When people use the term “performance anxiety,” they usually mean male bodies who can’t get it up. But did you know that performance anxiety is a universal experience? It can happen to people of all genders, striking young and old alike, though it’s most prominent in the middle-aged.
Let’s unpack this and get a handle on what performance anxiety is all about.
What Is Performance Anxiety?
Performance anxiety is the bedroom version of stage fright. While it can take many forms, the common denominator is that it takes you out of the moment and into your head. (And that’s not a recipe for good sex!)
What does it feel like? Often, it’s a fear of judgment from your partner. But it may also arise from your internalized judgments about yourself — how you look, how you smell, even the sounds you make.
As the insecurities rise up, the mind starts wandering over all the possible ways things could go wrong. What if they are turned off by something about you, physically or emotionally? You might worry that they need more than you believe you can give them. You may fear you can’t truly please them or that you may reveal a flaw or weakness that will bring things to a crashing halt.
And as you start worrying, the body doesn’t work the way you’d like it to. Penises don’t get and stay hard, vaginas don’t lubricate, and your libido doesn’t even enter the mix, since the neurotic parts are taking up all the oxygen in the room.
The toughest part of performance anxiety is that you may not recognize it when it’s happening. Indeed, you may not even realize the problem is anxiety until you’re with someone who acts like sex is the most natural thing in the world. Then you might wonder how they’re able to be relaxed and self-confident because being relaxed and self-confident about sex is so foreign to you.
Common Roots of Performance Anxiety
Since humans are so diverse by nature, a full list of psychological reasons could easily fill a book. For this blog, I’ll focus on the two most common psychological reasons people can get stuck in this mental rut.
Shame
Shame about sex itself takes endless forms. It is typically caused by sex-negative messaging from parents, teachers, clergy, or society in general. Growing up with the belief that sex is dirty takes its toll even into adulthood.
Self-consciousness about your body is another buzz killer.
Shame, like the anxiety it produces, can appear even when you generally have a positive opinion of yourself or about sex.
The most common issues I see in my practice are
- Anxiety about the act of sex and whether it is moral. This may stem from childhood experiences or indoctrination. They feel that their parents or peers would be horrified to know what they’re doing.
- The insecurity that they can’t fulfill a partner’s desires. They may over-focus on their genitals, monitoring their performance through a damning lens. I’ve had male clients who monitored their penis performance to a point where they couldn’t even accept when their partner was pleased with them. They suspected their partners were lying.
- Body shame. I’ve worked with people who have a genital-specific form of body dysmorphia. They chronically believe their genitals are “broken” (most common in females) or inadequately sized (most common in males). Others may demonize their weight, height, body type, disability, or other perceived flaws they believe make them undesirable to others.
- Fear of anxiety. Probably the most frustrating problem of all is when you are afraid of your own anxiety! When you’re convinced that you won’t be able to get through love-making without a humiliating failure, guess what? It becomes a self-fulling prophecy.
Trauma
By far, the most devastating trauma that can alter sexual performance for the worse is when someone was the victim of sexual molestation or rape. Sexual trauma is so impactful on a person’s sex life that it feels almost disrespectful to talk about it in the body of a blog post. Suffice it to say that sexual trauma inflicts wound that can change every aspect of their sexual dynamics with partners and create a vast range of emotional struggles and sexual dysfunctions for survivors.
Beyond sexual trauma, almost any kind of interpersonal or life trauma can spur performance anxiety. This includes:
- A history of physical abuse (in childhood or adulthood)
- A history of emotional abuse in relationships
- PTSD (particularly from violence, bad accidents, and combat trauma)
ALL trauma survivors lose the most precious emotional pillar of pleasurable sex: TRUST. When you lose trust, you lose the ability to surrender to the moment. That, in turn, means you miss out on all the pleasure and comfort that sex can bring.
Traumas are even more damaging to your chances of having an orgasm. Why? Because orgasms require that you surrender your body and trust that you will not be re-traumatized. That can be an excruciatingly difficult journey for a trauma survivor.
Three Quick Studies in Performance Anxiety
To illustrate the variety of Performance Anxiety, I’m sharing three sample cases from my practice.
Aliana
Aliana was a mom and wife in her late 30s who felt like she wasn’t a “real” woman because she couldn’t give her husband the pleasure he deserved. In their first couple of years together, everything seemed fine. But after ten years of marriage, she felt broken. Sex was a chore. She never felt aroused. He never gave her foreplay and scoffed at sex toys. Instead, he nagged her until she guiltily gave in, and then called her frigid for not enjoying it more. In his eyes, a good wife was ready whenever the husband was ready.
As Alliana told her story to me, she also HEARD her voice for the first time. The cycle of nagging and negging left her dry as a desert. A couple of homework assignments later, including a solo vibrator session, and she had no doubts that she could orgasm. She wasn’t frigid at all: she was traumatized by her husband’s emotional cruelty.
Perla
Perla was a single kinky woman in her 40s. She had a couple of fetishes that aroused her and enjoyed touching herself, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never orgasm. Instead of sex partners, she focused on the emotional pleasures of acting out her fetish with partners who, like her, didn’t want or expect intercourse. Though she’d found a way to feel very aroused, she felt like she was missing out on life by never being able to come.
Pearl’s personal history turned out to be extremely complex. She was raised to think that sex was a woman’s duty, not something she truly enjoyed. Since her family never mentioned kink or fetish, those activities seemed purer to her. Unfortunately for her, there was no easy path out of the religious doctrines drummed into her up until the age of 18. It took her a lot of self-work and effort to break through her toxic education.
Kael
Kael was a handsome guy in his early 50s. He never married because he was sure he’d disappoint anyone who slept with him. More importantly, he couldn’t stand disappointing himself. He told me that whenever he had sex, at some point, his penis stopped feeling any sensations, good or bad. He lost his erection every time.
In the course of therapy, I learned that his parents never held him or showed any physical affection. That explained why touch was a complicated issue for him. In his teen years, a bully taunted him and said he had a tiny dick in front of a group of giggling students. It made him so insecure about his penis, he almost wished he didn’t have one. Little by little he came to terms with his early traumas and was able to set a course of recovery with me. He slowly overcame the anxiety about intimacy and accepted that his penis could please a partner. It took a lot of baby steps for him to finally leave his traumas behind him and have a successful encounter.
Through a mix of affirmations, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapies, all three of them overcome their performance anxiety. They all worked their asses off to get there, too.
Overcoming Performance Anxiety
Regardless of the roots of performance anxiety, if you suffer from it, there’s no easy way out. Only by dealing with it head-on can you find the answers that will free you. Sex is just too much fun to spend your life trapped in its dark spiral of sexual dysfunction.
Since I’ve just graduated two clients this summer, I have a few spots open in my practice right now and of course, I’m always happy to help. Drop me an email and let’s find out if we should work together.
banner photo by Jen Theodore@Unsplash
