The shame and embarrassment of living with ED.
More and more men are having trouble with erectile dysfunction, getting and maintaining erections during sex, as well as when they try and masturbate. They are also experiencing premature ejaculation and difficulty achieving orgasm.
I’ve been giving men homework tasks, to allow them to reconnect their mind and body. Finding a new way of conscious connection to themselves, partners and sex. It’s where we start to get you off fight or flight and improve your erections. How has ED impacted your life? Has it resulted in performance anxiety, where you’re avoiding partners perhaps?
What is the cause?
I see diet, smoking, medications, stress or age contribute to ED. But increasing a contributing factor is pornography. For these men erectile dysfunction becomes a problem when they realise that they always masturbate with porn and are losing their natural sensations around how it feels to be aroused without porn. You can read more about ED here
This is because porn hacks the brain, causing a chemical reaction in the brain and they get erect, every time, because those chemicals are making the brain hyper aroused. Then whey they try to masterbate or have a sexual encounter without porn they experience erectile dysfunction. This is because they are expecting their body to react in the same way as it does when watching porn, and expect their erections to be the same but your body does not respond in the same way naturally with a partner as it does when watching porn. Your brain then panics, and results in erection problems.
An addictive cycle has been created where you get a thrill watching porn , and that thrill is the only thing getting you aroused. It also leads to premature ejaculation or avoiding sexual encounters with another person altogether. When they do have sex, they orgasm really quickly because they’ve trained their bodies to ejaculate as soon as they feel the orgasm coming on. This is premature ejaculation and many men don’t even realise that they suffer from it or know that it is an erectile dysfunction.
What is Erectile Dysfunction ?
Erectile dysfunction (ED), also known as impotence, is a type of sexual dysfunction where a person has the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual activity. You can read the NHS definition here. So if you’re having difficulties getting or maintaining an erection during sex, or masturbation, or when someone is touching you sexually, then your have erectile dysfunction.
But issues such as premature ejaculation and difficulty achieving orgasm due to loss of sensitivity, are also classified as ED. Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction is all a sexual wellness issue. So why the erection issues when watching porn? Watching porn regularly over-stimulates the brain and de-sensitises the penis. The video you watched yesterday isn’t doing it for you today, and you fast forward through the new video to that exact part which excites you, then find a new one, and so on and so on. This is resulting in your brain being over-stimulation and causing desensitisation, both in the brain and the genitals.
Your dopamine receptors and the reward centre of the brain are constantly being pushed to a new experience, something that gets you to oragsm quickly. There is no AROUSAL, arousal of the 5 senses, there is no timem for the whole body to feel and experience sexual arousal. Even Viagra will struggle to help you, because you need arousal and sexual energy pumping around your body to create blood flow in your sexual oragns.
No are no longer aroused by sexually encounters in real life. Viagra will not work if you are not mentally and physically aroused.
Both psychologically and physically, the programming and conditioning you’ve made around sex and pleasure has been hard-wired in your brain. Viagra will still do its job in preventing blood loss, but your brain and body still has to get the blood there to start with.
Men are watching porn at a specific time and then just expecting their penis to respond. There is no mind and body connection happening. No natural blood fow around the body.Men are using porn to get and erection, not becuase they are sexually aroused before hand. Touching yourself in this way stops sensitivity. Your brain is looking for the nero chemicals but instead it gets addicted to ejaculation.
Your subconscious mind actually thinks you’ve experienced all the things you’ve seen on
porn videos, as you’ve had a chemical reaction to it. This is not something that can be replicated in real life but your subconscious is looking for that original high and so finds that real life intimacy and not stimulating you. On top this your brain is releasing oxytocin, every time you watch porn, which is the love hormone. So you are creating a closer bond with watching porn than you are with a partner and left never satisfied with real life sexual experiences.
Rewiring and creating new neural pathways
Firstly a neural pathway is a neural pathway is a series of connected neurons that send signals from one part of the brain to another. These connected neurons process the information we receive. It is these that enable us to interact, as well as experience emotions and sensations. They create our memories and enable us to learn. Scientists have proven that your brain is being shaped, moulded and changed by your experiences every single day. This is referred to as rewiring of the brain, or neural plasticity.
A lot of the time, we are conditioning ourselves in a certain way, and to change those behaviours,we have to do something different.
In order to overcome your ED and any porn reliance you need to change the neural pathways, the hardwired neural programs that exist in the brain.
How hypnotherapy helps change neural pathways?
Hypnotherapy helps you to let go of old habits and create new, positive pathways in their place. If you have realised that you need to change your sexual reposnes, you can start to remove those negative behaviours.
I work with my clients to adjust their relationship with sex and porn. However solid this pathway has become, we can block it off by replacing the need to watch porn with other ways of feeling good and other ways of becoming sexually aroused. By looking at the source of the pathway, we can also head those anxious feelings off at the pass, meaning that you won’t need to travel that path anymore. Solution focused therapy helps you train your brain to stay on positive pathways, and yes, you can break those well-worn habits. Thanks to the neuroplasticity of your brain, with help, support and effort you can overcome habits that sometimes seem unbreakable.
How quickly does it take to rewire these pathways in the brain ?
It all depends on your commitment.Things like how frequently and how long your addiction has been present for, how well you look after your body, how old you are, how long you have had ED and how severe the addiction and brain damage is, will all contribute to how quickly you recover. We normally start to see erections improve after two sessions.
Start on a new path
I’m Helen Birch a clinical hypnotherapist and sex therapists. I offer in person and online therapy sessions. If you feel that you need support to break any negative behaviour or habits to help you overcome your erectile dysfunction or porn reliance please contact me for a confidential chat.