Anxiety is an affective state that has its healthy side when, for example, it allows us to evaluate situations that could be risky if we face them without precautions, or when it provides energy to different projects, among other times.
Instead, anxiety becomes a symptom when we feel apprehension or poorly anticipate a causeless danger or it makes us believe that we are eroticized when in fact we are in a hurry to comply. Anxiety can be brief or episodic or chronic, accompanying the person persistently, in both cases it is common for sexual desire to decrease and compromise other sexual functions such as erection, lubrication or orgasm. It can even cause pain during intercourse.
With regard to forms of expression, there are those who overanticipate what is going to happen during sexual intercourse (they generally think they will fail) and take precautions or directly prefer to avoid it. On the other hand, there are those who are governed by impulses or compulsions who seek quick contacts to relieve tension. In both cases anxiety gains by getting between bodies and blocking pleasure.
In general, anxious people are not denied enjoyment. However, they experience sexual intercourse as an exam that they have to go through to get a good score, that is, to please their partner. They have difficulty focusing on what they feel and focus not on the body, but on the ideas imposed on it. They struggle to concentrate on different levels of arousal, erogenous zones and sexual fantasies. They are demanding of themselves; they believe that sexual intercourse is based on intercourse and underestimate the importance of play and practices other than penetration. They are insecure and find it difficult to innovate.
There are differences between people who are only anxious in relation to sexual phobias. Anxious people face the relationship with a lot of fear and anticipatory ideas. On the other hand, sexual phobes anticipate badly, feelings of inferiority appear and also fear “embarrassing” or being embarrassed by the other. This active alarm system in sexology is called the “self-spectator role”. That is, an external view that judges and evaluates (almost always negatively) sexual behavior: “You are going to fail”, “you can't relax”, “when you penetrate you will go down”, “you won't reach orgasm”, etc. So much invasion of fears and beliefs make sexual phobes not even dare to have fantasies and refuse contacts erotic.
There is a common denominator in anxious people: they shorten the erotic game to “get the subject off” which leads to more tension and the impossibility of the body and erotic sensations increasing.
If at some point their partners propose new practices to them, they enter the dilemma of doing it or not doing it, they are not encouraged to try variants. On the one hand, I would love to modify erotic actions, but on the other they feel strange and doubt how to do it. In the case of people with obsessive traits, perfectionism and the programming of actions - such as planning the day, the time, the way to do it - are impositions that dominate them. In addition, they do not tolerate disappointment and are irritable, discouraged or filled with worries or guilt for not acting as planned (they confuse their sexual plans and strategies with sexual desire)
Sexual anxiety is more common in men, especially because of the social and cultural influence of having to comply, demonstrate potency, please their sexual partner. However, consultations for female anorgasmia and vaginismus due to anxiety are increasing.
How to regulate anxiety?
The management of anxiety exceeds the purely sexual because it invades other areas of the subject's life. Therefore, changes in lifestyle are fundamental. Managing stress at work and family with aerobic exercises, yoga, breathing, meditation, emotional regulation techniques, psychotherapy, are some of the current proposals that are very effective.
With regard to sexuality, focusing on intercourse as “the goal of the erotic encounter” is fundamental. Pleasure and satisfaction can be achieved in different ways: focus on the bodily sensations that come from the body and feel the other when I hug, kiss, touch, for example. Sexual encounter feeds on interaction; it is not one-sided. It commits them both: “I feel, I feel you, we feel”.
Walter Ghedin, (MN 74,794), is a psychiatrist and sexologist
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