your not performing. If you do find yourself in a great relationship with a patient, caring, supportive girl and IF you can't seem to get past this, you should assume that you just have a small barrier in your expectation of failure. All you would need to get past this is one success. Hypnosis or hypnosis recordings, a counseling session, a viagra pill, an anti-anxiety med -- anything that would get you one successful experience -- will probably tear down your expectation of failure and get you to smooth sailing from then on. (Watch out for anti-depressants, though, that reduce sexual functioning.) So basically, I guess it boils down to doing what you can to find a great relationship, don't freak yourself out with expectations of failure and let nature take its course. And if you have a block, it should be easy and quick to fix. This is only a big problem if you had your hopes up that you would be a great cocksman some day -- having great sex with a different babe every day or so and dying on an AIDS ward. Keep in mind that at a time when sex can be lethal, Jim, it is not a terrible disadvantage that you are forced to take a careful look at issues regarding your sexual attitudes, practices and hopes and it is certainly not a problem if your penis requires a great deal of comfort and safety in a solid relationship to work well. Don't be telling yourself that you're deficient or defective because your sexual comfort zone is complicated and limiting to solid relationships. Tell yourself that the cosmos wants to make sure you don't get sidetracked or bogged down -- or down right killed -- by some half-baked relationship with a floozy. -- And don't assume your buddies are so lucky. Questions? Comments? Dr. J |
|
another email !? (yep, another email)
Dear Dr. J I am in my mid 20's. And I have been in a sexual relationship with my girlfriend for two and a half years. About a month ago I had a failure to launch so to speak. In our lovemaking I almost routinely giver her oral sex, and usually that is enough to get me aroused for sex. However on that occasion it did not happen, she tried to give me stimulation with her hand, and even oral sex (which as a rule she never does). However nothing. After which she started a whole "you dont find me attractive" routine, which is 100% false since she is a gorgeous woman. We only see each other on the weekends and we tried to have sex again the next week. Again I was unable to get it up. It has been now five weeks. And everytime she gets angrier and more depressed, and as a result I am getting more performance anxiety, I guess. I tried talking to her, and outside of the bedroom our relationship is still healthy. I have also not had any trouble with masturabtion - I am able to get it up as regular. I am now wondering what to do? I have recently started law school, and I am sure that the stress has something to do with it, but as she pointed out It can't last all 3 years can it? I was wondering should I go to the doctors for some Viagra, but am I too young for that? And suppose personally (I guess more for my self esteem) I dont want to rely on medication quite yet, what should I do? Obviously at my age this is not something I could discuss with my friends, so I was browsing your website and some of the articles were on point, but I wasnt sure if age had something to do with it.That is why I decided to write to you. I am hoping you can give me some guidance. response from Dr. J Though it is possible that you could work at it so you would be unable to get an erection all through law school, it would take a lot of careful work and a lot of bad luck to manage that. You are starting law school. That isn't something you will do for four years. You will only start law school for a few weeks. Then you will be in law school which will also have occasional stress highs and lows but they will not be the same as your first few weeks. It is very likely that it is the stress of starting school that caused you to be unable to achieve an erection. You may be very stressed for a while. But though you seem insightful about the stress messing you up, you don't seem to be very insightful about stress and struggles in general. Even if you started law school every day for four years, there would be a "Groundhog's Day" -sort of learning curve (the movie with Bill Murray where he got very cool over the many repetitions of the one day) that would keep you from having the same amount of problem all through the four years. Getting yourself freaked out that you might have a problem for four years, though, would be a step toward having one for that long. You have two problems - one is the stress of law school beginning and the other is the stress of freaking yourself out about having had the problem. You are just in your twenties, so you haven't had a lot of time to figure life out. You will find, however, that most of your problems are double layered like this - the problem and the problem of your freaking out about the problem. Everything is complicated. Good things are trouble. Bad things are good for you. It can get you spinning just thinking about it but cut yourself some slack and use this as a growth experience. Everything carries pressure and stress. Having a pretty girlfriend is stressful. (There was a song that was very popular for a brief time on the radio -- in the days before FM -- that suggested that if a guy wanted to be happy for the rest of his life he should never make a pretty woman his wife - "from my personal point of view," the refrane said, "get an ugly girl to marry you.") Going to law school is stressful. Both are good but stressful. It has to be okay to fall down a bit now and then. Assume it can happen, notice that you