This long tube with the strobing light, connected to a couple of pulsating dongles, is an EMDR machine. It sits on a little tripod in the corner of my therapy room.
EMDR can help men with sexual difficulties, including premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction
I’m careful how I introduce this machine to clients. If I just grab the pulsators and say “shall we give this a go then?”, I risk setting off their woo-bonkers-quackery alarms.
And I wouldn’t blame them. But EMDR isn’t as bizarre or bonkers as it may seem.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. And EMDR therapy is pretty mainstream these days.
It helps resolve bad experiences, anxiety and fears. Three things that men struggling with PE or ED will know something about.
A humiliating experience
Glenn found it really difficult to last with his girlfriend. She was understanding, but he felt a massive amount of pressure and the breathing techniques and the numbing sprays didn’t make much difference.
Glenn (not his actual name, btw) was 24 years old and healthy. His doctor told him he had performance anxiety. And he did.
And it didn’t take much digging in therapy to find out why. He’d lost his virginity a year ago to a girl he’d met in a club. And imprinted on his mind, that night, the immortal words she said immediately after he’d come: “Is that it?”.
This echoed in his mind and his body every time he had intercourse. It had become a self-fulfilling prophecy of premature ejaculation. Ouch.
So what’s my EMDR machine going to do with that?
Sexual dysfunction and negative expectation
If you’ve struggled to stay erect or you keep coming a bit too soon – or the opposite and it takes you ages to get there, and your partner keeps saying “are you done yet?” – then you know how the expectation sets in.
That the problem will happen again next time. And you envisage those past experiences and your anxiety shoots up and you try to play it cool and remember to breathe and… it happens again.
We accumulate all these memories of us being rubbish at intercourse and the problem goes on and on. We need to break the cycle somehow, and not let our past keep dominating our sexual experience.
And this is where EMDR comes in useful. Because as a therapist, if I just say “ok try to forget about all that, let’s focus on relaxation and how confident you can feel…” that might sound somewhat superficial.
We don’t want to dwell on the memory too much and make it more of a thing. But we want to do something to file it away as a normal memory. To put PE or ED in the past at an emotional level.
How EMDR helps reprocess sexual memories
You’ll sit with the machine in front of you, so you can comfortably watch the light move back and forth. You can follow it with your eyes. And you’ll hold a pulsator in each hand and they pulsate in sync with the light.
But you don’t just sit there watching the lights. We have a brief conversation about what happened, how that anxiety and dread feels, the kind of things it has you telling yourself. And now and again, you’ll picture all this while watching the lights.
We’ll gradually shift to “what would be a more helpful way to talk to yourself about sex, about intercourse with your partner…?”. Consider that and watch the lights.
There’s something about bilateral stimulation, engaging both sides of the brain, that helps us reprocess memories. During an EMDR session, you’re accessing it, experiencing it in a very different way to the usual worrying and ruminating.
And the amygdala – that part of your brain that looks out for bad things happening again – seems to get the message. “Oh this is different, maybe I can go about sex differently from now on”.
Quite how EMDR works is the subject of much debate. There’s nothing magic about the lights or the pulsing, but those side-to-side eye movements have a relaxing and absorbing effect, helping the reprocessing to happen.
The effectiveness of EMDR is backed up by research and it’s recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the World Health Organisation as a treatment for trauma.
Prince Harry has used EMDR – not for premature ejaculation, I hasten to add.
“One of the biggest lessons that I’ve ever learned in life is you’ve sometimes got to go back and to deal with really uncomfortable situations and be able to process it in order to be able to heal.” – Prince Harry
How EMDR helps us regain our sexual confidence
So let’s get back to Glenn and “is that it?”.
In an EMDR session, we might ask him to picture what happened that night. How does he see it? Is he observing it or is he in it? How does he feel? Are there sensations in his body?
Then he’ll watch the lights for 20-30 seconds and reflect on that. Has anything changed – the picture or the feeling? If he was to rate the feeling – the anxiety or humiliation – on a scale of 1-10, where is it now?
Then he’ll watch the lights and we gently check in again. And what we’ll see is a move in a less anxious direction. That rating will start coming down. Has anything changed? Look at the lights again. We take our time with this.
And we’ll start to work with Glenn’s self-talk. As the stressful feeling subsides, what might be a more helpful learning? We let Glenn reflect on that.
Maybe “I can enjoy being present during sex, the pressure is lifting. I can take in the scene, the moment, actually focus on pleasure rather than going up into my head…”. Watch the lights.
Can he picture having relaxed sex with his girlfriend? Can he hold the more positive message, how real does that feel? Watch the lights, reflect on that.
What’s changing, what can he feel now? We keep following this momentum.
The combination of the guided visualisation with bilateral stimulation – reflection plus this relaxing movement to focus on – can shift old memories in quite surprising ways.
Common questions about EMDR therapy and sex
I’ve simplified the process here and it might be done over a couple of sessions. There is a protocol for EMDR therapy that should be followed, guided by a qualified professional. But I hope this gives you an idea of how EMDR works.
Sometimes people say “OK, EMDR is a trauma treatment… but coming too soon in bed, it’s hardly PTSD is it?”. Fair point.
EMDR is used for treating war veterans and people who’ve experienced abuse and all kinds of life/death situations. This is in a different league of trauma, we could say.
But EMDR is equally appropriate for any experience that was embarrassing, belittling, shaming, confidence-knocking. Sometimes the smallest of moments that take root in our emotional memory in the most negative of ways.
Take the guy with erection difficulties, ever since he was there for his wife giving birth. A wonderful, life-affirming experience. But with an unexpected image stuck in his mind that needed a bit of unsticking.
Or for people who struggle to relax into sex because they’re intensely uncomfortable with their appearance, their own bodies. Often they’ve had experiences, sexual or nonsexual, that have made them feel this way. EMDR can help reprocess self-perception too.
And if you’re reading this and thinking “hmm well I struggle with PE or ED but I haven’t had an ‘is that it?’ moment, or some specific event that triggered it”. Yes, that’s perfectly possible for a lot of people.
EMDR can be helpful for neutralising those accumulated memories of experiencing the problem itself. Those memories of feeling so frustrated, embarrassed, hopeless. The worries and expectations we keep bringing back into the bedroom.
And whether it’s a specific memory like Glenn’s or our general perceptions of our sexual ability, EMDR would be part of therapy. Along with assessment, teaching sexual skills, communication confidence, relaxation techniques.
Are we going to take a guy with PE or ED and just sit him in front of the lights and ask him to think about not having PE anymore and woooo problem solved? No, that would be a thousand-to-one placebo effect.
EMDR reprocessing work would be a potential part of his therapy, to help address the negative memories and clear the way for new learning.
Most people who have sex therapy for these issues never go near an EMDR machine, of course. It’s a good potential option in the hands of a therapist who knows what they’re doing.
There are alternatives to EMDR too – see my article about the rewind technique. That’s doing a similar kind of reprocessing.
Where to find out more about EMDR and locating a therapist
If you’re in the UK, Counselling Directory includes EMDR as a search option. There’s also the EMDR Association UK website, and EMDRIA – the international association website too.
And as ever, check that your qualified EMDR therapist has experience in working with sexual issues. They should provide a full assessment and tailor treatment to your own experience and circumstances.
I hope this has explained some of the genuine benefits that EMDR has to offer men and their sexual confidence.
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