Empowerment

[mangodean]

I'm a retired psychotherapist. One of my areas of interest is body-mind interaction. I love this board and the people on it who give so unselfishly to try to help men they will never meet. I want to contribute some thoughts on the possibility of emotional issues that could underlie Peyronies Disease.  It is well known that sustained stress can result in physical illness. This is certainly the case with me with Peyronies Disease.  In my case I was directly stressed about sexual issues.
I was a caretaker for my wife (Alzheimer's) for 8 years. Our sex life stopped in the first year.  But I still had intimate contact with her every day. I showered with her, dressed her, cooked and cleaned for us, slept with her, cleaned and diapered her when she became incontinent (awful), carried her for several months when she was injured and couldn't walk, etc.  I f***ing hated it!  But I couldn't imagine trying to get out of the situation, she was my girl and I'm a loyal guy therefore I took care of her. I still had sexual urges that were nothing but a problem. It got really hard to reconcile my instinctive desire for her with the deteriorating, severely handicapped, sometimes disgusting person she had become. So over the years I just turned it off.  Whenever I felt desire, in my mind I said "you can't feel that, it only makes it worse".  So as time went on I felt less and less till eventually, about 3 years ago, on one of the rare occasions when I had an erection, I noticed that my little man looked like somebody had a choke hold on him, an hourglass shape, and a radical curve. I had been choking off my sexual energy for so long that my penis looked strangled and just gave up trying anymore.
So now I'm involved with a woman that I really want to make love with in all the ways love can be made and I can't.  I'm determined to heal and I know how and why I created Peyronies Disease.   I'm implementing the medical strategies I'm learning in this forum: Pentox, VED, L-Arginine, Cialis, etc.  But I'm also trying to heal my heart and my sexual nature that have been broken for so long. Thanks to my clinical background I have a pretty good idea what kind of emotional work I have to do. I have to process all the years of pain I buried when I didn't have the luxury of acknowledging how I felt.  I'm starting to see a sex therapist next week and I'm planning on digging into that experience and crying and raging and feeling every part of it until I feel like a whole man again.  Our emotional experience influences our body chemistry every day.   Sex generates some of the most powerful emotions humans have and some of the most difficult to manage.  Men get all kinds of crazy about sex, we can't help it, it's biology, but it's hard for us to deal with problems when things go wrong. When pain gets to be too great to bear we survive by shutting down until a crisis forces us to try to heal. Crisis has a function.  It drives us to examine ourselves more deeply and grow in ways we didn't think we needed to.  In reading some accounts on the psychological issues board it's clear that lots of us are taking major hits to our hopes, our dreams, our self-esteem and our self-image.  I want to encourage anyone reading this to reflect on their past and current stressors and their sexual experiences prior to Peyronies Disease.  If you had traumas such as sexual abuse, or negative or conflicted feelings about sex, it could be very important to own those feelings and work through them.  Build a support system of people who can genuinely help you to be open. Shame is deadly, don't let it own you. We're not victims and owning your feelings never killed anybody, denial kills every day.
I offer a quote from Frank Herbert's book "Dune"
"I will not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

[NeoV]

Thanks mangodean.

Since my father is a psychologist I share a similar background when it comes to introspection, dealing with body issues, shame, etc. You really seem like you've been through a lot, and no doubt have a lot of wisdom behind all that. Hard to imagine..I appreciate it and am glad you're here. I love the quote from Dune. Great book!

[kuaka]

I have to process all the years of pain I buried when I didn't have the luxury of acknowledging how I felt.

That is about 95% of it.