I can't masturbate, I'm a 19 year old female

[Heather]

I'm positive it's not an orgasm and my body just kinda has a small seizure if I keep touching myself after it happens.

Unless you have a seizure disorder, this probably isn't a seizure. However, if you are feeling what you imagine a seizure feels like, it is very possible that this IS an orgasm for you. That is often how they can feel. If you are experiencing that, but feel like that can't be an orgasm because you don't feel satisfied, or "finished," then it's possible what's happening is just that your body is in the game here, but your head is still very focused on trying to make this happen, on your frustration with the whole thing and other distractions that are keeping you from really just having the experience.

It's also worth saying that orgasm that feels fuller and richer, rather than say, like a little bit of an electric shock or a tiny seizure, tends to come from whole sexual experiences that are fuller and richer. In other words, to get to experiencing orgasm as something that leaves you feeling more satisfying, the whole experience often needs to be longer, more involved and gradual, and again, not focused on orgasm. Orgasm is just a few seconds of sexual experience: what gets people there, and leaves people feeling satisfied, is not usually the orgasm itself so much as the much longer whole experience. Does that make sense?

Lastly, you also may be right that what you are feeling is NOT orgasm. If not, what it could be is just how it can feel when you are overstimulating a certain area. If and when that happens, it can help to change what you are doing or where, so, that means doing things like pressing more softly if you were pressing something more firmly, or switching from touching right on the clitoral head to taking some time with more general touch of the vulva, like with the outer labia, mons or clitoral shaft.

[PleaseHelpAsap]

So I've made little to no progress recently, I'm still stuck on not being able to finish. I've been feeling a little pleasure throughout like my previous update, but every time I get to the end, I have that thing where it goes completely numb. Today I tried doing it again and I ended up edging myself 3-4 times, every time I got close, I stopped and then slowly started again, and I still felt pleasure, but at the end when I decided I wanted to finish, it just instantly went from feeling closer and closer and... nothing, I don't know what else to change about my technique, I've tried everything, and I've been trying with and without my boyfriend but nothing ever changes the last bit where I feel like I'm not finishing. Also when I say seizure I don't literally mean seizure, the area down there just spasms uncontrollably.

[Heather]

I feel like at this point, all of this has become so much more about trying to solve a problem, and so little about just experiencing pleasure that the best thing you could probably do for yourself right now is take a break. When someone is coming to this this way -- seeing sex and response as problems to be solved -- it becomes more and more likely they not only will not orgasm, but also that they won't even enjoy themselves.

This is just often one of those things where in order for the good stuff to happen, everyone has to stop trying, and just go with the flow, and stop looking at something as a problem to solve, but instead just have the experience you're having.

If this were me, what I would do is take a break from genital masturbation and sex altogether for a couple months. Instead, I'd focus on exploring other kinds of pleasure, be they sexual (but not genital) or about the rest of my body, other ways to be in it, and other ways to experience pleasure in my life, like with cooking and food, nature, creative work, movement. I'd spend more time on things I know feel good for me and give myself distance from trying to solve for not reaching orgasm, and orgasm, period.

Then, once I had been able to let go of any attachment to orgasm and a renewed relationship with pleasure, I'd probably come back to genital sex via first having sexual experiences -- by myself or with others -- where I was only focusing on feeling good and without any attachment to orgasm at all. I'd do that for a while and just see what happens, staying focused just on what felt good, not what I thought might get me to orgasm.

And probably, at that point, I'd have discovered some things that were barriers to orgasm I didn't realize before that break -- like being overfocused on it, like maybe not doing enough to just be in pleasure, like maybe being too genitally focused -- that would make it so that either it would start to happen as a result OR that I really didn't care about it like I did at all to even be concerned with if it happened or not.