Change your Beliefs ► Change Your Mental ED

How Negative Beliefs Form and Their Impact on ED
Negative beliefs are like weeds in a garden—if you don’t pull them out, they’ll take over. They can come from past experiences, cultural messages, or even a single bad experience. If you’ve had a time or two times where things didn't go well in the bedroom, it’s easy to start thinking, ‘I’m a failure,’ or, ‘This will always happen.’ These thoughts can lead to performance anxiety and reinforce themselves.

Your body often believes what you tell it, whether it’s true or not. So if you’re constantly feeding it negative thoughts, it will react with stress and tension, making your ED worse.

The Three-Step CBT Process to Rewire Beliefs

Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT is pretty much the gold-standard in terms of being research-proven to be effective.  This exercise is CBT 101, something that would be a cornerstone of a lot of CBT therapy plans.  Let's get started...

1. Identify the Thought:
   First, take some time to reflect on your inner dialogue. What do you say to yourself about ED? For example, do you think, ‘I’ll never get over this,’ or, ‘I’m not good enough for my partner’? Write these down - all of them—it’s important to see them clearly.
2. Challenge the Thought:
   Ask yourself: Is this absolutely true? What evidence supports it? What are the counterexamples - what's evidence goes against it? For instance, if you think, ‘I always fail,’ ask yourself: Was there ever a time when things went well?   

If you tell yourself, This will always happen, ask yourself if you actually know that. Do you have a crystal ball and can see the future?

By challenging these thoughts very actively and analytically, you weaken their power over you and you start to create room for some different perspectives.  

1. Replace the old thought with a Balanced, reality-based Belief:
   Create a new, realistic thought that’s encouraging but not overly idealistic. For example, instead of, ‘I’ll never fix this,’ you might say, ‘I’m working on this step by step, and I can improve with time.’  This is going to happen every time might become, I don't know what the future holds, but I'm going to do the best I can to relax and enjoy sex.  

Write these new thoughts  down and repeat them to yourself daily. With some repetition, ideally you'll get to the point where you can see past some of that that old BS you'd had floating around in your head.  And when you're not taking the old thoughts so seriously anymore, your body will probably start relaxing.  More relaxation = more room for new perspectives and new thoughts.  More relaxation = better erections.

Building Confidence Over Time
Rewiring beliefs isn’t instant. It’s like training a muscle—you have to work at it consistently. Journaling your progress, celebrating small wins, and reminding yourself of past successes can all reinforce these new beliefs. Over time, they become second nature, replacing the negative patterns that held you back.