always get up and always survive. Stress can destroy and erection like a fire extinguisher puts out a small fire. And when a girl is very beautiful, a lot of guys find that stressful enough in itself to make it impossible to get things going. You are very lucky to have a supportive girlfriend that you have some time with. This could have happened at any time. Imagine if you had just met her. (When this happens to a guy at a very early stage in a relationship, some women have been known to become very angry, even viscious and vengeful, taking the lack of erection as some sort of violation of an implied contract.) I can't give much guidance that I haven't already given on the website. You have to find a way to not be so stressed that you might not get erect and then you will probably get quite erect when you otherwise don't have a ton of stress going on. If you hadn't heard - which you might have if you had friends that you could talk to, a lot of stress will make it hard to perform anything well that requires some kicked back focus without distraction. A lot of stress - an increased amount (e.g., starting law school, final exams, starting your first job out of law school, going to court when a case with billions of dollars or peoples' lives hinges on your performance) - will mess with almost any kind of physical performance. I wouldn't expect sex to include an erection, I wouldn't try competing at water skiing and I wouldn't go hunting if there was a lot on my mind like you have with starting school. But now that it has happened, are you going to give yourself a break and let it get filed under "I was under too much stress" and let yourself go back to previous levels of performance, or are you going to be freaking yourself out that it might happen again? If you do find yourself dealing with ongoing performance anxiety about your ability to get an erection with your girlfriend and if you want the relationship to work out you have to work with Murphy's Law, not against it. (Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong it will.) To do that you get both parties into the mind-set that you have to do without the erection part of the program and rely on hands, finger, mouths and tongues. If she is going to be a supportive partner, she will need to be able to be a supportive partner. If she is not a candidate for partner, then "Somebody" "up there" - or your own unconscious mind - is telling you that you will need to be more practical with respect to whom you intend to use your penis with, on, in, etc. In spite of the fact that there are a lot of people, guys especially, who like to talk about lots of casual sex and how fun it is, casual sex is dangerous and frequently self destructive in more ways thatn just health-wise. Casual sex is just not very cool to engage in. It messes up a person's ability to really focus on high intensity partnering and the ecstacy of sex with a true lover. But, different strokes for different folks. This stuff does happen because of certain meds and certain diseases. If you haven't got some sort of physiological disease process going and if she is a good, patient, loving candidate for partner, AND if you are having performance anxiety problems lingering long past getting used to school, then get resolved to make love with whatever works and resolve not to have your self-esteem or whatever wrapped up in whether or not you have a hard penis. Women do not need penitration to orgasm and it is a very "broadening" experience for the average male to have to make love without his penis for awhile. Learn to make love without relying on your penis and with the resolve on both your parts that you do not have to have a penis in play to show affection and then, about one second after you have really achieved that resolve, your penis will become hard and functional. And after that, after a few nights of hard penis performance, the performance anxiety will be gone. It still might happen that during finals you have a tough time getting erect and, if you freak yourself out again, you will get it all started up again. Then you have to deal with it again like you did before. What usually happens, though, is that once you achieve being able to perform a few times without problems, hard penis-wise, you probably won't have further difficulties. In dealing with all this, it forces you to really work with your girlfriend. She needs to understand that it is a tough challenge for you but that it has to do with feeling that performing for her is so important - not that she is not important. This is a very, very important distinction. You need to help her understand that when you get overloaded by stress, though you like to make love to her a great deal, having an erection and making her happy seems so important that when you are already very stressed, you can't get erect to make love to her because it is so important. Help her to understand that patience will fix things and that you hope she can be patient with you. Because people can be so shy about sexuality, she may not have ever heard this could happen. Like you, she may not feel comfortable talking about it with her friends. It happens a lot -- to almost everyone at some time or another. It is no big deal if everyone is patient and practical. The main thing with this kind of thing is that it is a big deal because it seems like a big deal and you fix it by deciding it is no big deal that once in awhile things don't work out perfectly. This is the deal whether you get anxious about public speaking, driving, meeting parents or you can't perform sexually. This is the same with everything. If you have a car crash and then get very, very anxious that you might have another car crash, it will make it