Less Anxiety, Better Sex:
28 Simple Tools to Solve Psychological ED
Dealing with psychological erectile dysfunction sucks. If you've been cleared medically...and you get good erections solo...but your performance anxiety has you striking out when you're with a partner? This book might be for you.
I wrote Less Anxiety, Better sex: 20 Simple Tools to Solve Psychological ED to help. It brings together practical tools drawn from research, specialist sex‑therapy frameworks and decades of my personal in‑the‑trenches work helping guys resolve psychological ED. I want to give you tools you can use to make a real change in the bedroom.
Why this book?
If you’re like most guys I work with, you haven’t told many people (or anyone!) what’s going on. One or two rough nights then you're in your head worrying and suddenly the bedroom is a lot less fun than it used to be.
I still remember one guy who told me he felt like he was “taking a final exam" every time his girlfriend was in the mood for sex. On paper he was fine - medically cleared, good erections alone - but his nervous system was treating sex like a dangerous threat. And he wasn't unusual. I hear versions of that story every week.
Over the years, I’ve shared a lot of material about this problem through my PsychogicalED.com website, YouTube Channel and guided hypnosis sessions. This book is the distillation of that work. It pulls the most effective tools together, organizes them into a clear structure and puts everything in one place you can move through at your own pace.
I wrote this book for guys who:
The goal is simple: help you understand what’s actually happening, change the internal conditions that have been blocking your erections and start feeling like yourself again in bed.
This book is for guys who:
- Get good erections alone or in the morning but struggle with a partner.
- Have been checked out medically but still feel blocked by anxiety or pressure.
- Find themselves constantly monitoring—“Am I hard? Am I still hard? Am I losing it?”—instead of being in the experience.
- Feel stuck in loops of self‑judgment, fear of failure, or meaning (“What does this say about me if it happens again?”).
- Want straight talk on psychological ED without fluff or a visit to the world of academia
- Want tools they can try now, not just theory.
- Prefer practical, structured exercises over open‑ended “tell me more” therapy.
This book is not for situations where:
- You haven’t yet talked to a doctor or urologist about possible medical causes.
- There are urgent medical or psychiatric issues that call for direct professional help.
- You want a purely pharmaceutical fix without touching the psychological or behavioral side at all.
- You're in a relationship with an abusive or overly demanding partner.
The book repeatedly suggests ruling out physical contributors and doesn’t present itself as a replacement for diagnosis or tailored one‑to‑one care.
What’s inside
Orientation
Before you start changing anything, you need a decent answer to a basic question: “Is this physical, psychological, or both?” The opening section of the book walks you through:
- How to talk to a doctor and what to ask for, so you don’t overlook physical contributors.
- Why consistent morning erections and strong erections when you’re alone can be a major clue that your “hardware” works.
- How fight‑or‑flight biology can shut erections down even when nothing is mechanically broken, including the “faucets and drains” metaphor the book uses to make it concrete.
Instead of telling you “it’s all in your head,” the book frames psychological ED as a real mind‑body pattern you can change once you’ve got the right tools. If you want a broader overview of the basics, you can start with my first steps for psychological ED.
Toolbox
This isn’t a “one trick” book. It’s a toolkit designed for different brains, bodies and histories.
Thinking and pressure tools
- The “MUST‑erbation” framework for catching rigid demands like “I MUST get hard” and turning them into preferences your system can live with.
- Exercises to reduce the physical pressure created by harsh self‑talk and non‑negotiable bedroom rules.
Spectatoring and presence tools
- How to stop running a live commentary in your head and get back into the actual physical experience.
- Sensate‑focused and “slow sex” approaches that reduce judgment and increase connection.
- Five practical ways to anchor your attention in what you’re seeing, hearing, feeling and sharing instead of performance monitoring.
Anxiety and loop‑breaking tools
- An ACT‑inspired two‑step process that teaches you to lean into anxiety sensations instead of fighting them, so the loop stops escalating.
- A step‑by‑step way to break the mental ED loop: noticing it, dropping back into the senses and staying out of the announcer’s booth.
Somatic and freeze‑breaking tools
- Nervous‑system techniques inspired by somatic trauma work to help your body let go of stored “freeze” responses.
- Structured breathing and body‑first exercises to bring your system back into “rest, digest and feed‑and‑breed” mode.
Questions and self‑talk tools
- Deeper questions to change how you relate to yourself sexually, so sex stops feeling like a pass/fail exam.
- Ways to rework bedroom self‑talk using CBT and performance psychology principles.
Not every tool’s going to be a fit for every guy. I’ve had guys tell me one exercise completely changed the game for them while another did nothing. Then the opposite will be true for somebody else. The idea is to give you enough options that you can find the ones that really move the needle for you.
How much is research vs. “in the trenches”?
A lot of what’s in the book is supported by solid, footnoted academic research. A lot comes from sitting with guys in real situations where textbook answers weren’t cutting it. Some tools are adaptations of established methods; others are practical techniques that came out of sessions live that have proved themselves again and again, even if they haven’t all been formally studied yet.
