Erectile Dysfunction Is Not a Malfunction—It’s a Message

If your doctor says the plumbing works but you still can’t stay hard, it’s time to stop blaming your body—and start listening to it. This episode isn’t just about ED. It’s about dissociation, shame, and the silent ways your nervous system speaks when your mind won’t.

Enrique breaks down the psychodynamic truth about erectile dysfunction: it’s not a failure to perform, it’s a failure to symbolize. When you’re stuck in performative masculinity, unresolved mother-wounding, or chasing validation from checked-out partners, your system pulls the plug.

We pull from the clinical wisdom of Donald Nathanson, Joyce McDougall, and David Schnarch to expose why real masculinity isn’t about angles or dominance—it’s about integration and direction.

Because maybe the softest part of you… is the most honest part of you. elevate.epo

Transcript

Erectile Dysfunction Is Not a Malfunction—It’s a Message
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Enrique: [00:00:00] Today's episode is about erectile dysfunction. If you're having trouble getting it up, start by seeing a physician rule out physical issues first, blood flow, testosterone, vascular, help get that cleared. but if your doc looks at you and says, you're fine, it's all in your head, then stick around. Because what's in your head is exactly where we're going. Here's the truth. If the plumbing works, but you still can't perform, you're not broken, you're dissociating. You're trying to be present during sex.

But your nervous system is in fight or flight mode. Erections require parasympathetic activation, rest and digest. That's a relaxed, attuned state. But if your system senses danger, even if it's subtle or emotional, you flip into sympathetic activation, adrenaline surges, blood [00:01:00] constricts, your mind starts to drift, you disconnect, and suddenly.

You're not in your body. You're not in the room and your dude knows it. 

So what's triggering you? Work? Stress, family. if we're being honest, and psychoanalytically honest, it's probably your partner or more specifically what they activate in you. when your partner triggers unresolved attachment trauma, when they hit that same nerve your mom hit growing up, you lose the frame, you fall out of leadership and your nervous system taps out.

Today we talk about some hard truths and come to terms with who we are and where we're at. I'm Enrique. This is Precision Cycle by Elevate epo. Let's open it up.

[00:02:00] when my kids were younger. We would watch Teen Titans go on Cartoon Network, and I'm going to be pulling from that wisdom today. There's an episode where Beast Boy becomes a tyrant after controlling all the bees in the world, and he dehumanized Robin by making him quote dance for his bees. I get it, you didn't sign up to dance for the bees, but that's what's happening.

Enrique: Your partner is triggering the same performative loop Your mom put you in. That subconscious contract you signed as a boy, earned love by being who she needs you to be. [00:03:00] That loop never stopped. It just got sexier. And now every time you're in bed, your body remembers it and it says no. But here's the kicker.

It's not just her. It's you. your boundaries are sloppy. Your polarity is collapsed, your masculine structure isn't calibrated, and until you realign your nervous system, rewire your relational stance and exit the loop of erotic submission, you're gonna keep going soft. So let's go deeper.

let's pull in a few voices. Donald Nathanson, Joyce McDougall.

and David snark to break this thing wide open. What all three of them are saying in their own clinical language is that erectile dysfunction isn't a failure to perform. It's a failure to symbolize when you can't name your fear, your shame, your grief, your body does it for you.

McDougall called it Theater of the Body. When the psyche can't find [00:04:00] words, it hijacks the body as a stage. So instead of saying, I'm scared right now, I feel small, I need someone to soothe me. You go soft. Your nervous system literally pulls the plug because the story you need to tell is too painful to say. Nathanson goes even further. He maps how shame, especially attachment based shame, creates a loop that scrambles affect.

Instead of reaching towards your partner, your connection, your system goes dark, you dissociate, your mind splits, your body ejects. And you're left not only losing your erection, but maybe losing your religion. Maybe that's what Michael Stipe was really singing about. let's talk about the culture. Let's talk about porn. Let's talk about the masculine performance loop. Most of the men I've worked with, when they finally say it out loud. [00:05:00] They admit they're performing during sex, not feeling performing, trying to get the angles right, trying to look like the clips they've watched, trying to prove something.

But here's the truth, real masculinity doesn't perform. It transmits

real Masculinity isn't about positions or aesthetics, it's about presence. if you're not in your body, you're not in the room. And if you're not in the room, your dick's not either. This is the problem with how social media, and let's be real American culture has defined masculinity. It tells you it's about muscle money body count.

That's all bs. Masculinity is integration. It's coherence. When you're integrated, you're not chasing validation from people who don't matter. You're not mimicking what you think a man is. You are the man Most of the dudes, [00:06:00] you're idolizing the meatheads, the influencers, the fake tough guys.

They're all compensating. They're all terrified inside. their masculinity is built on sand. Why? Because their fathers were absent immature or silent, and no one taught them how to lead without dominating or fleeing. That's why they blow money. That's why they sabotage relationships.

they can't hold an erection because their nervous system is screaming, I have no power. You want the truth? Fix your inner field. Rewire your nervous system. Stop performing, start integrating. That's when the erection stops being a mystery. And starts being a message that says, I'm here, I'm grounded.

I'm done dancing for the bees. Now here's where it gets even more uncomfortable. Sometimes you can't stay hard because you're not supposed to, because your body, your instrument of truth is [00:07:00] telling you she's not into you. And the reason it feels off is because it is off. You keep rationalizing, you keep trying to perform to fix it, to win her back mid stroke, but the data is there.

