Interoception, exteroception and the ability to regulate your nervous system
Feeling the world within you and around you
Interoception is the ability to sense your internal signals to understand what is happening within your own body. Exteroception is the ability to sense and understand what is happening outside of your body.
Let’s do a short awareness practice so that you can notice the difference between these 2 things. I’ll ask you to start in a comfortable position either sitting or lying down.
We’ll start with exteroceptive awareness:
notice the cushion/chair/floor/bed that is supporting you and how that feels on your body
Bring awareness to the clothes you are wearing and how they feel on your skin
Observe any breeze/wind/fan that may be blowing across the hairs on your body
Using your sense of smell, what aroma can you detect?
Notice any sounds going on around you
What do you taste right now?
Observe your environment by looking around and notice the things you see
We’ll move on to interoceptive awareness:
Bring attention to your breath and observe the inhale and the exhale without judgement and without trying to alter it
Notice if you are hungry. Is your stomach growling or rumbling?
Is there any tension within the muscles, somewhere you may be tightening a muscle to provide support for your bones
Notice the organs by visualizing the heart, lungs, intestines, bladder, and/or kidneys
Bring awareness to thirst and determine if you feel thirsty
Notice your heart beating
By tuning into these sensations, it helps us to regulate our nervous system. We are meant to have fluctuations in our nervous system responses that can help bring us back up when we are down-regulated or help bring us down when we are up-regulated. Fluctuations are normal and expected. Nervous system regulation doesn’t mean that we are always in a place of neutrality, but that we have the ability to come back to the calm/neutral space by being able to regulate our responses. Every inhale is a sympathetic response and every exhale is a parasympathetic response. Nervous system regulation and the ability to regulate ourselves helps bring us out of flight, fight, freeze, and fawn responses to a more embodied place of ease and calm. Nervous system regulation kicks us into flight or fight when necessary and brings us back to rest and digest when it’s necessary. The inability to come in and out of these states is where we can get stuck in a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Bringing awareness to our interoceptive and exteroceptive processes can help us in those times where we may feel “stuck” in one state or another.
It’s kind of like driving a car with a clutch. Nervous system regulation is like being able to press the gas and the clutch in a way that keeps the car from rolling backward down a hill when you’re trying to take off from a stopped position. There’s a balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems that keeps us grounded and centered. Noticing what is going on within our bodies and outside our bodies is a way to improve awareness of our nervous system and to help us understand what we may need at a given time to help us stay safe. For example, if we don’t recognize our thirst, we may become dehydrated. If we don’t recognize hunger, we may become malnourished. If we don’t recognize the water is hot, we may burn our skin. If we are experiencing anxiety and/or depression, we may be hyper-focused or hyperaware of our interoceptive processes. 1
In that instance, spending some time tuning into our exteroceptive awareness can help get us out of the hyper-focus on such aspects of our interoceptive system like our heartbeat. For some people, this awareness of the heartbeat can accentuate anxiety and/or panic disorder because of the combination of the awareness of the heartbeat and self belief systems that contribute to the sense of catastrophe related around your heartbeat. For some people, hyper-awareness of exteroceptive cues play a role in addictive behaviors.
Awareness is key to help improve the interoceptive and exteroceptive systems and to help with our nervous system regulation. Some practices to help improve awareness around these systems include:
Mindfulness based practices like journaling, breathing or a body scan practice
Yoga
Meditation (look at Insight Timer for guided meditations)
Sensory sensitivity awareness-use your 5 senses of touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing to examine an object that you like
Grounding to the Earth, barefoot walking, placing your feet in the sand, or spending time outside
Take good care,
Sharon
Paulus MP, Stein MB. Interoception in anxiety and depression. Brain Struct Funct. 2010 Jun;214(5-6):451-63. doi: 10.1007/s00429-010-0258-9. Epub 2010 May 21. PMID: 20490545; PMCID: PMC2886901.