Feeling your inner world to guide your outer world: Interoceptive Awareness
This story starts at Disney World
In college, I went on a bad first date at Disney World.1
It was mid-summer in Florida, approximately 95 degrees, and we had only a few text exchanges before the date. Looking back…what on earth was I thinking?
This guy was a pre-med student and at some point between the PeopleMover and Space Mountain, he explained proprioception to me. I am a big nerd, but I was a semester away from my own physiology class, so I did not know what proprioception was. I remember walking on a curb at the park when he brought it up.
The fact that I was stepping along the curb like a balance beam was relevant, because proprioceptors are the cells in our bodies that sense our movement and location in space. They help us maintain our balance and estimate how much work our muscles need to do. These cells then send signals to our brain, which divert messages to our eyes and inner ear to help us sense our body’s position, movement and acceleration pattern.
Despite how cool proprioception is, I am even more struck by the sister system in the body: interoceptive awareness.
This system is critical to how we experience food, nutrition, health behavior motivation, and the impact of health behaviors while also minimizing the need for “self-control”.
Interoceptive awareness is our ability to perceive and interpret sensations and feelings coming from inside of our body.
I am taking on virtual nutrition counseling clients! If you or someone you know is struggling with their relationship with food, book a free Discovery call to see what it is like working with an IFS-informed dietitian.
Researchers use the term body awareness to reference both of these sensing systems. Body awareness is your subjective experience of these two sensing systems that enters your conscious awareness.2
How we experience body awareness is impacted by psychological and emotional factors including:
Attention
Interpretation
Appraisal
Beliefs
Memories
Conditioning
Attitudes
Affect
I imagine each of the things on this list like a little filter leading down a flowchart. There is a trigger sensation (tensing of abdominal muscles)—attention may grab the sensation—interpretation may be positive or negative—beliefs about the positive/negative interpretation can trigger a feeling—maybe that feeling brings a memory of another time you felt that way…and on and on. Here’s an example with hunger and two possible beliefs a person may have coupled with possible outcomes:
No two people will experience their body in the same way. I have worked with many clients who feel disconnected from their body, clients who know it’s time to eat not because of hunger but from other physical sensations, and clients who only experience hunger or fullness when they reach the extreme end of the sensation.
This is an intrinsic and interactive process within ourselves. We are the awareness of the body’s states.3 We are attuned watchers of our body sensations, which are colored by our unique life experiences, genetic dispositions, and mental health.
If it feels challenging to drop inside to sense your body - you are not alone!
Throughout life, many of us learn to disconnect from our bodies and it’s sensations. Perhaps growing up, food access was unreliable, thus, hunger was a strained or dangerous sensation. Numbing body sensations can be a protective mechanism the body employs to ensure immediate safety. These types of adaptations the body makes in times of distress help to maintain some semblance of safety in the moment - even if there are unintended consequences down the line, such as a tough time feeling physical sensations.
Importantly, mental health diagnoses also impact how the body is sensed. For example, those diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder exhibited hyperawareness of body sensations but also tend to experience worry about the sensations and feel their body is less safe.4 5 Not feeling safe in one’s body was also a mediating symptom that bridges interoceptive awareness and eating disorder symptoms.6 Where one lands on the spectrum of neurodiversity may also impact how body sensations are felt and interpreted. The research tool many of these studies use is accessible here and includes many examples of interoceptive awareness:
None of these experiences mean there is anything wrong with how you sense your body. However, it may mean that implementing tools and support can help you care for your body with more ease. It may also be worth dedicating time to “paying attention to your body” or working with a therapist or dietitian that can help you build these skills.
I cannot overstate how harnessing the power of interoception will absolutely change your experience with motivation, “self-control” and health behavior changes.
Tuning into our body’s cues can guide your choices towards ones that feel right for you. Culture teaches us to use self control to stop eating XYZ food. It says use motivation to get yourself out the door for a bike ride. It says to use moderation to ensure a balanced eating pattern.
But, interoceptive awareness can help us uncover:
What amount and balance of foods feel good in our body
What type of movement we enjoy and can commit to with less “willpower”
What amount of sleep we need to feel our best
How emotions are linked to your drive to eat
When to stop eating
Exploring your interoception will equip you with insights directly from your body which can guide your behaviors naturally. Perhaps “willpower” will become irrelevant. You don’t need to force a behavior; rather, you can find a behavior that feels good and is naturally positively reinforced by your interoceptive awareness.
Tuning in may feel complicated, but a 00’s throwback can illuminate how approachable this can be.
Thinking about body sensations reminds me of the “Needs” bars from the original Sims game. As a middle schooler, I noticed my Sims’ “Fun” bar got too low if all they did was chores. Their “comfort” bar increased while they were sitting on the couch. Their “hunger” bar declined as the Sims-hours passed. I accidentally let these bars get into the red, too; I was so busy telling them to do random Sim-tasks that, seemingly suddenly, they would fall asleep standing up or they would wet their pants.
Your body has these same needs as the Sims.
I bet you can call to mind an interoceptive skill, too.
Conjure up a time you were stuck in a car or on a train when you really, really had to pee. Your brain was alight with alerts: “Get to a restroom asap”. You might have also felt physical discomfort or pain, and you may have even felt the sensation of your bladder emptying when you made it to a restroom. This is interoception!
Other examples of interoception include:
Hunger or fullness
Feeling your heartbeat
Digestion symptoms like gas, bloating, reflux
Breathing sensations or breath pace
Eyes feeling heavy
Anxiety or panic responses - clenched muscles in your abdomen, a drop in your stomach, feeling lightheaded.
Each sensation on this list might feel easy or hard to access. Maybe jot down a few notes to the below questions that can get you started with your exploration of interoceptive awareness.
Thinking about the Sims “Needs” bars - how could I make my “needs” more in the green?
How do I know if it is time to eat?
What sensations help me understand when to stop eating?
What does my body feel like before I do something that makes me nervous?
Do I know where in my body I experience emotions?
Next week we are taking this knowledge one step further with a framework to help you dig into your health behaviors.
From the archives…
In this essay, I outline a few strategies I used to get back into my body…
Going away to go within
I spoke a few weeks ago about my seemingly never ending dance with burnout. In the midst of the worst of it, I booked a trip to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health with three of my yoga teacher training (YTT) pals; it became a beacon of light on my calendar. The exciting “THING” to look forward to. Kripalu’s simple but idyllic campus is home to my intens…
Very important context is that I went to school for a time in Orlando. Many of my friends worked at Disney or had family members who worked at the park. This meant free passes. This meant 20 year olds could take other 20 year olds on dates to Disney.
Fun fact! Initially, scientists thought interoception only included the intestines, however, the definition has expanded to include the cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal system, respiration, and genitourinary systems.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211364920301056
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/inner-world-of-overactive-monitoring-neural-markers-of-interoception-in-obsessivecompulsive-disorder/4A32E2708EB32C7D9370129C0BB89039