My inner critic says this isn’t going to work and she is going to feel terrible and that is the end your back alone.
Mine is a quiet questioning critic. Resigned to ‘not this again’. I’m two years out of a long term relationship (ex wife cheated). ED was never a problem before this.
I was on anti depressants for a while and blamed sexual problems on them. Been off them for 18months, but my brain is definitely rewired somehow. Nothing is how it used to be.
I’ve been with three beautiful women since the split - I can perform sometimes, but the sensations are all off.
It’s like I’m fucking you (when it works), you’re amazing - christ, like a middle aged blokes fantasy, but it’s like I’m remote from the act. An observer rather than being in the moment with her. Almost like I don’t care.
It’s fucked up.
It’s a voice in the back of my head telling me I’m not going to be able to do it, it’s going to happen again and it’s loud enough it takes me out of the moment and makes me stop being and just enjoying and start focusing on what I’m doing
Mine stems from my ex wife who used to get angry when it happened. She’d sulk and rage for hours afterwards. We broke up eventually as you’d imagine, and I was fine with new partners a few times, then it’d kick in again. My wife now is amazing. Super attractive, very sexy but as we have a young daughter we very rarely get time (or she wants to as she’s tiredness) to have sex. When we do the pressure to perform is a killer for me. She likes spontaneous sex, but I’m relying on kamagra to help me along but it takes 30 minutes to kick in… if you haven’t had a heavy meal! My inner critic just eats away at me and leaves me flacid and clammy. I feel the shame for days afterwards. Imagining some young rock hard guy pleasuring her with ease as I struggle to get hard just to torture myself a bit more.
This exercise made me realize that the voice of my inner critic is just me… a stubborn and pessimistic version of me that makes statements like “this isn’t going to work”, “give up”, “here we go again”, etc… I feel these statements throughout my entire body.
My inner critic sounds like my father, very stern and sure of himself, anger bubbling just under the surface. He wears posh business suits and has an air of superiority. There’s a faux wisdom which is really just harsh criticism. He is very sure that I am going to fuck everything up and that I should fear these situations which risk embarrassment, humiliation, and failure.
My inner critic tells me he can do it to her and you can’t
My inner critic is more of a worm slowly gnawing at my brain, increasing the pressure to perform. There are times when the critic is more of a shout but one thing remains and thats the pressure of performing and staying hard.
A lot of the time I identify my inner critic as myself, it’s my own voice in my head and I’m often trying to soften the blow if this happens to me. I get pretty scared at the prospect of having sex because it feels inevitable. Even if things start off well, I’ll be worried. “How hard am I right now? Is that how hard I normally get? Does she think I’m not as hard as I normally get?” etc.
My inner critic is a voice much like my own, but in an irritated tone. It speaks from behind my shoulders, and comes with negativity, or almost a condescending tone. It almost mocks my insecurities.
My inner critic is telling me I’ll be judged by my partner and friends if I can’t perform
My inner critic is like a small person in my head almost like a devils advocate on my shoulder that whispers to me in the build up to sex or even smaller things like wanting to speak to that girl or putting myself in a position that could backfire
That little bastard that gets me all nervous and stressed out had officially gotten a target on it! Can’t wait to be the one in charge
I visualized my inner critic as myself with a more aggressive personality. He didn’t shout at me but had a cold way to point out weaknesses.
It’s like a heavy fog that rolls over and fills my body with anxiety and rushes me to start getting it up and the longer I take to get it up the heavier it gets.
It’s my voice I think, and it’s like a little sly being that says you won’t be able to pleasure this girl with your penis, you won’t be hard for long enough and even if you are you won’t be able to ejaculate yourself.
My inner critic questions whether I’ll be able to make my partner feel good as I enter her and points out every awkward misstep I may make and how my partner may judge me for it.
Not really a voice but a constant nagging reminder that this probably won’t go well. Also telling me not to overthink it but doing exactly that causes me to overthink the situation.
My inner critic is trying to figure everything out way before the act, calm me down when he’s made me anxious on the first place. He keeps reminding me all those times when I didnt perform and my dick got limp or didnt want to get hard and tries to find the reason for it to make it never happen again. He keeps going on and on and on it’s like a loop of thoughts I cannot stop. When I masturbate it interrupts me to say “imagine now it gets limp, what do you do? How do you get it back up? Start!” Or “now check how hard it is”. My dick is sick of this voice, doubts and interruptions, when I have sex suddenly I start having some song stuck in my head on the loop, or my thoughts wondering off somewhere and when I realise that I notice that my dick is not as hard as it was, then I think “oh no it’s happening again” and it goes down. Not only goes limp but shrinks and goes completely flat. Then I loose any pleasant feeling in it, its unreceptive for pleasure. All I can think of is embarrassment, shame and anger that this happened again. That triggers the whole avalanche of negative thoughts and puts my masculinity into doubt. I can hear all sorts of tones in my head, primitive criticism from my family members, myself criticising myself, imagining situation when other people find out, all at the same time plus at the same time I’m trying to get it back up and get back into a flow state, when the girl is just there not knowing what the fuck is going on?
Inner critic is a mess. It’s not just one person or voice, it’s a mix of them
I’ve come to a point that when I do get an erection and start to have sex, I get concerned that will I become soft, and do so more and more. The voice of this concern is my own voice.