4 Ways Sex Therapy Can Help With Erectile Dysfunction
For men who contend with Erectile Dysfunction (ED), this problem can cause serious shame and stress. For some it leads to relationship problems. For others, it can lead to serious anxiety surrounding sex. Therapy can help work with the body in a way that promotes increased confidence, lower anxiety, and reduced shame.
Sex Therapy can help with ED in the following ways:
1. Lower anxiety: Sometimes anxiety comes before the problems with ED, and sometimes ED causes the problems with anxiety. Either way, the problems can turn into a viscous cycle that can quickly feel out of control. Sex therapy can help by gaining a better understanding of the sources of anxiety, and intervening in a way that works.
2. Hidden sexual message: For many, ED can be caused by historical personal messages about sex. Sexual arousal can be influenced by social and familial messages, which can lead to ED, without recognition. Therapy can help to decode these messages, and create a plan to contend with them.
3. Shame resilience: Shame is a feeling that almost every person who is dealing with ED deals with. On some level, there are difficult feelings associated with the problems that go with maintaining an erection. We have a lot of messages about contentment, and we associate happiness for men with a particular sexual outcome. This can make this this process a shameful one to deal with. Therapy can help to deal with this shame. First, you can learn to identify the feeling for what it is. You can also learn how this can make the problem worse. With this awareness, you’ll be able to deploy shame resiliency tools that can help with your overall goal.
4. Realism: If there is a problem, the reality is that you’ll have to work on it, and it is likely to happen again, before it stops occurring. Therefore, you have to give yourself some grace period. In this grace period, you can identify other sexual experiences that are pleasurable. This can take some of the pressure off of this one sexual goal. This can decrease the odds of you having future problems, because you’ll see how much more expansive sex is, other than penetrative sex.