On more than one occasion I’ve found myself saying, “Look, this isn’t in any journal article—it’s just something I’ve seen work over and over in real life.” Those tools still earn their place if enough guys tell me, “That was the thing that finally got me unstuck.”
On the research side, the book pulls from:
- CBT and ACT research, including meta‑analyses on acceptance‑based approaches to anxiety.
- Sex‑therapy literature from people like Barry McCarthy, Michael Metz, Lori Brotto and Masters & Johnson.
- Neuroscience on prediction and the Default Mode Network—how the brain forecasts and prepares the body.
- Somatic and trauma frameworks like Somatic Experiencing and TRE‑style exercises.
- Structured breathing and vagus‑nerve‑related work, including studies on breathing patterns and heart‑rate variability.
On the “in the trenches” side, it includes:
- Tools refined through thousands of hours of one‑to‑one work specifically on psychological ED and performance anxiety.
- Tweaks to standard techniques that make them more usable for guys stuck in real bedroom loops, not lab experiments.
- Simple, repeatable exercises that clients have described as turning points, even when they were sceptical going in.
How the book relates to my website and YouTube channel
If you’ve followed my online work, you’ll recognise a lot of themes: breathing drills, ACT‑style anxiety work, ways to stop spectatoring, somatic freeze‑breaking, partner guidance and more. The difference here is how it’s all pulled together.
The book:
- Takes the strongest tools from my articles, videos and hypnosis sessions and puts them in one place.
- Connects them into a clear progression instead of leaving them as standalone tips.
- Adds detail, nuance and context that doesn’t always fit into shorter formats.
In other words, the website and channel give you a lot of pieces; the book is where those pieces are organised into a single, usable playbook.
What guys report back
In the manuscript, guys describe shifts that go beyond “I got hard once” and move into feeling like themselves again sexually. They talk about going from desperation and monitoring to presence, curiosity and actual freedom.
You’ll hear things like:
- “I feel that animalistic drive again. I can do it so I feel more like myself again. It’s freedom.” – Chris
- “Confidence is back. I’m not rushing or checking. I’m relaxed — if it happens it happens, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Who cares?” – Dennis
- “Now it’s 100% better. I’m present, I’m letting myself enjoy it. It feels like it did when I was in my 20s.” – Robert
- “The first time I was able to have a normal sexual experience again…the joy I felt was just indescribable.” – Alex
I’ve also had guys send me a single‑line email months later saying things like, “It’s just sex again,” which is exactly the sort of boring, ordinary outcome you actually want. None of this is framed as instant magic and the book doesn’t pretend it is. It’s what happens when guys stop treating sex like a pass/fail test and start working with their nervous system and thinking in a smarter, more humane way.
Almost nothing! The book is a "best of" my Youtube stuff. It's meant for guys who'd rather read and be able to glance quickly to pick the tools they want to try (though if you get the Kindle version, it does link to the relevant section of each related video).
No. It’s a practical resource you can use alongside medical care and, if you choose, therapy. The book repeatedly recommends ruling out physical causes with a doctor and treating it as one part of your support, not the whole story.
Definitely not. Most guys find that a handful of tools become their “go‑to” set and the rest give backup or deeper work when they’re ready for it.
Yes. There’s a section written specifically for partners and many of the tools and frameworks work well for couples who want to tackle this together.mostly what you want it for, you can find the same information/video here on my partners of guys with ED page.
That’s common. Most generic psychological ED advice doesn’t really address performance anxiety or the nervous‑system patterns behind psychological ED in a pragmatic, structured way. It's great for some guys, but it's not a fit at all for others. This book is designed like a toolbox. The hammer might be great for some jobs, but for others, you might need a wrench or screwdriver.
If you want a broader overview, start with first steps for psychological ED, then explore psychological ED treatments.
If psychological ED has turned sex into something you dread or obsess over, you don’t have to keep dragging it around by yourself. 20 Simple Tools to Solve Psychological Erectile Dysfunction is built to give you clear ways to see what’s happening, calm the system that keeps flipping into threat mode and reclaim the parts of sexuality that feel like you.
It’s a toolkit you can work with—step by step, at your own pace—drawn from both solid research and years of sitting with guys in this exact position. The PsychologicalED.com website and YouTube channel give you plenty of free material; the book is where it all comes together into one coherent, usable guide.
About the Author
Brian Mahoney is a specialist dedicated to helping guys overcome sexual performance anxiety and psychological erectile dysfunction. He’s spent roughly 25 years in private practice, focusing on guys whose bodies work fine alone but shut down under pressure with a partner.
Instead of relying only on open‑ended talk therapy, Brian combines:
- Advanced hypnotherapy.
- NLP and metacognitive tools.
- Behavior design and cognitive restructuring.
His style is direct, encouraging and very practical, with a strong focus on resolving the anxiety and other underlying issues that drive psychological ED.
Before shifting into this work full‑time, Brian was a partner in a Boston research/tech startup and later a Vice President at LexisNexis. That background shaped a results‑driven, accountability‑focused mindset that runs through his client work and this book.
If you’d like to know more about how this fits into my broader approach, you can explore psychological ED treatments as well as first steps on psychological ED.