much more likely that you will have another wreck. If you make a fool of yourself when public speaking, saying something very silly and confused - and then you become very anxious about it happening again - you are far more likely to find it happening again the next time you speak in public. If, when meeting your girlfriend's father, you suddenly become very nauseous and throw up all over him - and then if you become very, very anxious about this happening again if you meet him again, then the likelihood of it happening again the next time you meet him is very high. On the other hand, if you accept your car crash as a fluke, normal in anyone's life, and you accept your confused mistake when speaking, and you decide that your nausea was a normal thing to happen that first meeting, then you don't keep feeing the anxiety. If you would like to try an extra boost from my hypnosis CDs, there are three or more that can help. They are not necessary, but they might help. If you are very poor, try Performance Perfected. It is designed to help get you less consciously concerned and stressed during a performance of any kind, sexual or etcetera. If you have a few extra dollars and would like to make sure your efforts are optimized, you can optimize your efforts and your mental health and attitude with Self to Self Partnering. It is very helpful when struggling with any challenge, especially one with so much self esteem wrapped up in it. If you have a comfortable cache of coin, you might also add Performance 2, which is very much like Performance Perfected with respect to focus on getting your self-consciousness out of the way of your performance - it just does its thing from a bit different perspective with a little different emphasis. If you are actually fairly well off - a young promising law student coasting along with a lot of cash stashed, then you might also add Healing Tree 2, which focuses on fostering a sense of resiliency and wisdom from experiencing adversity. (There are discounts for multiple purchases.) Life is a heck of a stressful adventure. But addressed with a practical and positive approach, life offers some wonderful experiences - not the least of which will be finding yourself making love to someone you dearly, clearly love and appreciating everything working so extraordinarily better than it did for a bit there with the current girlfriend and the current challenge. You will find yourself able to appreciate making love much more after this challenge - like you would find yourself able to appreciate a hamburger more after being faced with possible starvation for a few weeks. I hope all that is helpful. Dr. Johnson |
|
still another email (from the girlfriend)
Dear Dr. J There is this guy that I have just started seeing. He is a virgin and I am not. However, I only had one sexual experience, which was with my two year boyfriend, and we were both virgins; so it's not like I have STD's or anything. Anyway, when we are fooling around, or even with the slightest rubbing of his leg, he gets a boner/gets hard, and well you know, becomes in the mood and such and can go.Actually, the first time that he released was when we were dry humping. Anyway, we tried to have sex for the first time and we would work ourselves up and all so he would of course have an erection so he could put on the condom, but whenever he goes to put one on, he automatically loses his erection. I didn't think anything of it at first because I had figured it was due to part of him being a virgin and just being nervous. Now just the other day we tried it again, and he lost his erection when he went to put on the condom. I keep on telling him that if he's not ready to have sex, then that's okay; I wasn't going to pressure him. He keeps on telling me otherwise. So finally I said, maybe you have performance anxiety, which he believes might be the case but can't figure out why (which then I went online to find information about it and decided to e-mail you). But one thing I did notice was that every time we are standing up and fooling around or kissing, he would have an erection. But every time we would lie down in attempts to have sex, he would lose it. So then we decided to try to have sex standing up, you know, to see what would happen. Surprisingly he still keeps the erection but as soon as his tip hits my outer part of my vagina, he automatically goes limp. What do you suggest that we do? He keeps on telling me how embarrassed he is and I think that that kind of thinking might make it even worse. I tell him all the time how I don't need sex to be satisfied (which is the truth) and how I am here for him whevener he would like to try and I never make fun of him. How can I get him to escape this performance anxiety without having to take pills (just because I think that would make him feel even worse)? Help! Thanks! answer: Here are two strategies for dealing with your issue: 1) (This assumes a good relationship, good communication and a cooperative attitude in dealing with the performance anxiety element of a couple's lovemaking.) You can try to make a rule that there will be no penis-vagina penitration for six months. All sex to be accomplished without penile penitration. Touching penis to vaginal lips can be okay, but that has to be with condom on. To him you make it clear that this is the rule. The law. BUT, what you will expect to do is get him very, very frustrated, and when things get tough to control and frustration threatens to violate the rules - after many instances of sternly refusing to allow any violation of the six month rule - you just violate the rule and give in. I am assuming in all this that it will get crazy WAY before the six months is up. I am assuming that it