Performance Anxiety

Did you know that Performance Anxiety is one of the top causes of erectile dysfunction? It negatively impacts your ability to get and maintain an erection throughout lovemaking. It also contributes to continued erectile issues even if you have a medical cause for your erectile dysfunction.

What is Performance Anxiety?

Performance anxiety is the stress you feel to please your partner sexually using your penis, typically, through intercourse.

You can also think of it as performance worry, which is a worry that you will not get or maintain an erection and thus not “perform” good enough sexually with a partner.

If you wonder if this type of performance stress is contributing to your erectile dysfunction, it helps to identify what your thoughts are before and during sex. Do you have thoughts like:

"Will I get hard?"

"Am I getting hard?"

"Am I hard enough?"

"I need to have intercourse before I lose my erection."

"Is she getting mad at me because I'm not hard?"

"Oh no, I'm getting soft!"

"What will my partner think about me?"

"What's wrong with me?"

If that sounds like you, then you have performance anxiety.

Every person I treat for erectile dysfunction talks about the performance pressures they feel to please their partner and to get and keep an erection. It makes complete sense as it just takes one time of having erection problems to cause a cycle of worrisome thoughts that lead to future erection issues and erectile dysfunction. Yes, you read that correctly, it just takes ONE experience of erection difficulties to throw you into this cycle.

It happens even when your lack of or soft erection is due to a medical reason like prostate cancer treatment, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. But once you can’t get or stay hard during sex, it haunts you the next time and the time after that etc. It’s a heartbreaking cycle that results in many men developing even worse clinical erectile dysfunction.

But the great news is that you can overcome this and feel like you are more in control of your erections.

For many men, simply understanding the connection between stress and erections helps them to overcome their erectile dysfunction. Others need to do a deeper dive to unpack their negative thoughts and implement strategies to change their thinking process.

Next Steps

If you are ready to learn more about performance anxiety and identify how it is impacting your erections and lovemaking, I created a free education video and handout.

You can watch the performance anxiety video at my sister-site LOVE FILLED LIFE.

If you are struggling with erectile dysfunction, you may be ready to explore sex therapy or take my online erectile dysfunction course called Take Charge of ED.

Erectile dysfunction is hard on both the person trying to get an erection and their partner. It can have a huge impact on the quality and connection of a relationship. But it can be treated and couples can create a satisfying sex life in which both partners feel sexually fulfilled.

Performance Anxiety: How it Impacts Your Erections