Dive Deeper into Interoception: The Key to Emotional Regulation
When we think about our senses, we tend to only think of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Some people may also include our ability to read the room or pick up on social cues (neuroception), balance (vestibular sense) and body awareness in space (proprioception) as the sixth, seventh and eighth senses.
But did you know there is an often-overlooked but profoundly important sense known as interoception. This is the "ninth sense."
But What Is Interoception?
Interoception is the sense of the internal state of the body. Interoception is how our body signals how we are feeling, including hunger, thirst, heart rate, breathing, temperature, and even the need to use the bathroom. It also includes our emotional state, happiness, sadness, shame, anger etc.
Think of it as the body’s way of communicating its physical condition to the brain. While the other senses connect us to the external world, interoception connects us to our internal landscape.
None of us experience this internal landscape in exactly the same way. And some of us can perceive these signals as very muted or very loud. Usually with a mix across different sensations and signals.
If you’ve ever experienced anxiety or a panic attack, you will be familiar with the sensation of racing heart, churning gut, and a deep inner knowing that something isn’t right but you don’t quite know what. You could be very highly tuned into interoceptive signals of increased heart and breathing rate, feeling hot, and out of sorts. For you, these signals are very loud.
We call signals that are too loud or too muted, unreliable interoceptive experience. And this is more common than you think, with many neurodivergent people experiencing it. You may also have an unreliable interoceptive experience if you have anxiety, depression, sensory processing differences, or eating disorders among other things.
How Interoception Impacts Mental Health
Interoception plays a crucial role in emotional regulation and mental health. Emotions are often first experienced as bodily sensations: a racing heart, tightness in the chest, or a sinking feeling in the stomach. We interpret these emotions based upon what we learnt as children. And how our caregivers dealt with these emotions alongside us. If we were co-regulated as children, we often find self-regulation as adults much easier.
But if we have unreliable signalling from our bodies, and a caregiver didn’t know how to interpret these cues and so couldn’t help us to co-regulate, then we can end up feeling very dysregulated and dysfunctional. What ends up being diagnosed as a disorder, labelled a problem, and treated perhaps with medication such as SSRIs, can be supported much more compassionately if we go back to the basics of understanding our body’s signals.
Studies are now showing that behind almost all mental health conditions sits interoception. It is the key factor in emotional regulation and how we feel about ourselves and our surroundings at any given time.
Therefore, having a well-tuned interoceptive system and conscious awareness of what that system is telling you can allow you to respond in a more calm and centred way, rather than becoming overwhelmed.
Therapeutic approaches, including Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy combined with somatic techniques, focus on enhancing interoceptive skills. This can lead to greater emotional resilience, self-compassion, and peace of mind.
The Role of Interoception in Somatic Awareness
Somatic awareness is the practice of tuning into the sensations in the body to understand and heal. Interoception is fundamental to this process. In session when I ask a client to put their hand where they’re feeling the emotion, we are tuning into their interoception. This gives us useful information about what is happening in the body, and allows for a slowing down, respectfully noticing, and compassionate approach to healing emotional wounds.
For people healing from trauma or chronic anxiety, interoceptive awareness can be transformative. Traumatic experiences can disrupt the body's natural signals, leaving you disconnected from your own sensations. This disconnection can manifest as numbing, dissociation, or heightened anxiety. By restoring interoceptive awareness through somatic therapy, you reconnect with your body and learn to interpret and respond to these internal cues gently and kindly.
Developing Interoceptive Awareness
Building interoceptive awareness is a gentle and gradual process. Here are some ways to start:
Mindful breathing: Paying attention to the breath as it moves in and out helps anchor the mind to the present and heightens internal awareness.
Body scans: Systematically noticing sensations through different parts of the body develops a map of interoceptive signals.
Movement practices: Gentle yoga, tai chi, or dance can improve sensitivity to bodily signals.
Somatic therapy: I use body-focused techniques to safely support the exploration and regulation of internal sensations.
Interoception is a vital yet often neglected sense that connects us deeply to our internal experience. If you are seeking healing from trauma, chronic anxiety, or other mental health challenges, developing your interoceptive awareness through somatic approaches offers a powerful path to mind-body healing. By understanding and trusting the messages your body is sending you, you can nurture your wellbeing from a place of gentle curiosity and love.
At Somatic Harmony Healing, I honour the wisdom of the body and support you in building this essential connection, helping you find balance, resilience, and healing on your unique journey. Drop me an email or book a free 30 minute consultation using the button below.
