No End in Sight: How Anxiety Impacts Your Sexual Performance and What You Can Do About It
Sex and anxiety are very intertwined, which you may not realize most of the time. Anxiety is not something you get rid of, after all – the biological purpose of it is to keep you safe (so trust me when I say you don’t actually want to get rid of it!). That said, how you handle anxiety as it comes up, and your thinking related to sexual performance anxiety specifically, makes a big difference when you notice it affecting you and your experience.
Anxiety has different effects in men and male-bodied people than it does in women and female-bodied people. In women, too much high, chronic stress can result in chronic pain, high inflammation levels, and autoimmune disorders. When it comes to sex, anxiety can show up as lack of sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused, difficulty achieving orgasm, and can even end up causing painful penetrative sex. In men, testosterone production can decrease, and depression can increase. We can see anxiety present sexually as difficulty getting an erection, keeping an erection, ejaculating before one may want, having low interest in partnered sex but no problem with masturbation, and even can be related to engaging in out-of-control sexual behaviors.
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So, what are some common causes of anxiety and how do they relate to your sexuality?
Trauma and Abuse
When you’ve experienced trauma and abuse in the past, your brain remembers. In fact, your brain can even rewire itself to become hypersensitive and protect you preventatively from danger, making it very difficult to become aroused, let alone find pleasure in a sexual experience.
Body Image and Sexual Performance
Self-consciousness about body image and how you are doing in your sexual performance (spectatoring) are both big culprits in creating anxiety during sex. Many describe magnificent sex as being able to really let go and lose yourself in the sexual experience, which goes against what anxiety about our bodies and performance allows you to do.
Sexual Mythology
Myths about sex can range from, the only dicks that are pleasurable are 8 inches and rock hard or otherwise inadequate, to desire is a thing that hits us spontaneously, to non-monogamous people are compulsive cheaters in disguise and rife with STI’s (PS these are all very false). Even though intellectually you may understand that these myths are far from truth, you still may internalize these things and remember them in the back of your mind – especially in vulnerable sexual situations (hello, anxiety!).
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Chronic Daily Stress
In America, success is often defined by how busy and in-demand you are – the way you live your life and define success is a huge anxiety factor that directly effects sexuality. Making your grocery list during sex is just plain not sexy and furthermore, your body can’t calm down as its designed to do when you’re constantly functioning at a high-stress level.
So, what do you do with this all-consuming anxiety? The work is complex, but there are two small, very important things you can engage in to help lower anxiety. First, learn and practice mindfulness. Simply put, mindfulness is the practice of purposefully noticing thoughts, feelings, and sensations in your body in a nurturing, nonjudgmental way and focusing on the present rather than things that happened in the past or things that you are anxious will happen in the future. Mindfulness has been clinically proven to reduce stress and anxiety, help with sexual dysfunction and sexual pain, and improve rigid or negative thinking around self-esteem. An additional important step you can take is to seek proper sex education (Hint: check out our Resources page). Your beliefs about sex are greatly informed by the amount of sex education you received and where you received it. Understanding myth versus fact, as well as applying mindfulness, are two easy and essential ways you can manage anxiety around sex and move toward learning what makes sex a glorious experience.