In this episode, hosts Dr. Rena Malik and Dr. Elisabeth Gordon explore the intricate connection between the mind and body in ...

youre-missing-out-on-better-orgasms-and-sex-heres-why

You’re Missing Out on Better Orgasms (and Sex!) – Here’s Why!

let's talk about orgasms let's talk about how people can use their mind and their experience to obtain better orgasm I love this topic this is something that is so key in my practice that we talk about so perversely I want to put this out there right away focusing on an orgasm is the worst thing you can do for the possibility of having an orgasm or to the quality of your orgasm orgasm is not the end game that is really important to understand pleasure is the end game in sex that may or may not include orgasm it may or may not be available to you at any time but we very much again culturally focus on orgasm as the end of sex or as the ultimate pleasure and I'm not going to lie orgasm is great it can be the most pleasurable part for many people it is the most pleasurable part but again the focus on orgasm versus the focus on Pleasure is the death nail to the quality or perhaps even the possibility of orgasm so what people can do instead to really enhance is they first have to understand the physiology and they have to understand that to be in the right space to even have the availability of orgasm but certainly to enhance orgasm they have to understand the autonomic nervous system so I know you you know what it is but I like to explain it to people as the autonomic nervous system is two states one is the parasympathetic nervous system which I call the stream and chill State and it's when you can sit back you relax you're eating your popcorn and maybe having a little Nookie and the other is the sympathetic State or the fight flight or freeze and fawn state or essentially the lion is after you state and to have full arousal you need to have more of a parasympathetic State you need to be in that relaxed space you need to just be chilling out and that requires not being in that sympathetic State it's not that they are an on andof switch it's not one or the other they work as sort of two dimmer switches and when you adjust them simultaneously you can see which state you are in but you really want to lean more towards that parasympathetic relax State and this does not happen if you're busy being worried about orgasm if you're checking in with yourself oh no am I there yet am I there yet am I going to have an orgasm okay this is anxiety this is essentially that there is a threat to your pleasure a threat to your health that you're not going to have that orgasm which revs you up which is counterproductive to the arousal to get you there so instead we as sex therapists and in the psychological Community really rely on using more focus on sensation you want to focus more on the bodily sensation you want to be more Mindful and you want to focus on those Sensations we use a technique called sensate Focus to help people learn how to do this and often use mindfulness as well there's a lot of great evidence about mindfulness and the best way to focus and enhance your pleasure is to focus on the sensations here is again where communication comes in because you want to both focus on your Sensations and be able to communicate to your partner what will give you more good pleasurable Sensations the more you focus and learn what are good Sensations the more you hang on to those the quieter your brain becomes the less of that sympathetic State happens the more you enhance that parasympathetic State the more you enhance that pleasure the greater the pleasure you have the more likely you are to have satisfying orgasms I think that's so important and you know there's always like these uh movies or things where they're like oh you know baby come for me right or like have an orgasm for me which actually adds more stress right because if you're not primed and ready to go at the moment your partner is asking for it you're not going to come you're not going to orgasm because that's just stressful it can be for most people it really is not everybody some people really enjoy that component of pressure but for most people that's is extremely stress F and counterproductive yeah yeah no I think it's really important I think there's a lot of um discussion about how women are multi-orgasmic and that can also lead to sort of cuz women can feel inadequate if they're not multi-orgasmic or like if they're not having orgasms even just one versus multiple what are your thoughts or tips there again not focusing on orgasm I think that this gets back to that cultural script of sex is about mainly penis and vagina but certainly about heading straight to the orgasm and now that we've started to think about female pleasure as a culture and noticed that women don't have as long a refractory period as men they have the potential to be multi-orgasmic that became okay you need to be but that's not true you need to have pleasure you need to be safeguarding your pleasure out of the encounter and that comes back to the more you focus on it the less likely it is to happen but it's not a problem if you're not having orgasms if you are having pleasure and it is not a problem if you're only having one orgasm if it is pleasurable to you nor is it a problem if you're having multiple orgasms as long as it's pleasurable to you but to feel that you have to might not be as pleasurable in Neely so we want to take the focus away from orgasm for all genders it just really needs to not be the focus and for all body types um but I I do I get many women in my practice who come in and are feeling inadequate because they only reach orgasm occasionally or they are not multi-orgasmic and we really need to understand what is the Incorporated understanding of what myths around sexuality you have that you are comparing yourself to and proide real education about the fact that this is not true not all women are multi-orgasmic certainly not all of the time and there is a percentage of women that don't have orgasm at all it doesn't mean that they don't have sat satisfying or can't have satisfying sexual lives when you understand what is more of the reality that can help you feel better it's a destigmatization through normalization and through education and that alone can take some of that pressure off and leave you better able to access your pleasure by being less anxious being more in that chill State yeah I want to talk about