Feeling Our Insides - Exploring Interoception, Our Eighth Sense
Did you know that children with reduced interoception awareness may get bruises and bumps but don’t complain that they’re hurt? Or, they don’t seem to complain if they’re too cold or too hot? The potty training process may even take longer than expected.
In this article, we take a closer look at interoception - our sense of our internal processes, and what helps us notice what is going on inside our body. Many of us are familiar with our five ‘external’ senses: visual (sight), auditory (hearing), gustatory (taste), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch) but there are also three other “hidden senses” - vestibular, proprioception and interoception.
What is Interoception?
Interoception allows us to feel our internal organs and skin and gives information regarding the internal state or condition of our body. The interoceptive system helps us feel many important physical sensations such as pain, body temperature, itch, hunger, thirst, heart rate, breathing rate, and the need for the bathroom. It also allows us to feel our emotion states like anger, happiness and excitement.
Kelly Mahler, an Occupational Therapist, educator and the author of Interoception: The Eighth System puts it simply: ‘At the most basic level, interoception can be defined as the sense that allows us to answer “How do you feel?” in any given situation.’
Why is it important to have interoceptive awareness?
We can see from the examples we gave at the beginning of this article, that having good interoceptive awareness contributes to a child’s physical safety. It is also important in building self-awareness as well as self-regulation.
When we are aware of and are able to discern our interoceptive signals, we are able to detect and manage our body and emotional states.
For example, if we are able to feel the sensation of a full bladder (self-awareness), then we are able to take the appropriate action by going to the bathroom (self-regulation).
Children who have sensory processing challenges often have reduced interoceptive awareness - they might have interoceptive over-responsivity, interoceptive under-responsivity and interoceptive discrimination difficulty.
The table below shows how these categories can present themselves around the issue of hunger/thirst cues:
Having a deeper interoceptive awareness paves the way for children to cultivate better physical and emotional regulation. It helps them become more connected to their bodies, to notice the signals coming from within their bodies better, so that they have a greater awareness of what can make them safe, healthy, and regulated.
References
Mahler, Kelly. Interoception - The Eighth Sensory System.
Warren, Matt & Finkel, Miriam. “Interoception: The inner sense driving your thoughts”
