What is physically happening when your confidence is crushed?
I'm sure every man has experienced what we in the medical profession call 'hesitancy'. You're standing at the public urinal at a football match, three men either side of you. You've been busting to go. You stand there, conscious of the fact that there is someone waiting to use the urinal after you. For the love of money, you just cannot start peeing. And the more you think about it, the worse it gets, until you give up, put yourself away, and leave the men's room frustrated and still 'aching for a piss'.
The pressure you felt from being surrounded by other men during what is usually a private task feels strange and induces a low level of anxiety. Your body activates what we call the 'sympathetic nervous system'. This is the part of the nervous system that is activated during the 'flight or fight' response, that is, when you're running away or turn and challenge in response to fear. This part of the nervous system relies on the release of adrenaline from the adrenal glands.
Adrenaline has a number of effects. Most importantly, it speeds up the heart and constricts the blood vessels at the periphery of the body. These two effects lead to the channeling of blood away from the periphery and towards the life-sustaining organs of the body. Adrenaline is released in response to states of shock, stress and anxiety. The following steps clarify just how it affects the penis.
Step 1
The thought of having sex excites the man. Excitement is combined with an increase in heart rate. This results in an increase in blood flow around the body.
Step 2
The fear of failure causes a form of tension called 'performance anxiety'. This results in a release of adrenaline. The adrenaline constricts the peripheral arteries of the body.
Step 3
There is now less blood supply to the penis than will be required for an erection. This will also make it very difficult to maintain one.
The vicious circle
If a man encounters just one humiliating experience, such as losing his erection during sex, this will have immediate results. In his next encounter, memories or his previous embarrassment will surface. This will produce anxiety and the process associated with adrenaline release is repeated.
When this happens frequently, you begin to doubt your abilities. You prefer to avoid the humiliation. You stop trying to have sex. For some men, it takes years before they see a doctor. They live a lonely life because of this fear of failure. They do not realise that this problem can be fixed.
In fact, years later, some men may even have forgotten why they stopped having sex in the first place. Many of these men will complain of a low libido. When I investigate their medical history, the problem was not a lack of desire to have sex, but rather a subconscious feeling of inadequacy. These men responded exceptionally well to treatment of their erectile dysfunction.
Risk factors
Lastly, if you are concerned whether your problem is psychogenic (related to the mind's development), take a look at the list of risk factors in Chapter 2 under the section titled, 'The physical causes of erectile dysfunction'. If you fall into any one of these categories, your problem is either purely physical in origin, or due to a combination of physical and psychological factors.
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