Is Your ED Physical or Mental? How To Tell

Are you suffering from erectile dysfunction but you’re not 100% sure exactly why it’s happening?

I can speak from personal experience when I say that erectile dysfunction can be stressful, confusing, and embarrassing, and even disheartening when it comes to your sex life.

But the good news is that if you can identify the root cause of your erectile dysfunction (and there’s really only two root causes), then you can work out the best treatment options for you or the action steps that you can take to get your erections in order and get back to having healthy, hard erections and blowing your partner’s mind.

While erectile dysfunction is extremely complex and everyone suffers with it to varying degrees and in different ways, ultimately it comes down to two main causes. You need to work out which one you’ve got or whether you actually have a combination of both of them that is causing your issues.

There are two main types of erectile dysfunction.

On one hand, you have physiological erectile dysfunction. This is erectile dysfunction caused by issues with your body, or as I like to say, your plumbing’s not quite in order or working properly.

And then on the other side, you have psychogenic erectile dysfunction. And this is where issues with your mind are causing issues with your erections.

And you might think, “What? My mind can cause me issues with my erections?” And absolutely, your mind plays a major role in how strong your erections are.

And in this article, I’m going to show you how to work out which one of these two problems you have and also how you can go about starting to fix it.

Physiological ED: Issues With Your Body

Let’s start with physiological ED, which is erectile dysfunction because your body isn’t working as it should. Or as I say, your plumbing isn’t working quite right.

Because remember, your penis is basically a giant sponge. And when you get an erection, you get 20 to 40 times the amount of blood flow into your penis that you do when the penis is flaccid.

So any issues with the level of blood flow or how much blood is being held in your penis, even a small issue can cause a decrease in the firmness of your erections.

This could be caused by things like clogged arteries, venous leak or blood leaving your penis too quickly, erectile tissue problems or scarring of the erectile tissue.

You could have had surgery. Often people who’ve had prostate surgery will have erectile dysfunction issues.

You could have nerve damage in the area. Diabetes and smoking are known to cause physiological erectile dysfunction.

You could have side effects of medication you’re on, or there’s a whole host of other diseases and comorbidities that can cause erectile dysfunction.

Psychogenic ED: Issues With Your Mind

However, on the other hand, if we look at psychogenic ED, this is erectile dysfunction that is caused by issues with your mind and is generally related to anxiety, worry, stress and depression rather than any issues with the functioning of your body.

And so what could be causing this erectile dysfunction from your mind?

Well, one of the common things that happens, especially in younger males, is what’s known as the vicious cycle.

This is when you are able to get an erection, you’re doing fine. And then all of a sudden, there’s a situation where you lose your erection. This is obviously stressful, embarrassing, and you don’t want it to happen again.

So the next time you go into a sexual situation, you’re thinking about this and thinking, “Oh my gosh, I hope I don’t lose my erection. I need to maintain my erection. I really hope it doesn’t happen again.”

This stress and anxiety makes it harder for you to get it up. So you may lose your erection again, which makes you stress more in future situations until you have this cascading effect known as the vicious cycle.

You could be suffering from stress in your life. Too much stress is known to cause erectile dysfunction.

You could have anxiety or nerves. This could be systemic anxiety. If you constantly suffer with anxiety throughout your life, that can affect your erections.

But it could also be anxiety or nerves related to the sexual situation that you’re in. This could be the vicious cycle, like we talked about, or it could just be that you’re with someone that you find really attractive. You want to impress them. You’re really nervous about it in that situation. And that affects your erections at the time.

Depression is also known to cause erectile dysfunction in some people.

And also your beliefs about erections can actually have a serious impact on how easily you’re able to get erections, maintain erections, and regain erections if and when you lose them.

Sometimes unhelpful religious beliefs or moral beliefs can cause issues with erections.

And for a lot of us, we believe that we should be able to get hard on demand whenever we want. And that if someone is there naked with us, we should automatically be hard. Otherwise something’s wrong with us.

And this belief is just fundamentally not true.

Then if you do lose your erection, you stress about it because it’s not lining up with your incorrect belief. And then this can begin to create that vicious cycle we talked about.

Treating Both The Mind And The Body

How you treat your erectile dysfunction is going to depend a lot on what type of erectile dysfunction you have and what’s causing the issue. However, most people are going to benefit from treating both the mind and the body.

That’s why I’ve created a free ED toolkit where I look at 10 proven strategies to get you healthier, harder erections. And these strategies work on both the mind and the body.

In this free ebook, there are exercises you can do and supplements you can take to boost the body’s ability to get and maintain an erection. And there’s also mental exercises and ways you can think about and approach sex that’s going to get you healthier, harder erections as well.

So whether your problem is physiological or psychogenic or both, you can benefit from these proven strategies.