will not be hard to give in after so long not allowing what is a normal completion. What you want to have working is all sex drive and no actual rational thinking - so he is absolutely, completely, mind-bendingly frustrated, "blue balls"-type crazy when you finally give in and let nature take its course. Making love under the condition and admonition that the penis is not allowed inside will tend to take away all performance anxiet and leave pure tension. If you can get him worked up enough times and get him convinced there is no way you are going to give in (if he thinks you are just getting him worked up until he can't stand it and he expects you to let him try to penitrate you, it won't reduce the performance anxiety), you should find yourself finally having the rules and the performance anxiety steam rollered over before he realizes that he has done (before he realizes he is doing what was before so anxiety provoking). This could possibly give him the impression that when you say "no" you mean "yes" - but if you have a good relationship and good communication, that isn't a certain consequence. It gets him passed the concern that his penis will not perform well because he will be doing the opposite of what he is supposed to be accomplishing with his penis. You will be saying six months is the rule but you might be giving in within a month or two - depending on how long it takes to get him convinced you mean what you say when you tell him he has to have a condom on and not be using his penis for anything but "dry" rubbing - which will be the case after you have him used to getting very worked up and having to repeatedly deal with his penis being denied access to your vagina. This is sort of working with a reliance on Murphy's Law. When he thinks he is supposed to be performing with his penis, he has trouble doing it. When he thinks is is supposed to be NOT performing with his penis, he just may find that he has just as much trouble doing that. As long as you both know this is intended to be a fix for the performance anxiety and soft penis situation, it should not seem like rape and there should be an end to the performance anxiety after a night of successful lovemaking. It usually only takes one experience of success to get over the wrory. After that, a guy might have an incident now and then of inappropriate softness, he at least knows that it is only an incident - that it also works the other way sometimes. or 2) You can have him try my recording, performace perfected. It is intended to get people past the anxiousness that gets in the way of natural "in the zone" flow of the situation. If you guys have some bucks, self to self partnering will also help with basic optimizing of attitude (there is a small discount for purchasing two CDs together). He listens to the recording(s) one or two times in the space of a week and then once in awhile in the months after that. The performance CD focuses on getting self-consciousness stopped. The self CD focuses on not getting stressed out with one's self. Good luck. Dr. J |
|
another email
Hello I am 19 years old. My partner ( now ex-partner ) and I have had sex several times, but I have never been able to last very long. I can masturbate without a problem, lasting until it hurts to touch before an orgasm if I set my mind to it. This is the same with oral sex. However, once intercourse comes into play, I can feel my penis rapidly trying to orgasm, and once we begin, it doesn't take long to lock a load into the chamber and quickly shoot off. Occasionally my penis will stay hard after orgasm and allow me to continue for a while until a second orgasm, but not often. I haven't been able to find a solution, and I am not sure if I can train myself, or I need counselling, or what. Sex has always been a big deal to me, some unachievable activity, but I have been sexually active for almost a year now, and intercourse is consistently short and frustrating. Suggestions? answer: You should start with a visit to a good MD - probably a urologist - with special skills in this area. You might get a referral from your general practice MD. Just a visit to a general practice doctor would not be sufficient because you need to rule out any and all physical problems before you look into psychological and "training." Sex is a big deal to everyone. It's part of the standard wiring package included with each set of legs, arms and brain. The reason science believes in evolution is because it is apparent that the architecture of the human body is basically the architecture of the mouse body with a great many add-ons. Because baaic mice designs do not include a lot of considerations for, or reliance on, complex thinking, the whole sex thing makes no sense at all past the replenishing of the species. Do not go into doctoring for the fine-tuining of your sexual apparatus with a lot of self-talk about how critical and crucial it is to get your machinery working to a standard based on movies you've seen or the bragging of buddies. If you do, Murphy - of Murphy's Law - will hear you and deal with you harshly. Look into this with the understanding that you are just getting into this sex life thing and it - and your mind - is very complicated and you might actually have nothing wrong other than just not realizing that your mind and body did not like your recent girlfriend as well as you thought they should. I get an enormous number of emails from young guys who hear their buddies speaking of great tales of cocksmanship that have a constant hard-on at their core and a trail of panting, bow-legged babes in their wake - but who do not find their own penises working that way. Though it may seem like it would be fun to have a lot of meaningless physical intimacy with women who open their bodies to guys they "hardly" know and who want to feel ravished, savaged, rolled and poled and then thrown away, there is a lot to be said for finding out that your penis has an agenda - that it wants to make sure you find a strong, meaningful relationship that might be able to last through children, decades and possibly even death, and that it will only perform under those conditions. It does happen. Dr. Johnson |
