Is It ED or Just Nerves? How To Tell

I was recently talking to a client who was 49 and felt like he had erectile dysfunction and maybe because he was getting older, his penis just wasn’t working the way that it used to. However, with this client he was able to get rock hard by himself and with some partners.

However, he found that if he was with someone that he was extremely attracted to, he would get nervous and he would struggle to keep his erection. He actually tried treating this with Viagra and had limited success, where sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t.

But throughout conversations he was able to learn that he more likely had performance anxiety than erectile dysfunction, and with a few simple tips he was able to improve his performance anxiety and be more likely to get and keep erections in all circumstances.

See, a lot of guys, even younger guys, think they have erectile dysfunction and there’s issues with their body and their ability to get and keep an erection, when really they just have performance anxiety or issues with their mind that’s affecting their erections. This causes them to treat it with unnecessary prescription medication and can actually lead to the problem getting worse over time rather than getting better.

What exactly is the difference between erectile dysfunction and performance anxiety, and how do you work out which one you might have, and how can you best treat it so you can get and keep hard erections when you need it?

Hey, I’m Phoenix Blake, sex coach and educator, and I’ve personally suffered with erectile dysfunction myself, so I know how difficult it can be, and I specialize in helping guys to get harder erections than they’ve had in years and overcome any issues they might have so they can have a vibrant and fulfilling sex life.

Erectile Dysfunction Versus Performance Anxiety

Looking at erectile dysfunction versus performance anxiety, you’re looking at a difference between physical issues with you being able to get and keep erections and mental issues that are causing you to not be able to get erections or to lose your erections quickly, generally when you’re with a partner and you’re in a nerve-wracking situation.

With physical issues, this could be caused by lots of different things. Sometimes medications that you’re on can affect your erections. Sometimes poor cardiovascular health can be a big issue, or issues with your hormones and things like testosterone can also cause issues with your ability to get an erection.

There’s also more specific localized issues such as nerve damage, scar tissue or whether you’ve recently had prostate surgery, which can all cause erectile dysfunction that is physical in nature.

However, a lot of guys are similar to this client, where they’re maybe having issues in some circumstances and they pin it on physical issues and they think they have a bigger problem physically than they actually do, where really they’re just having performance anxiety, and if they can get control of their mind then they can get and keep hard erections just like normal.

What Happens With Performance Anxiety

See, with performance anxiety, what happens is when we go into a situation and we’re nervous about whether or not we’re going to get it up, we start to future project and think about “I really hope I get it up, I hope I can get hard” or “I really hope I don’t get soft,” and we start worrying about the future.

Now, when we worry about the future and we get ourselves stressed in these situations, it causes our body to actually release adrenaline, which will flow throughout our body, and when adrenaline reaches different areas it does different things.

So, when adrenaline reaches your heart and your lungs, it’s going to tell them to accept more blood into those areas because you need your heart to be pumping really fast, you need to get a lot of air if you’re going to be escaping danger, which is what your body thinks is happening when you’re getting stressed.

That same adrenaline, when it goes to your penis, is going to tell those blood vessels to constrict and to send that blood away from the boner elsewhere, because you don’t need to get a bone when you’re running away from danger.

So, when we’re having performance anxiety and we’re getting anxious or stressed or worried about our erection, there’s actually a physical response which causes the blood vessels in our penis to contract, and it does actually make it physically difficult to get an erection in those moments.

However, you may have noticed that after that situation has ended, maybe the partner has left, you’ll then go and masturbate by yourself and you notice that you’re rock hard again. This is because the nerves and the worry have gone, the adrenaline has been cleared out and your body does actually have the ability to get and keep an erection.

How Do You Know If It’s Physical Or Mental?

You can go and see a specialist and they can do a Doppler ultrasound on your penis and look at the blood flow in and out of your penis to see if you’ve got any problems there, and that’s the only way to truly know whether you have any physical issues or not, but a great way to begin to do some self-assessment before seeing a specialist is to fill out what’s called the SHIM questionnaire.

This is a five-part questionnaire that asks you about your experience with erectile dysfunction, and each question you score yourself from one to five and tally up the results at the end. You can get access to this questionnaire by going to passionately.com/shim.