To get this free ebook, head over to passionately.com/ed, and you can get access to it right now.

How To Work Out Which One You Have

So we now know about these two different causes of erectile dysfunction, but how do you work out which one is causing your issues and which one you’re more likely to have?

Well, the only truly definitive way to know is to go to a specialist or urologist, and they can do an ultrasound and examination of your penis to see if you have any physiological issues.

However, if you don’t want to go to that effort, and I understand a lot of people don’t, there’s some simple questions you can ask yourself to work out which issue is most likely for you, or whether it’s a combination of both.

Signs Your ED Is Physiological

With physiological ED or issues with the body, it tends to come on slowly. This means you notice a decrease in your erections over time, or you’re having more difficulty getting erections up. And the problem is getting progressively worse over time.

You likely have decreased morning wood, so you’re not waking up with morning wood as often as you used to.

People with physiological ED generally notice a decrease in their erections in all situations. This means whether they’re by themselves or with a partner, they’re going to have issues with their erections.

And if you have other health issues, then this could be an indicator that your erectile dysfunction is caused by issues with your body, or it could be side effects of medication that you’re on.

About a year ago, I was suffering with intense fatigue in my body. And I noticed that I wasn’t waking up with morning wood anymore.

So this was obviously concerning for me and indicated that the issue is probably something underlying in my physiology.

After a whole bunch of research and changes to my diet and lifestyle, I was able to regain my morning wood and also improve my fatigue to where I no longer suffer with that anymore.

So by understanding that my issue in this circumstance was physiological, I was able to tackle it physiologically and fix the issue.

Signs Your ED Is Psychogenic

Let’s compare this to erectile dysfunction caused by the mind or psychogenic ED. Now this generally, but not always, shows up differently to physiological ED.

And with psychogenic ED, you’ll often notice a sudden onset of erectile dysfunction. This means everything’s going fine. Your erections are great. And then all of a sudden, bam, you notice a decrease in your erections.

This is not something that slowly happened over time. You didn’t have an issue and now you have an issue.

Another indicator that it could be psychogenic in nature is that your erectile dysfunction is situational.

So if you are able to get and maintain erections by yourself, masturbating and watching porn, but you’re struggling to get erections with partners or there’s certain situations where you’re struggling to keep your erections, then this can be an indicator that it’s an issue with your mind and could be related to worry or anxiety.

Another indicator is that you’re able to get erections, but you struggle to maintain your erections. So you can get hard, but you seem to lose your erection really quickly.

You also likely have no underlying major health issues and you’re waking up with morning wood and having those nocturnal erections.

A fairly simple question to ask to work out which type of erectile dysfunction you have is to say, “Am I able to get and keep an erection when I’m masturbating and watching porn, but I lose my erections with partners?”

If you answered yes to that, then chances are your erectile dysfunction is psychogenic or caused by your mind. However, if you’re having difficulties getting it up at all, then it could be a physiological issue.

However, it does vary from person to person and you may want to see your doctor or urologist to work out exactly what’s causing your issues.

Overcoming Psychogenic ED

The good news with psychogenic ED is that your plumbing is fine. Everything is working great, but the bad news is that psychogenic erectile dysfunction can actually be quite difficult to overcome.

And there’s not a lot of great tools out there that teach you how to overcome this. There’s very few people out there who actually know the tools and strategies that work to help you overcome these anxiety loops to calm down in the moment and to gain mastery over your erections and to stop your mind interfering with that.

I understand this is a really important topic to talk about and that’s why in my course on healthy erection mastery, I go in depth on how to master the mentality of your erections.

We look at how you can overcome performance anxiety, both leading up to the event and also in the event as well.

So when you’re having a sexual experience, what can you actually do in the moment to get and maintain an erection and not really stress out and get in that very anxious state that’s going to crush and kill your erections?

And we also look at when you do lose your erection, which can happen from time to time, what can you do to regain it in the moment with your partner to keep the fun going and to have a very vibrant and amazing sexual experience.

Now, this course isn’t for everyone, but if you’re really serious about overcoming your erectile dysfunction and you want the absolute best resources to become the master of your erections, then head over to passionately.com/edcourse and you can learn all about the course over there and sign up and learn how to master your erections and ultimately overcome erectile dysfunction so that you can have healthier, harder erections for the rest of your life.

For those of you who sign up, I look forward to working with you personally and helping you overcome your erectile dysfunction because I know how important this can be in your life and what a big impact it can make because it’s personally affected me and I’ve personally been able to improve it in my own life. And I know what a huge difference it’s made to me and it’s going to make to you.

If the course isn’t for you, then go ahead and read this article on the exercises that you can do that have been proven to improve erections.

These exercises are so simple. You can do them when you’re driving, brushing your teeth, heck, even if you’re in a work meeting and no one’s going to know that you’re doing them.