|
and still another email - mostly anxious obsessions Hello- I have ordered your Performance 2 CD and can’t wait to receive it. I believe I have developed male performance anxiety. My wife and I have enjoyed a healthy sex life for several years and I never really gave sex a second thought. We average making love once a week and sometimes I masturbate as well. I was quite promiscuous in my younger days and once in a while I would experience not getting an erection but it never really bothered me too much due to excess partying and all. However during my first sexual experience ever I experienced this and it definitely left a scar. When my wife and I first got together I was very nervous at first, but happy and relieved when things worked fine and never really gave it a second thought except about how grateful I was that things worked. Some months ago I had a mild panic/anxiety attack while making love and everything shut down. I have not been the same since. All I think about is sex and an inability to perform. I have worn my wife out (with sex) in the last three months and have proved to myself over and over that I can perform, however the negative thoughts are not going away and I feel I’m starting to get worse. I’ve been on Zoloft, but I’m currently weaning off (through my doctor) because my problem is not depression. I’m a recovering alcoholic so I believe I’m a bit OCD, but I realize my real problem is male performance anxiety. Zoloft also left me numb and I feel that could make matters worse. Here’s an interesting tidbit. I’m a professional performer by trade and have had bouts of performance anxiety performing in front of audiences. However since this has happened I basically could care less how I perform and I’m playing better than I ever have. I can’t seem to focus on anything but this. I’m eating a good diet, don’t smoke and exercising like a fool. I’m also heavily involved in A.A. which works wonders and gets me out of my own head as well. Any suggestions you have would be beyond greatly appreciated. As mentioned I ordered your Performance 2 CD. Would additional hypnosis also help or would it contradict this CD? Please forgive my ignorance as I know nothing about this. Also, would pills such as Viagra or… help in this situation? Thanks again for your time. answer: You have a great deal on your mind about this anxiety issue. A good counselor might be better than an anonymous shrink that you've stumbled across online. However, maybe things happen via some sort of guidance from above somewhere and this will be a helpful email. No way to know - "let the buyer beware," they say. Anyway, here are a few thoughts ... It does sound like you are struggling with anxiety but in spite of the fact that it takes a form related to performance and in spite of the fact that you are a male, it really doesn't sound like what one would diagnose as "male performance anxiety" because it seems like you are describing anxiousness without significant performance interference - confidence interference, contentment interference, yes, but not performance interference. This is often the case with anxiety related to one's wiring more than a particular traumatization. I would guess that you have a parent or a sibling or two that also struggles with anxiety now and then, too. When anxiety is caused by an experience - a car crash or an assault - then anxiety is (usually, not always) either generally generalized or specific to some related aspect of the trauma (e.g., fear of driving or fear of grumpy, angry people). When one has a bit of anxiety prone wiring/biology/DNA, though, it is often the case that the brain focuses anxiousness on one or two aspects of life at a time, switching them to something else now and then (e.g., musical performance last year, relationship performance this year, Walmart crowds next year, produce bins at the supermarket the year after). I don't have enough info on you to say that this is the case, but you do. If it is the case that your anxiousness just morphs - like that game whack-a-mole, where you whack a critter popping it's head out here and it pops up there and you whack it there ant it pops up over there - then it might be easier on you to simply recognize that you are dealing with wiring-related anxiousness that is actually mostly unrelated to experience. In such a situation it is better to focus on general helps for anxiousness, work on developing an attitude of acceptance of the challenge and recognition of the arbitrariness of the particular issue and not waste a lot of time figuring out the details of old scars and causative experiences. When dealing with challenges of any kind it is important to maintain a sense of experiment and exploration. Some ideas may seem to hold promise and then later be seen to have problem side effects. Zoloft and such meds, for example, can be very helpful with respect to obsessing about problems but they can reduce libido and cause problems in relationships because of a reduction in the passion felt and expressed. If you try medications, beware of assuming they are necessary without careful consideration. Sometimes a crutch is only necessary while something heals. Other times, a crutch is needed more or less permanently. A crutch relied on when not needed