To work out whether you’ve got erectile dysfunction or performance anxiety, I actually suggest that you fill out the SHIM score multiple times. What most people do is they fill out the SHIM score once to determine whether they’ve got erectile dysfunction. However, I encourage you to fill it out for certain situations that you might find yourself in.

Fill it out as if you are masturbating by yourself with your favorite porn. Fill it out as if you’re masturbating just by yourself without porn or fantasizing.

Fill it out whether you’re receiving a blowjob and then fill it out if you’re having intercourse with a partner, and you may also want to fill it out if you’re having intercourse with new partners, which can be much more nerve-wracking than an existing partner, and above and beyond that, if you’re going into more extreme situations, fill it out for whether you’re having threesomes, going to swingers clubs, being involved in orgies or any other situation that may be relevant for you.

The reason that you fill it out multiple times is you want to see the situations where your score is affected.

So if you’re finding that you’ve got low SHIM scores across the board, whether it’s in a low stress situation such as masturbating by yourself with porn versus a high stress situation like being with a new partner, if it’s low across the board, chances are, yes, you may have some physical issues and it would be a good idea to see a doctor and see a specialist to get that checked out.

However, if you fill out the SHIM questionnaire and you notice you’ve got really high scores in certain scenarios, maybe when you’re by yourself masturbating or when you’re with an existing partner, your scores are really high and you’ve got basically no erectile dysfunction. That’s what happened with me.

However, then you notice that when you’re in more stressful situations like with new partners your SHIM score drops, and then in even more stressful situations like swingers parties your SHIM score drops even further. Then this is a strong indication that you might actually have performance anxiety, not erectile dysfunction.

It still might be worth checking in with the doctor and the specialist to make sure that everything’s fine, but chances are you need to work on improving your mind and not getting stressed in these situations, and it’s not actually your penis or your body that’s causing the issues.

Alternatively, you can ask yourself this very simple question. Are you able to get and maintain an erection when you’re by yourself masturbating but you have trouble when you’re with partners?

If you answered yes to that question, then chances are good that you may have performance anxiety.

How To Treat ED And Performance Anxiety

Work On Your Body

I think with both of them it’s very important to work on your body and your ability to maximize your erections. Important things such as improving your overall health, improving your cardiovascular health and your diet are going to help you get and maintain stronger erections.

There’s also certain supplements you can take and certain exercises that you can do that’s going to make it easier for your body to get erections more consistently.

This is going to help you whether the issue is physical or even if the issue is mental, because if you can get and maintain erections easier you’re going to be less stressed about it, because you know your body can perform when you need it to.

I’ve created a free ED toolkit to show you some of the best ways to improve your ability to get and maintain erections. Simply go to passionately.com/ed and you can download that toolkit absolutely for free.

You’ll also get access to my free newsletter where I share loads of tips on how to be better in bed and how to overcome erectile dysfunction, and many of those tips I don’t share on YouTube.

Work On Your Mind

So it’s really good to work on your body for both situations, but if you have performance anxiety it’s really important that you also work on maximizing your mind and learning how to de-stress in those stressful situations.

What you want to do is get out of that constant future projecting loop where you’re thinking about whether or not you’re going to get an erection. You’re worried that you’re going to stay soft and not be able to get an erection, and you’re not actually there and present with your partner.

You’ll notice that the best times that you’ve had sex where you’ve been able to get and keep an erection is when you’re fully present with your partner. You’re not even thinking about your erection; you’re just really aroused in the moment, really connected with your partner and having a great time.

This is where you want to get to mentally: not worrying about your erection and future projecting.

I used to suffer with performance anxiety all the time, where it felt like it was a coin flip as to whether or not I could get an erection, and now I go into sexual situations confident that my erection is going to come and I know how to manage my mind so I don’t get in those negative loops.

To learn some of the best tips for how you can get out of your mind and overcome performance anxiety, I do have a brand new course on exactly how to do this. In this course I go through details on all of the things to maximize your body, but also the best ways that I’ve found to maximize your mind and overcome those negative thought patterns that happen during performance anxiety.

To learn more about that course and begin overcoming your performance anxiety, go to passionately.com/edcourse.

A lot of guys are getting great success and these tips are helping them to get harder erections than they’ve had in years. It’s worked for me and I’m confident that it’s going to help you as well.