The Connection Between the Subconscious Mind and Sexual Functioning
By Shlomit Wolfin
Not many people talk about this, but what happens in the bedroom has significant implications for quality of life in general, for self-image in particular, and for the relationship between partners.
Many men experience sexual functioning problems and do not always realize that they are dealing with an emotional or consciousness-related issue.
What Led Me to This Groundbreaking Field?
After personally healing from a chronic illness through working with the subconscious mind, and after one persistent man with a sexual functioning problem succeeded in resolving his problem, I explain the connection between the subconscious mind and sexual functioning problems in men, what the subconscious mind is, and how this type of difficulty can be addressed.
Each of us has a kind of "back brain" that manages us. This brain is essentially a storage area for events, experiences, memories, and even traumas, as well as beliefs and habits, which controls our decisions, the way we conduct ourselves, our thinking, our behavior, and especially, in light of the subject of this article, our sexual functioning.
It is commonly thought that sexual functioning problems occur because of age, illness, or stress, or simply because "that’s how it has been since we were teenagers".
And I state unequivocally that in some cases, the subconscious mind clearly plays a role in managing sexual functioning.
According to the Freudian model of the psyche by Sigmund Freud, our consciousness is divided into three parts:
1. The subconscious (the unconscious);
2. The preconscious;
3. The conscious mind.
Freud, as early as 1902, opened our awareness to the subconscious mind, while developing a groundbreaking treatment to alleviate the suffering of people with depression.
From this treatment and the development of awareness surrounding subconscious treatments, the spectrum of awareness expanded beginning in the 1970s and has become an increasingly prominent subject in recent years.
According to him, a person is rational and appears to act from the conscious mind.
The conscious mind is everything within our awareness at this very moment.
The preconscious is something we are not thinking about at this moment, but which we may nevertheless remember in the future.
In Freud’s view, the purpose of psychoanalysis is to make people more whole, more connected to their true selves, and better able to understand the structure of their psyche.
This is so that they can live their lives free from the burden and weight of mental disorders and internal conflicts.
According to him, mental disorders constitute a kind of castration of the true self.
And I found the direct connection to sexual functioning.
And the Subconscious Mind?
It contains concepts that do not explicitly enter our conscious awareness:
Emotions, drives, and desires, as well as unpleasant content that interferes with our ability, as human beings, to manage our daily lives.
In contemporary language, we call these blocks, inhibitions, and traumas.
Milton H. Erickson – one of the most prominent American psychologists – argues, in contrast to Freud, that the subconscious mind is an inexhaustible reservoir of resources, a source of creativity responsible for most of our daily activity.
In other words, we are managed by the subconscious mind, even though we experience the conscious mind in the present moment, and it controls a very high percentage of the way we conduct ourselves.
According to the theory of Dr. Joseph Murphy, a researcher of the subconscious mind and author of the bestseller "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind", every event or thought that a person experiences "sinks" into the subconscious mind and remains there forever.
All of our memories that exist in the conscious mind also exist in the subconscious mind, but not the other way around.
The subconscious mind can guide us by “retrieving” the right memory at the right moment, or by using several memories in order to draw a complex conclusion that the conscious mind is unable to reach.
He believed that our thoughts affect the subconscious mind and dictate the way in which it should guide us. Therefore, positive thoughts contribute to us, while negative thoughts detract from us.
He believed in introducing ideas into the subconscious mind through repeating key phrases with positive thought patterns and belief, or by imagining images that depict the desired situation.
From his perspective, any problem can be solved and any question can be answered.
As a result of this way of thinking, many diverse therapeutic techniques were developed.
Techniques for integrating a new belief to create reality, manifesting things into our lives, “diving” into the subconscious mind to retrieve and correct memories, and more.
I describe the subconscious mind as a storage area in the brain that has accumulated events, experiences, memories, and even traumas over the years, and sends impulses into our conscious reality, thereby managing us.
On the negative side, we are not always aware of what is managing us, and therefore the results in our lives are not always clear to us – especially when we feel trapped in an endless loop of difficult emotional experiences that can lead to a lifestyle we would not necessarily choose, and even to illness.
On the positive side, when we know how to work with the subconscious mind, the sky truly is the limit.
How Is All of This Connected to Sexual Functioning?
Based on my clients, my experience, and years of research, I have found that most sexual functioning problems were created through patterns embedded in the subconscious mind as early as adolescence.
They were stored inside this computer file called the brain, and began to manage sexual functioning in an unhealthy way either from the moment they were embedded or years later, when the embedded memories were "retrieved".
Sexual functioning problems stem from two clear characteristics: beliefs and habits.
(which, by the way, is true in every area of life).
A belief is a thought that has been repeated enough times until it has become embedded and proves itself to be true, while a habit is a pattern of activity that has been repeated enough times until it becomes established.
If a person wholeheartedly believes that he is absolutely worthless and that nothing ever works out for him, life will show him that this is the truth according to the results he experiences.
He does not even have to create this thought himself in order for it to become a belief, because it is enough for an educator or parent to tell him that this is who he is for the belief to become embedded.
If a person repeats a particular action over and over again, over time he will develop the habit of that action.
What Actually Happens in Subconscious Treatment?
When treating sexual functioning problems, I identify the clear connection between the problem and the beliefs and habits of the man who has come to me.
I identify the patterns that are managing him, whether he is consciously aware of them or not.
From there, I create inner work using tools and techniques, primarily guided imagery, to identify the source of those beliefs and habits and change them.
Through this change, under professional guidance, healing and improvement in sexual functioning are created.