She's already pulled away. you just haven't caught up. And that gut feeling, that creeping sense of being invisible that's your nervous system doing what? Your mouth won't, it's ejecting. And today in session with a client, It hit me again sometimes what you're reading isn't paranoia or projection. It's pattern recognition. A lot of these partners. Don't even realize how little they're offering emotionally, how checked out they are because they're still in their own survival loop. 

still scanning for the next savior, the next escape hatch. You're not crazy for sensing that you're not weak for [00:08:00] wanting more. You're just finally listening to the part of you. That's done Dancing for the Bees. this is where residential taught me the most because the stakes were real.

Women play out the same drama over and over. They cry, they cling, they flirt, they rage, they get caught up in it. You get jealous, you get caught up in it. But if you're paying attention, you realize something deeper. That their self-sabotage isn't personal. It's archetypal, it's their disorder.

Talking through them in a new way, a new dialect, a seductive whisper, dressed up as protection. 

that's what I saw in the client today. She wasn't lying, she wasn't faking, but the heat she was throwing wasn't her. It was a symptom. real healing isn't just getting sober from drugs, it's getting sober from chaos, from the chase, [00:09:00] from the high of being needed.

So maybe your dude isn't broken. Maybe it's the most honest part of you. Maybe it's the one thing in the room that's not pretending, because when your body says no, it's not always dysfunction. Sometimes it's direction. So if you made it this far, here's what you already know. Your body isn't betraying you.

Erectile dysfunction isn't a malfunction, it's a message, a shutdown in the presence of a disconnection, shame, or mis attunement, whether it's her energy, your history, or the ghosts of your childhood running loops inside your chest. Your system knows you don't need another supplement.

You need alignment, nervous system alignment, emotional sovereignty, structural recalibration. You need to stop performing and start transmitting. That's what Precision Cycle was built for, [00:10:00] to turn men who are tired of collapsing, tired of chasing. Tired of pretending into embodied leaders, into sovereign operators, into men who don't just talk presence.

They are presence.

So if this episode hit, if your gut's telling you, I'm not just talking, I'm talking to you, then here's your move. Tap the link in the description. Join the list. Recalibrate your system, because real masculinity isn't about domination, it's about direction. Elevate, align, lead. This is Elevate dot epo.

Some quick references. I mentioned some works here. the works of Donald Nathanson, md. One great text that you can reference 

Affect sex and the birth of the self, 1992. This is his magnum opus. It introduces the compass of shame and how shame affects sexual expression, [00:11:00] affect regulation and identity formation. Joyce McDougall, she wrote The Many Faces of Arrows, A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Human Sexuality. 1996 was the editor on that.

an anthology where Nathanson also appears as an editor, and others uses. He uses Tompkins base effect theory to examine the fragmentation of erotic experience through shame, trauma, and affect dysregulation. theaters of the body, a psychoanalytic approach to psychosomatic illness 1989. That's also a core concept there of our work.

when words fail, the body becomes the stage. That's essentially the biggest takeaway, especially useful for framing ed as a psychosomatic defense rather than a mechanical failure if we're going down that route.

Passionate marriage, keeping love and intimacy, alive and committed relationships. that's another text, 1997. this is a work that lays [00:12:00] out, the sexual crucible model, differentiation, emotional fusion, and erotic tension of self definition. and finally, another work, intimacy and desire awaken the passion and your relationship.

2009, that explores how self validation and integrity not arousal tricks or porn scripts are the key to, sustainable erotic performance.

And those last ones were by, Dr. David Snark, PhD. 

so hopefully you've. Walked away from this with some information and a new way of, conceptualizing a topic that may be, a little embarrassing, but very indicative of how, disconnected we are at times. the sexual act is very intimate for a reason, and it's one of the most primal forces of nature that exists.

The fact that you cannot perform this very simple task is a big red flag of, [00:13:00] significant issues that are blocking your q if you will, again, if you have issues in that realm that need to be medically looked at, please by all means go and find a licensed provider, internal medicine.

General practitioner, urologist that will be able to help you further with those concerns. If you've been to those, practitioners and they have all referred you back to someone to deal with it because it's in your head, traditional therapy is a way to go forward with it. But precision cycles should also be considered.

our seven dimensions of emotional and personality alignment can be a helpful tool when assessing what particular parts of our personality are bleeding into others. having the ability to have hard data, from a cross dimensional perspective would be rather.

Welcome, please feel free to make up your own mind. Just make sure to [00:14:00] reach out if this episode really spoke to you. Thank you very much for your support for downloading our podcast, for, watching us online. we really appreciate all the support that you have been able to provide.

Something that we really, look forward to and it's something that, is great to see. please feel free to DM or send me an email enrique@elevateepo.com. We're on Instagram and Facebook Elevate dot epo. We're on Twitter Elevate. EPO. Also now on YouTube Precision Cycle tv, where you can find full length episodes of this show along with others and some behind the scenes work.

You can also reach us at Precision Cycle on TikTok. Look for us there. For more video and insight, please tune in on Wednesday. I will be attending Post Con a, conference for the Postman Group APIs. we are looking to find ways to effectively merge psychology [00:15:00] with technology. So if you're down there, say hello, 

We'll be back on Friday as well for another round of insight. Thank you again for all your help and support. Please feel free to contact me should you want to continue book your Precision cycle today and we can get your 2025 summer off to a great start. Line you up for a perfect 2026. Thank you very much.

Welcome to June. Happy June and everyone please enjoy themselves and have a great week. Thank you.