because I know this is an area of interest for you but about how to talk to kids about sex I love this area I found myself kind of falling into this area I have children and thinking about what I would want them to know and also because I everybody that I see in my practice really a major component of what goes into the dysfunction even when I just see them for a consult and we realize it's biological and I send them off to have some biological treatment and or assessment and treatment the lack of education has so hindered them it's hindered them from seeking help or it's hindered them from understanding that it's biological and therefore they end up with me feeling something's wrong with them on the psychological level or whatever is going on psychologically or sexually could so easily have been prevented or mainly prevented at least by having had good access to education so for all of these reasons it really became so clear to me that we are underperforming when we are not providing good sexual health education for children and it's been fascinating to be in this space because I think that so many adults think that means that I'm saying therefore we should go into kindergarten and talk to them about how to engage sexually what is intercourse what is kink and that is not it at all what good sexual health education is for children is providing foundations age appropriate repeated education that provides foundations so it starts with giving them the names for their body parts talking about what their body means to them talking about how they interact physically with things like how does it feel when you're sad and you get a hug from mommy or daddy It Feels Good Hugs can feel good but you have times where you don't want to hug and that's okay too you're allowed to say no that's laying the foundations for consent for bodily autonomy for physical pleasure knowing their Anatomy gives them the words and talking about it in a very non-stigmatized fashion gives them the understanding that it is okay to talk about that lays the foundation for being able to communicate more effectively later plus when caretakers engage in this way and begin talking and building on these Sexual Health Concepts and when kids get them through other sources too hopefully through school that we know that that's a little dismal but also hopefully through their health care practitioners then it normalizes talking about it normalizes that this is part of life and opens lines of communication so that if they encounter problems they're more likely to come and fix them early on and there is abundant abundant abundant evidence that providing this layered comprehensive sex positive education helps on so many levels it blows my mind it helps by preventing kids from being at risk of abuse when they have words for their parts I heard one horrible story that I truly it's I didn't verify it I don't know I truly hope it's not true but one horrible story of a young girl who reported to her teacher that her uncle kept touching her muffins and this went on for a few weeks before her teacher realized that her her muffin was her word for her vulva we need accurate language that could have been stopped sooner if we had accurate language I've heard similar stories not that exact one but again you don't have the terms and you come and try to explain what's going on if you can't explain it it could be misconstrued oh and it just drives me crazy I want to protect these kids and give them the possibility of health and safety the way to do it is start with young children with those foundational topics and then build in an age appropriate way and so with middle kids you can start talking about often quite young kids will have siblings on the way they either have a sibling on the way or they are a younger sibling or their friend's parents will have siblings so they'll want to know where the babies come from giving concrete explanations of where babies grow of how babies go through the vagina to be born or you can say sometimes they don't come that way and giving explanations of how families are made sometimes doesn't involve that either either can be very helpful they want to know about their own bodies and they notice the difference in other bodies explaining the difference and saying that you know everybody has a different body there are everybody shares Parts just like everybody has a face everybody has a nose but they all look different they also have other parts everybody has elbows but they look different everybody has genitals but they all look different and then providing the names for the parts of the genitals again I feel this is particularly important for female-bodied people because so often they don't have words and they can't see see their genitals the same way offering a mirror naming the parts can be very helpful for them very destigmatizing very non-shaming and then as they get older continuing to talk about relationships continuing to provide education about physiological processes one of the tenants of good comprehensive sex positive sexual health education is approaching each area of development in advance of the time frame so that you are starting to provide the before the kids start to have the changes or start to engage in behaviors so that they can hear it and start to understand what their responses might be when this happens to them and have some options for how to respond rather than be surprised be scared mhm and ultimately you want to be talking about puberty before kids hit puberty and we know that for girls this happens around ages 8 n it's slightly later for boys but you want to start talking about it in advance otherwise kids get scared and otherwise they're desperate for information and then they're turning particularly around sexuality they'll turn to the internet they'll get poor information misinformation sometimes even disinformation from their friends or from the internet and one of the things I see commonly is people coming into me with this idea of oh sex is whatever they've seen in porn porn is great porn can be wonderful but that's rather like having kids sit down and un you know if you shielded them from ever driving you never let them in a car and you closed their eyes and told them to look away when cars were driving past and then when they're 16 years old you sit down and let them play Grand Theft Auto with the racing cars going up the walls and crashing and then it resets and then once they had played a