Coping with Performance Anxiety

If there is anything the recent spike in erectile dysfunction treatment has taught us all is that most men are afraid of seeking help for sexual problems unless the problem is normalized to the point where there isn’t a stigma attached to it anymore. In the case of erectile dysfunction, it took a long time politician who ran for president to come out and admit that he had the problem before most men felt comfortable enough to admit that they did, too. To date, no celebrity spokesman has stepped up to champion the cause of sexual performance anxiety. One of the main reasons why this may be is that, in most cases, performance anxiety is a mental problem instead of a physical one like ED.

Before we talk about cures for performance anxiety, let’s take a look at what performance anxiety actually is. In most cases, performance anxiety is the inability to enjoy sexual intimacy with someone due to extreme worry or anxiety. Sometimes, PA can manifest itself in the form of a man not being able to get or maintain an erection, even though he is in a situation that he finds very arousing. Other times, it could be that he is simply unable to achieve orgasm, or it can be something as debilitating as a sudden bout of illness or another kind of sudden, violent reaction once a certain level of intimacy is achieved.

For many performance anxiety sufferers, the anxiety is built around expectations. Both men and women can experience performance anxiety built around the expectations of sex. Men are expected to have a penis of a certain size and be able to “last” a certain amount of time. If a man or teen is inexperienced and isn’t sure that they will “live up” to expectations, this can be a great source of anxiety during sex. On the female side, similar anxiety can be brought on by society’s unrealistic body and breast expectations as well as by sexual inexperience.

Treating sexual performance anxiety is a matter of talking, trust and time. For many men, sexual performance anxiety is a condition that remains with them until they are with a partner they feel comfortable enough talking to intimately and exposing what the source of that anxiety is. Some men find the help of a licensed sex therapist to be invaluable in treating the condition.