Sexual performance anxiety is defined as a type of performance anxiety that involves a fear of offering sexual satisfaction to a sexual partner during a sexual encounter. This kind of sexual-related fear can take place during sex or after sex.
While Sexual Performance anxiety is more common in men, it can also occur in women. In fact, more than 40% of women experience sexual dysfunction, including performance anxiety.
Figures indicate that 9-25% experience premature ejaculation and psychogenic erectile dysfunction, and 6-16% experience Sexual Performance Anxiety which severally inhibits sexual desires.
As the cause is majorly attributed to having been triggered by healthy issues or hereditary grounds, research suggests millions of men self-sabotage their relationships due to Sexual Performance Anxiety. Problems begin when a man tries to make a woman like him, and they don’t want to lose that value.
In most cases, men who experience this kind of fear are concerned about giving their partner pleasure mostly because they got feedback from a partner that they were frustrated or not satisfied or maybe lost arousal in a previous experience. However, experts suggest it is important to note that they focus on what they want to happen instead of their failures.
Sexual Performance Anxiety is mostly triggered by intrusive thoughts and all the anti-fantasy and completely hijacking the man’s normal arousal. In other words, men are instilled with the fear that in case they lose before the woman, they will lose value in her eye.
Dr Ashley Olivine, a Health Psychologist and Public Health Professional, suggests that applying the method of mindfulness can eliminate multiple types of anxiety, including Sexual Performance Anxiety. “It involves learning how to get into a relaxed state, often with eyes closed and resting comfortably,” she says.
Like other disciplines, with which many thinkers and experts agree, when we focus on negative things happening, we actually invite more of that. So to get away with Sexual Performance Anxiety, men really need to start visualization and picture an experience going the way that they would want it.
On the way around, sexual performance anxiety can be belittled by a pause or a break or a move to something else because usually you just need to give yourself time and space to get back into an erotic moment or flip into fantasy or focus on something that really attracts you to your partner, those are the ways to in the moment bring your attention back to something that is erotic and sexy.
Sometimes erectile dysfunction is biological and can be treated by a doctor, but it can also be a psychological pattern that can stem from intimacy issues. If left unchecked, it worsens self-esteem problems and intensifies the feeling of rejection.
How to cope with Sexual Performance Anxiety
Healthy lifestyle
Diet and exercises both affect erectile function. In addition, lack of exercise and improved diet can increase the tendency for anxiety for both men and women and conversely, the opposite is true when a person engages her or himself in the exercises and diet. This will increase confidence and sexual stamina. Deep-seated evidence indicates that exercise and diet can reduce Sexual Performance Anxiety.
Communications
Honest communication can ease tension and get you back on track to bedroom bliss, and having a conversation with your sexual partners can help in coping with sexual performance anxiety in the end. This is important because it lays the ground for understanding the problem and paves the way to practical solutions together.
See a therapist
Seeking sexologists can help you manage stress, so you don’t need to limit it to bedroom scope.
If you have established a long pattern of Sexual Performance Anxiety, try seeing a sex therapy therapist. Ask your therapist about guided exercises for couples to increase intimacy.
Sexual anxiety is not an official diagnosis, but experiences during sex may help a therapist understand the dysfunction.
The dysfunction might be related to the erection and orgasm as well as drop-in desire or troubles of getting aroused, physical pain experience or feeling anxiety or trying to avoid sex which can cause relationship issues.
Enjoy your partner and relish the moment
Obsessing about being “good in bed” or whether or not you and your partner will climax can ruin the sexual experience; however, enjoying each moment with your partner during intercourse can change the situation.