few hours of that you toss them the keys Grand Theft Auto is for is for entertainment purposes this is not education no you start kids in cars you tell them what's safe you tell them what they need to look for you start them slowly driving you make sure they're safe you just Shepherd them along the way step by step until they you finally let them go out on their own and engaging sexually needs to be that way too not that you have to be sitting by their side as they engage but to provide the information so that they have that information in advance and it just is really amazing to me that ultimately comprehensive sex positive education preferably provided by caretakers by I mean it takes a village right so preferably provided by caretakers by Educational Systems by Health Care Systems results in such a myriad of positive outcomes it results in later onset of sexual engagement even for early kids as we said it results in better safety reduced rates of child sexual abuse so these kids are safer that results in later on speaking of abuse it results in later reduced incidence of intimate partner violence and reduced incidence of domestic violence and so you're talking about decreased victimization across a lifetime it also results in later onset of sexual activity as we said in increased use of protection with first sexual encounter decreased risk of teen pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy decreased risk of STI transmission it results in increased satisfaction with first sexual encounter and seemingly with ongo knowing sexual encounters increased satisfaction with your sex life the results there are not as robust cuz the research just hasn't been robust it's hard to do across the lifetime but there is some interesting evidence there it also has more profound and far-reaching it results in better communication skills better relational skills increased empathy increased understanding and tolerance of difference whether that is racial or sexual and gendered minority difference it results in inre ined compassion and better ability to have conflict resolution because you have increased skills of talking about these difficult topics with good comprehensive sexual health education you're modeling that you can talk about these topics and I like to think there is very little evidence I I don't I haven't found any yet because we haven't done these multigenerational studies but it would seem to me that when you provide this comprehensive sexual health education with all of the results we do know that these are the things that often go into increasing the likelihood of having sexual dysfunction having relational dysfunction so you're going to have improved sexual function relational dysfunction which we know is correlated with better mental and physical health outcomes and better quality of life but I also like to think that therefore you'd have a whole generation once you raise these children who would be less unable to provide this for their own children and we could start to to break this cycle yeah and just increase health I mean the the the potential far-reaching benefits blow my mind it's it's amazing and I think everyone can agree that you may not agree with everything but you can agree that you want them to be safer you want them to have less abuse and less partner abuse right like those three things I don't think anyone could argue on like you want your that for your kids everything else you can argue whatever you want but those are like non-negotiables for me as a parent and I would think that that would be reason enough yeah H and it is important to add I know they can hear the some of the push back potentially um many of the arguments out there are oh oh no but we don't agree with having sex before marriage in our family or our particular cultural religious dictates our XYZ but it's so important to understand that this education does not negate anybody's values any religious values any cultural values it can be provided as this is factual information yet our Family Values our religious values our culture values say that this is the way that you should conduct yourself you are only safeguarding you don't tell your kids not to wear a seat belt because you don't want to deal with them getting an accident you wear a seat belt to prevent the problem and so this is information that is just prevention in case something happens and with all those benefits yes yeah I share very often I talk to my sons or at least my older son so far about sex about the potential for viewing for getting coming across erotic uh films or things like that and it's uncomfortable for me and I talk about sex for a living right and it's still uncomfortable for me and it's going to be uncomfortable for everyone because we weren't given the scripts but this is life saving information and and it's really valuable and you just have to sort of work at it slow it doesn't have to be all in one sitting ites to better I mean but like people will think oh I have to sit down and have the talk I think that's wrong like that's not the way that we should be approaching this this is something that you give in small doses over periods of time one you get more comfortable with it and your child gets more comfortable with it and they start feeling oh this is something I can talk about regularly it's it's exactly it you're modeling that you can talk about it regularly children do not have the attention span to absorb all of sex head in one talk nobody wants to sit down and talk that long about it well except maybe for you and me um but nobody wants to listen to that that much and it is you C you can't provide all of that because you want to provide it at each education education at each developmental stage and you need to deliver it differently they have different concerns but it's it's also that you need to understand that by repeatedly talking about it you're normalizing it and there was something else I was going to say but I've totally forgotten that's okay I mean I think a good a good Le and these are just have worked for me not based on any evidence but if they see something on a TV show or a movie I sort of watch their reaction and then I'll like do you have questions for me like did something confuse you about that and then I let them I let them say like you can ask me anything right I'm not going to react in a negative way I will always tell

Dr.

Related Videos

Consultation & Treatment

Consult With Loading Doctor Data