Hello Guys,
Most of you will probably not like this post or reject it ; I would have done the same for years ; I feel like I need to share my view because it could help some of you.
I spent the last five years trying to understand what is POIS ; I saw dozen of med, had thousands of blood work, tried pretty much sups discussed here ; I've been investigated my endocrine system, my liver, my stomach, my brain, my ears, my eyes, my immune system and so on : My body is in good shape.
Like many of you, I noticed I had a lot of anxiety and have always been looking at it as a consequences of POIS caused by the fear of living the next day, week and years with my POIS. I've been absolutely convinced about that for years.
Today I'm POIS free and it's been about 2 month now ; Guess what i've done : I just stopped to control everything and especially my orgasm ; I have orgasm whenever I want, whenever I feel the need to have it, I stopped looking at everything I do, eat, act, feel every minute of my life as I did for years ; I stopped worrying about what will happen ; My logic was : this strategy doesn't work , I need to face it, Im' more sick that before I discovered that POIS existed ; I have to give a try and stop controlling ; If my POIS logic is right I should almost die with a lot of orgasm, no more pills, no more control ; If I don't die, maybe I'm wrong somewhere...
And I actually felt much better immediately ; So this is my explanation :
POIS is like a chronic burn out ; For individual reason(a part is probably genetic, for me it was caused by a trauma when I was 18) we have accumulated stress and anxiety for years ; Fight or flight response very useful in some situation is not designed to perform for an extend period of time ; Overstimulation of sympathetic system create conditions for exhaustion of nervous system ; My guess is that most of us developed strategy to avoid sinking totally and avoid doing a burn out which is nice but the problem became chronic with good period and relapse ; Most of us here are creative and intelligent people ; this has to play a role.
As a result, symptoms of POIS are totally real, something happens in the body, and in my opinion the nervous system just crash with a very probable influence of vagus nerve which control the sympathetic system. All the symptoms that we describe(most of them are sensation) can be linked to chronic anxiety. Feeling anxious doenst' even need to be present and not necessarily in the same period ; it can be unconscient and exhaustion stage ca, happen years after an anxious episode. 90% of case of anxiety disorder are revealed before 18yo which explain why many of us first experienced POIS in the puberty
If your are not convinced about what our brain can do you our body when we believe that we do something bad for us, look at this video ;there is some people that can die and other heal cancer just by turning they brain in one side or the other ; It's not new age theory, it's mainstream medical evidences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWQfe__fNbsFor some reason our fear and anxiety have been focused to sexual activity and it works just like a phobia ; We fear orgasm a lot and when it happens everything that we expect(reinforce collectively through this forum) just happens ; It's Nocebo effect(the opposite of placebo effect) and it's quite powerful mechanism ; If we accept that placebo effects works on us(which is as a matter of fact very clear) we need to accept that nocebo has also a real impact.
It's very difficult to admit, took me a year and it's like waking up from a bad dream ; make me think to shutter island guy ; For and anxious brain, having a external problem is always easier that facing the problem but it's never gonna solve it.
I'm sure the Dr K. will find something with vagus nerve but I also believe that it will be a dead end as there is no cure for a neurovagal dystonia because it's a symptoms of a screw up nervous system, not a disease ; It's quite a common diagnosis here in France and people get basically benzo as a cure.
The good news is if i'm true we can heal ; we have an ability to use or brain to both make us ill or make us better and the brain is very powerful.
What I've done :
meditation : it's the key ; it's not an oriental think for monks with encents, it's science and very efficient ; you can re programate your brain(physically, if you do an MRI before and after some weeks of meditation you'll see a change in grey matter) with a bit of training ; I found out that I had a very athletic brain for worrying but I was able to train it to get more peace and calm ; it's efficient after only 6 weeks
cogntitive therapy : I saw 4 guys that was no competent ; the fifth was the good one ; This part is also really important
sport : accelerate the process ;
Food : eat healthy also accelerate the process
Normal life! stop wording after POIS
It's not an instant process, I failed a year ago because I had relapse after some O which make me fear again about O which was turned into anxiety and stressed/exhaust my nervous system ; then you feel tired mentally and physically so you worry even more,start ruminating avoid O, restart to spend your day to assess how you feel and the cycle continue...your brain will try to find a logical/external explanation and POIS will get bigger again like a chimeras. So it's really important to regenerate your nervous system by giving it a break for enough time(including during POIS period) ; it's important to know that there is cycle and it will come back but if you modify your neuronal circuits and thinking pattern, it will go away for life.
What I felt for years was a subjective experience of again anxious mind ; we are non objective observatory of ourselves ; Cornelius who basically said exactly the same 2 years ago was true.
I know that most of us will reject all that ; I would have done the same ; It's like giving up on everything we've been believed before and it's much more confortable to have a disease on which we can't do nothing than having a psychological problem ; But again, read my old post, just like you I was absolutely convinced of POIS being a physical illness and today for the first time is 6 years I feel good.
Hope it helps some of you
Good luck
