Do You Have Erectile Dysfunction? 5 Ways To Know For Sure!

Tell me if this sounds familiar to you. You are making out with your partner, you’re getting really hot and heavy and you’re very hard inside your pants, but then as the clothes come off and you get ready to have sex, all of a sudden you completely lose your erection and you don’t know where it’s gone and you can’t seem to get it back.

Or maybe you used to wake up with rock hard morning wood and that doesn’t seem to happen anymore, or your erections just aren’t as firm and strong as they used to be.

All of these things and more can be potential signs of erectile dysfunction, but how do you know if you actually have erectile dysfunction, what’s causing it and what you can do to make it better?

Hey, I’m Phoenix Blake, sex coach and educator, and I have personally suffered with erectile dysfunction in my life and I know how disheartening it can be, how embarrassing it can be and how challenging it can be to understand why exactly is this happening to me and what can I do to fix it.

And the first step is to actually work out whether or not you have erectile dysfunction, what’s causing it and how severe it is. And there’s five different things you can do to work this out.

1. Have You Ever Experienced An Erectile Dysfunction Event?

Technically, if you’ve had even one event of erectile dysfunction, then they would say that you have erectile dysfunction, but someone experiencing one erectile dysfunction event versus someone experiencing it all the time or maybe in certain situations is very different.

So while this will technically tell you if you have erectile dysfunction or not, it’s not very helpful.

2. Do The SHIM Score

The SHIM score is a score out of 25 that comes from a simple five-point questionnaire asking you about your erections and whether or not they are firm and hard enough to have sexual intercourse. And this questionnaire is commonly used by doctors and psychotherapists to work out how severe is your erectile dysfunction.

And while the SHIM score is extremely helpful, one of the major flaws that I see in the way that people approach the SHIM score is they just ask you once for your entire life to answer this survey to work out how severe your erectile dysfunction is.

And from my personal experience and my experience working with many men that suffer with erectile dysfunction, different situations can cause more or less severe erectile dysfunction.

A lot of men will notice differences getting an erection when receiving oral sex versus trying to have intercourse, or differences when they’re with an existing partner that they’ve been with for a long time versus being with a new partner. Or maybe it’s having sex with a condom versus having sex without a condom that causes some erectile dysfunction issues.

So rather than just doing the SHIM score one time for your entire life, I encourage you to do the SHIM score for the different situations that occur in your life. What happens in your life where your erections are affected?

So do a SHIM score for when you’re by yourself, do one for oral sex, existing partners, new partners or any other unique situations that you find yourself in, where you find your erections may not perform up to the standard that you’re used to.

Doing this can really help you identify where it is you’re having trouble and how severe your erectile dysfunction is across different situations.

3. Ask Yourself This One Simple Question

Can you get it up when masturbating and watching porn, but you have difficulties with a partner?

If you answered yes to both of those, that you can get it up by yourself and have difficulties with a partner, chances are you have what’s called psychogenic ED, or erectile dysfunction that’s caused by your mind.

This one simple question combined with our SHIM score can tell us a lot about our personal erectile dysfunction and what might be causing it, as well as how severe or how mild it might be.

If you have a high SHIM score in a lot of situations but a low SHIM score in some specific situations, then chances are you have some psychogenic ED, or erectile dysfunction that’s caused by your mind and some anxiety and stress around that situation.

The good news is that whether you have mild or severe erectile dysfunction, or whether your erectile dysfunction is caused by physiological issues or psychogenic issues, there are things that you can do in your life to improve your erections.

I’ve created a free ED toolkit. This is an ebook where I share with you the 10 proven ways to get healthier, harder erections when you want and how to regain your erections if and when you lose them.

This ebook lays out specific action steps that you can take, supplements that can improve your erections, as well as mentalities and exercises that you can do to strengthen your ability to get and maintain erections.

To get access to this free ED toolkit, head over to passionately.com/ed.

4. Are You Getting Morning Wood?

Are you waking up with an erection in the morning and are you having nocturnal erections?

It can be difficult to know if you’re having nocturnal erections and how long they are lasting given that you’re asleep, but many of us have had the experience in our lives of waking up with an erection.

If you’ve noticed in your life that this morning wood has diminished or is no longer existent, then you may have erectile dysfunction and this could indicate an underlying issue.

About a year ago for me, I noticed that I was no longer waking up with morning wood, or it was very rare that I would ever wake up with an erection. I also started having erectile dysfunction issues with existing partners, which is something that was never really an issue for me.

This was obviously cause for concern with me, and to me indicated an underlying physiological issue, not just one that was an issue with my mind.

I was also suffering with a lot of fatigue at the time in my body, and luckily for me a change in my diet and my lifestyle was not only able to reduce and improve my fatigue, but it also got me back my morning wood and it actually came back rather quickly for me.

5. See A Urologist

A urologist can actually do a test, I believe it’s an ultrasound, where they look at the blood flow into the penis and they look at the blood flow out of the penis, as well as the health of the tissues in your penis, to discover whether or not you have any underlying issues.

If you’re really concerned about your erectile dysfunction, then this is a really good step to take, because if you can see that, yes, everything is working fine, you’ll know that you have psychogenic ED and you need to work on your mentality and your anxiety. And if there is an issue, then you can work with the urologist in order to fix that issue.

Understanding whether or not there’s an issue with the plumbing or there’s an issue with your mind is really going to help you take the right action steps to improve your erectile dysfunction and get healthier, harder erections.

So go ahead and check out this article and work out exactly what type of erectile dysfunction you have, so you’re treating it the right way.