Sexual performance anxiety can affect your romantic relationships. Learn how to deal with it for a healthy sex life.
Sexual performance anxiety is a type of anxiety that leads to intense worry or fear about performance before or during sex. Many people experience nerve pains before having sex. The root cause can be anything. It can be triggered because you may be having sex for the first time, have body image issues, fear pain, or worry about not being able to meet sexual expectations. If sexual performance anxiety persists for a long time, it can be difficult for you to engage sexually with your partner, and the lack of sexual activity can eventually put a strain on your emotional relationship.
Fortunately, there are some ways to deal with this anxiety to help you overcome sexual performance anxiety.
What is sexual performance anxiety?
Sexual desire should occur naturally, like feeling hungry and eating food or feeling thirsty and quenching the thirst with water. Similarly, engaging in sex is a natural act and we should not doubt their level of performance. However, if someone feels less confident and anxious, they may worry about their sexual performance and feel anxious while engaging in sexual activity. This can affect their performance as their mind is diverted, says psychiatrist and sexologist Dr Sanjay Kumawat.
Wondering how stressful or anxious thoughts are affecting your sexual performance? When you feel stressed, in response, your body starts producing more of the stress hormone, cortisol. When there is a spike in cortisol levels, there is a drop in the levels of the sex hormone testosterone, thus reducing your sex drive or libido. Sometimes, medications you take to treat anxiety or depression can also harm your libido.
Symptoms of sexual performance anxiety
Just like performance anxiety, this type of anxiety can affect you mentally and physically. People who struggle with sexual performance anxiety are often overwhelmed by sex-related thoughts and sink into a loop of negative thinking or fears that they will experience problems during sexual activity. This can happen before or during sex.
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The result; Men may have difficulty maintaining an erection (erectile dysfunction), climaxing or ejaculating. Some people, regardless of gender, may even lose interest in sex altogether. Sometimes, severe anxiety can also manifest physically in the form of palpitations, upset stomachs and tremors. Some of the common symptoms of sexual performance anxiety include:
• Inability to orgasm during sex
• Dryness of the vagina
• Painful sex
What causes sexual performance anxiety?
People could have limiting beliefs about their sexual performance or have different fears and experiences that could affect their sex life. Causes of sexual performance anxiety include:
• You feel anxious about your partner’s sexual expectations or satisfaction.
• Worry about how your masculine or feminine energy would come across during sex.
• Low self-esteem or body image issues.
• Lack of physical or emotional attraction to your partner.
• Previous negative sexual experiences can make you feel anxious.
• Fear or anxiety about sexual trauma.
The effect of sexual performance anxiety on relationships
Lack of sex due to sexual performance anxiety can negatively affect romantic relationships. This Sage Journal The study shows that couples who engage in more sexual activity tend to deepen intimacy and have a lower divorce rate.
Not being able to have or enjoy sex can make your partner feel less connected and intimate. This can lead to relationship tension with partners questioning their care for you. People suffering from this anxiety also become cautious with their partners, which destroys trust and intimacy.
How to deal with sexual performance anxiety?
Anxiety comes from negative thought patterns or worries about an event that is about to happen. The best way to deal with sexual performance anxiety, like any other form of anxiety, is by learning to identify your triggers and finding ways to let yourself down to manage those negative thoughts and feelings that affect your sex life. Some of the coping mechanisms include:
• You can try mindfulness meditation to become aware of your sex-related thoughts and desires.
• Yoga can also help reduce stress and strengthen the mind-body connection.
• Indulge in masturbation to better learn what you enjoy or don’t enjoy during sex.
• Seeking professional help from a sex therapist can help you identify your thoughts and feelings that give rise to sexual performance anxiety.
• Open communication with your partner can help manage performance anxiety by better understanding their feelings and sex-related struggles. This can help you puncture your bubble that prevents you from enjoying sex, such as body image issues or performance concerns.
• Indulge in more foreplay to improve intimacy.
• More often than not, it’s a body image issue that comes in the way of sexual performance and self-doubt. It is important to understand sexual physiology and anatomy from your counselor if it is not already known. This includes understanding the arousal and orgasmic periods of both men and women, which helps dispel any myths about sexual performance, the expert says.
• Any past traumatic experience can be addressed with counseling. However, if difficulties persist, medical intervention for anxiety symptoms may be needed. If premature ejaculation problems persist, intervention with behavioral therapy and medication is needed. For a partial erection, a physical examination and some investigations with the advice of doctors will be needed, says the expert.
Accept that sex isn’t always perfect. Sometimes, women take longer to reach orgasms. This is how their body is made.
Other ways to spark your sex life might be:
• Hug
• Kisses
• Hugs
• Holding hands
• To spend quality time with each other
Treatment for sexual performance anxiety
The intensity of sexual performance anxiety largely depends on the underlying causes. There is limited scientific research on the success of these treatments. However, a combination of treatment and therapy may be helpful.
1. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
CBT is a type of talking therapy where you have the opportunity to vent your feelings and concerns about performance during sex. Voicing your concerns with your therapist can help achieve a common approach to treating sexual performance anxiety.
CBT helps people reframe negative thoughts around sex that make it difficult to perform or enjoy good sex. This helps identify triggers while directing your energy toward dislodging old beliefs.
2. Couples therapy
Seeking couples therapy helps people improve their sexual performance by helping them communicate their feelings with their partner and find the root cause of feelings that may be affecting sexual performance. This type of therapy focuses on the couple as a whole, not just the partner suffering from sexual performance anxiety.
This approach can help eliminate feelings of shame, fear, and miscommunication that exists between couples. It provides space for an open dialogue related to sources of emotional distress or negativity while finding solutions to resolve the underlying issues.
3. Medicines
Some medications may help reduce problems in men such as erectile dysfunction. Some anxiety medications, unlike others that reduce sex drive, may be recommended to improve sexual arousal and sex drive.