can actually cause dysfunction. With emotional/psychological wounds or dysfunctions, it is seldom clear what the extent or duration of an injury, dysfunction and necessary healing is. It is astonishingly complex - living, experiencing, thinking - and astonishingly wonderful how well it all works, in spite of the relatively small glitches that come up now and then. Isn't it interesting how in your situation one anxiety seems to erase another. It can work that way with all sorts of challenges and with pain. (It is also true of perspectives on things. It is very difficult to wrap one's mind around multiple perspectives - much the same as it is difficult to stand in two very different places at the same time to look at a scene.) With respect to most of the issues of life - issues of performance anxiety and all other forms of anxiety included - the most important three things to consider are attitude, attitude and attitude. Everything in life seems best represented by the Yin Yang symbol. Everything is actually a mix of positive and negative - with a bit of negative in the positive and a bit of positive in the negative. From one perspective, a challenge like you describe can seem an unfair nightmare, reinforcing one's helplessness and hopelessness. From another perspective, just as true, such a challenge can be seen as an opportunity for growth and development, guided by unseen forces that assure one's life works out always. If you focus on the positive aspects, that focus often overshadows the alternative negative focus. This is a tad easier said than done and it seems the default for humans when stressed, distressed, tired or inattentive is to adopt negative perspectives. Nevertheless, though, it is very helpful to work on achieving and re-achieving a positive perspective on things whenever possible. This is a very nifty and often unnoticed aspect of our minds and our lives - that if one uses the challenges that one faces as opportunities for growth and an exercises in acceptance, problem solving and endurance - everything is easier and life seems almost magically positive. If one assumes, for example, that everything that happens is happening on purpose to make one a better person (and, yes, it is true that there is no evidence that this is the case but it is also true that there is no evidence that it is not the case) - life is still hard but it is much more fun and one actually grows much more in wisdom and resilience from one's experiences. Will other hypnosis recordings help or clash? They will help. As will articles on strategies for being positive and practical in coping with life and anxiety. I have several such articles online and I have several hypnosis recordings that focus on planting the same or similarly practical, positive perspectives on dealing with life in the deeper, unconscious parts of the mind where fears and attitudes are held . They can be very helpful in some very empowering, healing ways if my word weavings click with your mind. If you were to obtain more of my recordings, the only proviso is that you limit yourself to listening to one recording one time per day maximum. You can read all the articles you want but the hypnosis recordings can make a person excessively spacey and inwardly focused if too much time is spent focused on them. It might be very helpful to you, actually, to engage in a broader sort of self-growth effort than just the temporary elimination of self critical, worrisome thoughts (the focus of Performance 2). You might find that several of my recordings, listened to in an order determined by a sort of "use the force" decision process - might help you with your experience of anxiety in general and your approach to, and appreciation of, your life, your challenges and your blessings. Self to Self Partnering, for instance, is a very helpful attitude optimizer that can be very helpful in promoting a very positive and helpful set of attitudes about dealing with challenges, limitations, difficulties and dilemmas. Healing Tree 2, too, is very helpful in self improvement. It is a very interesting rambling about trees and tribulations that poignantly focuses both conscious and unconscious mental processes the fact that the struggles that one's life has offered - every one of them - have been endured successfully and have always resulted in increased wisdom and resiliency - even though that might not have been noticed at the time or possibly ever. A number of other recordings that focus on various aspects of one's thinking and that can foster a general sense of confidence and reduce or eliminate worry and fear, are listed on the page of anxiety-healing recordings. Hope that helps. Dr. Johnson |
|
and still another email - mostly anxious obsessions Hello- |
|
TAKE NOTE: In self-helping it's important to tell helpful from hurt. It's important to give yourself permission to consult a professional if you need one. Just as its important to get to a doctor if you're severely injured, and in borderline cases of injury it's better to waste the time it takes to go see a doctor than risk that you should have -- and just as one should not goof around with bandaids when an artery is gushing -- it's important to consult a psychologist,
psychiatrist or other counselor or physician -type professional if you believe you might, in fact, need one. Better safe and not sorry -- a stitch in time saves nine. If it turns out its a false alarm, the professional will tell you. You might take a look at the comments on finding a therapist for some tips.
|
head-cleaners visitors since Valentines Day, 2001 |
|
|
Rule out physical disease, medication side effects, alcohol effects, the effects of stressor distractions, ill health or lack of sleep.
