Help with Premature Ejaculation (PE): Through the use of the arousal scale redefine your masturbation goals
Re-framing (or redefining) your masturbation goals: Use of arousal scale for PE Common complaint among men with PE: since their early years of masturbating, due to various environmental and societal factors men often train themselves to rush their masturbation focusing only on the act of orgasm and achieving it fast. While orgasm is often one's goal when masturbating, because the focus was solely on the orgasm, men often don't know what got them there in the first place. This is a major disadvantage for men with premature ejaculation because it's crucial to learn what is arousing to you, how your body responds to arousal, and what sensations you enjoy, and how much.
The arousal scale helps you take a slower approach to masturbation to gain awareness of your body, your sensations, and your physical triggers, and physical reactions (and through the process, you might just find yourself with new masturbation goals). The point is to focus more on the journey of masturbating and what gets you to ejaculation, but not making ejaculation the main event. The information you have on sensations you find to feel good, the better understanding you will have on how your body responds to sensations in order to increase your ability to last longer before ejaculating. Therefore your new goal when masturbating is to put all of your focus on the journey of masturbation, rather than solely on the destination (ejaculating).
While trying the arousal scale, it is important to be without distractions in order to focus completely on the moment at hand and the sensations you are experiencing. Use of pornography, fantasies, having your cell phone ringing, are all surefire ways to impair your awareness of what is going on with your body during this exercise. To help you understand this as a trial run do a comparison, complete the arousal scale just once with the use of porn or fantasy, and then once without. See if you notice a difference between both experiences, was it difficult to multitask with watching porn or fantasizing while trying to identify levels and numbers of arousal?
Your first step in redefining your masturbation goals is by creating your arousal scale to help guide your focus on the sensations experienced throughout your masturbation. On a piece of paper write out every number from 0, all the way up to 100 (0,1,2,3...). As a frame of reference for the scale, 0 starts of the arousal scale as having no sexual thoughts and not being at all turned on or aroused, 99 is the point of no return, and 100 is ejaculation. To give you a better idea of where/how to scale your masturbatory experience on the arousal scale, beforehand write on the scale and rate as many things as you can that you find sexually arousing. For example, kissing the neck may be a 25 to you, seeing an arousing picture may be an 8, 50 may be seeing your partner naked, 75 may be genital touching, etc. The more detailed, and the more numbers you can identify with an arousing situation or image, the more helpful the scale will be to you in____. Next, write down with the appropriate number any physical sensations that occur with what you already have listed to be arousing. Examples include sweating, heavy breathing, etc.
Now that you have a rough layout of what you recall is sexually arousing and what occurs for you, next masturbate to ejaculation while taking notice of what you find arousing and by how much, as well as how your body is responding. To help you stay in the moment and focused on the sexual activity if you find your mind starting to wander, or you're beginning to feel impatient, bring your focus back to the sensations and what is feeling good to you at that moment, and continue to keep your mind on your breathing and your sensations. Record on your scale what stood out to you the most, what exactly did you do to increase your arousal and how did your body respond to each action? Keep the scale on hand in order to add more information to it throughout the week. The 1-100 approach is extremely detailed oriented and it will most likely take you 3 to 5 times of doing this exercise to complete the scale entirely. Repeat this exercise each time your masturbate this week, with a minimum of 3 times. After your first attempt at the scale assess where you have missing pieces on the scale, is it the middle, around the 55, or 62 part of the scale? Or perhaps is it closer to 99, and you just start to go black somewhere around 93? The more times you repeat this exercise the more information you will be surprised to find, that you didn't know before. Once you complete the scale for the first time, it will be easy to repeat the process because you will then have a better understanding as to how the activity works and what you are looking for.
When completing the scale keep in mind the specifics of your actions, For example, if on the scale you are tempted to write “46, stroke penis,” or “51, touched my balls,” add more! How did you stroke your penis? Hard, soft, fast, or slow? Where on your penis where you stroking? Bottom of the shaft, top of the shaft? When you touched your balls, did you use just your index finger to play with one, did you use the palm of your hands to play with both? These little picky questions DO matter! The more understanding you have of your own arousal process, the more awareness you will have in the moment when with a partner. This will become clearer to you in the next phase of the arousal scale. Feel free to click on the link below to view an example of a completed 1-100 arousal scale.
Once you have a completed 1-100 scale, it's important to experiment with different types of touch and see how your body responds. Take about 3 minutes for each type of touch, and experiment with slow strokes, and fast strokes, hard strokes, and light stokes. Be sure to experiment with each touch on all areas of your penis (the base of the shaft, the tip, etc.). What sensations did you experience with each touch? Where does the experience and the sensations rate on your arousal scale?
If you are ready for the next step that means you have learned in great detail about what you find arousing, how to increase your arousal, and what just doesn't do it for you no matter how you slice it. You have slowed yourself down, and have taken a step outside of the ejaculatory experience and have now made it more about the masturbatory experience.
Now as much as you have learned about yourself through completing the previous exercises, this is truly where all your new knowledge is put to good use. Take a look over your most recently completed arousal scale, look at what techniques helped you reach a 65. In your next masturbatory exercise, you will masturbate, bringing yourself to a 65 and then bring yourself back down to your identified 55. In order to identify how to bring yourself from a 65 to a 55, it's important to know the paces and the touch that help you slow up. Stop stimulation and allow your penis to go flaccid, bring you back down to a complete 0. Repeat this step two more times. Next bring arouse yourself again from a 0, bringing yourself up to an 80, then slow your pace and change your touch (if needed, to lighter) to bring yourself back down to a 60. Stop stimulation and bring yourself back down to 0. Repeat two more times. Spend about 5 minutes total on the full exercise. Complete the 2 steps a total of 4 times.
Following these instructions and completing the exercise will help you discover what helps you slow down in order to better control your arousal (Was it a slower pace? A specific type of touch, or no touch at all? Breathing? Touching or stroking a different area of your penis?)
Keep in mind to focus on the sensations whether you are masturbating or engaging in sexual activity with a partner. This will help you maintain your focus on the moment at hand, assist in avoiding any distractions, and will encourage you to stay focused on what is making your body feel good and by how much.