Interoception 101
The Skill Trauma Disrupts
and How to Rebuild It Gently
Interoception refers to the brain’s ability to sense, interpret, and integrate signals originating from inside the body. These signals include heart rate, breath rhythm, hunger, thirst, temperature, muscle tension, visceral sensations, and internal shifts associated with emotions. In short, interoception is how the nervous system monitors the body’s internal state.
Neuroscientist A.D. (Bud) Craig describes interoception as the foundation of subjective feeling states — the mechanism through which physiological signals become emotional experience [1]. Brain regions such as the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex integrate these signals and contribute to awareness of “how we feel” in any given moment [1,2].
Why interoception matters
Interoception is central to emotion regulation, decision-making, self-awareness, and nervous system regulation.
When functioning well, interoception allows a person to:
Notice early signs of stress or activation
Recognize hunger, fatigue, or need for rest
Detect subtle emotional shifts
Experience pleasure and safety cues
Differentiate between anxiety and excitement
Research shows that accurate interoceptive awareness supports adaptive emotional processing and resilience [2]. It is also strongly tied to the body’s ability to return to rest-and-digest states, which are necessary for bonding, digestion, immune function, and recovery [3].
Without reliable internal feedback, regulation becomes difficult. The body may escalate before conscious awareness catches up.
How trauma alters interoception
Trauma — especially chronic or developmental trauma — can significantly alter interoceptive processing. Studies on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) demonstrate altered insula activation and disrupted body signal integration [4].
Trauma can shift interoception in two primary directions:
Blunted interoception (hypo-awareness)
Difficulty sensing hunger, fatigue, or emotional states
Feeling “numb” or disconnected from the body
Delayed awareness of stress until overwhelm occurs
Amplified interoception (hyper-awareness)
Heightened sensitivity to heart rate or breath
Misinterpreting normal bodily signals as threat
Anxiety triggered by benign physiological changes
Both patterns are adaptive survival responses. When the nervous system has experienced overwhelming threat, internal sensations may become either muted (to protect from overload) or intensified (to scan for danger). Over time, this can narrow the window of tolerance and reduce flexibility in regulation.
What it looks like in daily life
Disrupted interoception is not always obvious. It often presents subtly:
Eating past fullness or forgetting to eat
Difficulty identifying emotions beyond “fine” or “stressed”
Chronic tension without awareness of tightening
Sudden emotional spikes that feel disproportionate
Trouble recognizing early fatigue
Anxiety triggered by body sensations such as increased heart rate
Importantly, these experiences are not character flaws. They are nervous system adaptations.
Rebuilding interoceptive awareness
Research in mindfulness-based interventions and somatic therapies shows that interoceptive accuracy can improve with structured attention to bodily sensation [5]. Slow, graded exposure to internal cues appears to help recalibrate the nervous system’s interpretation of those signals.
Evidence-supported approaches include:
Body scanning practices that bring neutral attention to physical sensations [5]
Slow breathing exercises that stabilize autonomic rhythms [3]
Gentle movement practices (e.g., yoga, tai chi) shown to improve body awareness [6]
Trauma-informed somatic therapies that titrate exposure to sensation
The key variable is safety. Interoception rebuilds best in conditions of perceived safety, predictability, and social connection. The nervous system must experience that internal sensation does not automatically equal threat.
Over time, consistent and tolerable contact with internal states strengthens neural pathways linking the insula and regulatory regions of the prefrontal cortex [2]. This supports greater emotional clarity and regulation capacity.
Why this matters for healing
Interoception is not simply a skill; it is the foundation of embodied experience. Without access to internal signals, regulation, pleasure, bonding, and boundary-setting become more difficult.
When gently restored, interoception expands the nervous system’s flexibility. Internal cues become information rather than alarms. Regulation becomes proactive rather than reactive. And emotional experience becomes more differentiated and manageable.
Healing, in many ways, begins with the ability to feel — safely.
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Craig, A.D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn894 -
Critchley, H.D., & Garfinkel, S.N. (2017). Interoception and emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X17300052 -
Porges, S.W. (2007). The polyvagal perspective. Biological Psychology.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051107000518 -
Simmons, A.N., et al. (2013). Altered insula activation in PTSD. Journal of Psychiatric Research.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395613000210 -
Khoury, B., et al. (2013). Mindfulness-based therapy: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735813000731 -
Mehling, W.E., et al. (2011). Body awareness: Construct and self-report measures. PLoS ONE.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0017146
