Interoception

I was terrified of the psychological material that would bubble up if I allowed my brain to idle.

You're utilizing sensory overload to block interoception.

Interoception.

Remind us what that is again.

Interoception is your brain's ability to perceive the internal state of your body, your heart rate, your digestion, but also the somatic signatures of your emotions.

By constantly flooding your auditory and visual processing centers with external data, you effectively jam the signal.

Like a radio jammer.

They become more important to examine when they're making adequate nourishment difficult or creating distress that substantially restricts someone's life.

Interoception can add another layer.

You may not experience hunger in a clear, predictable way.

Hunger might register as irritability, nausea, shakiness, fatigue, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, or simply a vague feeling that something is off.

Your brain is communicating with your gut, but your gut is also sending information back and forth.

And then this brings us to another word you may not have heard before, interoception.

Interoception is essentially the way your nervous system senses, interprets, and responds to signals coming from inside your body.

And think of it as your internal sense, S-E-N-S-E.

Your brain constantly receives information about what's happening inside of you.

That is exactly right.

Interoceptive refers to the sensations inside your own body.

People with panic disorder become terrified of their own bodily sensations.

Right.

A slight increase in heart rate is misinterpreted as a fatal heart attack.

Which triggers more panic, creating a vicious cycle.

Interoceptive exposure involves deliberately inducing those physical sensations of panic in a safe environment.

So the therapist might have the patient spin rapidly in an office chair to cause dizziness, or breathe through a thin straw to cause the sensation of shortness of breath.

So yes, of course, that's a factor, too.

There's another factor at play that I think is fundamental and directly impacting this loss of sense of self that I just don't hear anyone talking about, so I'm gonna talk about it, and that is this concept of interoception.

Interoception is your ability to sense and feel messages and signals from your body.

Your brain then interprets these physical sensations and connects them to emotions and prompts you to respond accordingly.

So if we take a very simple physical example, your tummy rumbles.

And you might even feel symptoms of chronic stress that you don't necessarily tie back to that root cause, like digestion issues, you know, you have an upset tummy or constipation, or getting sick really frequently, or not being able to fall asleep at night.

So let's talk specifically about how chronic stress negatively impacts our interoception skills.

So according to a PubMed article entitled "Interoception and Stress" that I will link to in the show notes, chronic stress alters how the brain processes internal bodily signals, and it gives four ways how this happens.

It helps us make decisions, but it also helps protect us For people that have been traumatized, that midbrain starts to act a little bit off.

I don't say off in a pejorative way, but there's a thing called interoception.

Interoception is... our midbrain's ability it's like our radar it's like our fire watch tower it's like you're in the uh allegheny national forest can you go into the forest you go up one of those fire towers to watch the smoke that is what our midbrain is for people have been through extreme stress now i would add to this people who that have lost a loved one who have um compassion fatigue meaning they have cared for this person for a year or two years they've been through all of the um you know all the hardships of caregiving their interceptions probably a little bit worn out because they have they perceive everything as threat They perceive everything in a different way than just the average person who would say, well, I really like that person and they passed away and I feel sad.

That would be very different than the person who's like this extended family member where there was some caregiving, a lot of caregiving that occurred.

So that person is naturally going to not perceive things necessarily differently the way that maybe they really are.