This applies to premature ejaculation or delayed ejaculation, erectile difficulties, decreased desire and libido, and more.
Here Are Some Examples of Specific Cases (Each Case Is Unique) –
Premature Ejaculation
A teenager who was accustomed to masturbating in the bathroom or shower out of fear that someone might catch him would masturbate quickly in order to reach satisfaction, thereby developing a habit of sexual stimulation accompanied by rapid ejaculation.
What happens later in his sexual life is that when the time comes for sexual intimacy, the subconscious mind sends a signal that he should ejaculate quickly so that he "doesn’t get caught", and therefore he ejaculates quickly.
This is just one of many examples of premature ejaculation.
Performance Anxiety
A teenager has his first sexual experience with a woman who provides sexual services for payment.
Because of the pressure and excitement, he cannot get an erection at all.
The subconscious mind remembers the event and stores the memory, and from that point onward, every time he wants to meet a woman for sexual intercourse, a memory of that first experience is retrieved, and he experiences performance anxiety that prevents him from engaging in healthy sexual intercourse.
Erectile Difficulties
A man once has sexual intercourse with his regular partner and suddenly, due to fatigue, intoxication, or lack of concentration, briefly loses his erection.
His partner, of course, has something to say about his masculinity, and from that moment an imprint is created in the subconscious mind.
Every time he becomes intimate with her, he loses his erection.
The examples are virtually endless.
Everyone comes with the same types of problems, but each person has a different reason for why the problem developed, what caused it, and when it began.
The examples are virtually endless.
Everyone comes with the same types of problems, but each person has a different reason for why the problem developed, what caused it, and when it began.
The beauty is that although the subconscious mind manages us in almost every aspect of what happens to us and around us, it is also flexible, as I mentioned earlier based on the experts in this field.
Therefore, identifying the event, retrieving the memory, changing the energy, healing the place, integrating new energy, and creating a change in belief and habit can lead to resolving the sexual functioning problem.
This can lead to control over ejaculation, control over a good and strong erection, as well as the ability to engage in sexual intercourse calmly and peacefully, without anxiety and distressing physiological symptoms.
The psychologist Carl Jung, one of Freud’s students, expanded the concept of the subconscious mind into the collective unconscious, which is shared by all human beings across all cultures.
The collective unconscious has a significant influence on personality. It includes experiences accumulated over generations, passed down through inheritance from the distant past, and rooted in human beings as innate tendencies to respond or behave in certain ways, according to the culture and heritage into which they were born.
From this, we can see, for example, people today who, generation after generation, believe in something that was embedded long ago, and which still manages us today, despite the progress and development over the years in technology and awareness.
A collective belief that I have encountered is connected to "what the doctor said".
Several men came to me who had truly allowed the statement, "Men’s erections already start failing at age 50", to influence them.
On the surface, these were completely healthy men, without health problems or medications for blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, heart problems, and so on.
Simply because some doctor said it, the subconscious mind decided to embed it as a fact.
In other words, although everything had been sexually normal and healthy until the age of 50, the switch in the mind changed and caused erectile difficulties based on a belief that actually belonged to someone else.
How Did It All Begin?
After I healed myself from a condition called ulcerative colitis, which is identified by conventional medicine as a chronic intestinal disease, I opened a home clinic for treatment through the subconscious mind.
On one occasion, a man in his late 40s came to me claiming that for two years he had been unable to have penetrative sex with an erection.
Every time he wanted to penetrate a woman, he lost his erection.
At that time, I did not yet have the extensive knowledge I have today. I had no experience at all with men experiencing erectile difficulties.
So, from my perspective, I told him to take Viagra, but he refused.
After he insisted that I "do what I do with the mind", I was indeed able to identify the emotional and psychological factor that had led to his erectile difficulty.
After the assessment, I guided him through a guided imagery process to recreate the event and create a different integration, and in doing so, the problem was resolved.
We removed the embedded pattern from the thought that had been managing him until that point, created healing in that place, and a few days later he moved me deeply when he shared with me that his erection had returned.
Since then, I have specialized in the field of male sexual functioning through working with the subconscious mind.
I have found many emotional and psychological causes that contribute to functional problems.
Some are connected to adolescence and early sexual experiences.
Some are connected to the "awakening" of the subconscious mind following an ongoing or one-time event from childhood.
And some are connected to collective beliefs.
Either way, once an in-depth assessment is conducted and we understand the traumas, blocks, and inhibitions that led to these difficulties, they can be addressed.
From my perspective, they are resolvable, and it is possible to regain control over sexual functioning well into old age.
Shlomit Wolfin
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Sigmund Freud was an Austrian-Jewish psychologist and neurologist (1856–1939), considered the father of psychoanalysis, one of the most important thinkers in the field of personality theory, and one of the most prominent and influential scientists and intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Dr. Milton Hyland Erickson (1901–1980) was an American psychiatrist and psychologist, one of the founders of the strategic approach to psychotherapy and the father of the Ericksonian approach to hypnotherapy (hypnosis techniques). He contributed to the development of the NLP technique, coined the expression "Brief Therapy", and sought to create change among patients through a small number of therapeutic sessions.
Dr. Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) became a minister in the United States and spread many teachings dealing with the subconscious mind. He published more than 30 books. Murphy’s basic premise was that the solution to every problem lies within the individual, and that in order to improve life, one must change one’s thoughts and beliefs rather than external circumstances.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and one of Sigmund Freud’s leading students. He was among the group of thinkers who laid the foundations of modern psychology.
