I’m seeing nervous system talk everywhere (which is awesome), but for neurodivergent people, our introspection awareness creates a big barrier between what we sense in our bodies and then being able to meet our needs. So if you’re a person that’s been like, all this nervous system stuff is frustrating and/or overwhelming, I don’t think you’re not alone. Struggling with your introspection is not a simple or quick fix. If we can’t get an idea of what’s going on inside our body, how are we gonna build self-trust, reconnect with who we really are and develop a better sense of self? All of which are needed to act with more integrity and become better humans.
So, let's talk introspection for a moment…
Introspection: the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes. Being able to sense and understand what your body’s sensations are telling you (not only physical sensations, like being hungry or having to go to the toilet but emotional ones too)
From the top of my head, I could list a few things that would make somatics and introspection a bit tricky for neurodivergent:
All our sensations feel the same in our body: I remember the first time (a VERY long time ago!) I asked a good neurodivergent friend of mine to sense what emotion came up in their body. To which they responded, “all I feel is pain everywhere.” We realised they needed to figure out what parts of their body felt different from the norm first if we were going to have a hope of being able to notice anything unique sensations at all. Let alone where anywhere that felt at ease or comfortable.
Pausing is difficult because it feels scary to do: how are we supposed to figure out what our bodies are telling us if stopping to check in with ourselves is scary as hell and we try to avoid it through our trauma responses all the time? In my work, I’ve discovered that pausing feels like torture to many neurodivergent people (unfortunately, zoning out is not pausing, nor is sleep or rumination), so some of us need to practice pausing first in times when we’re not dysregulated. I did one of my more recent podcast episodes on this.
Alexithymia: a lot of us don’t have the words for sensations in our body or simply struggle to make sense of what emotions were feeling. I remember talking to my best friend about their alexithymia and they shared the elaborate checklists they finally had to create in their head for some of their physical conditions. If they sensed a panic attack coming on, they needed to know if it differed from a seizure, so they had to intentionally go through these “sensations checklists” all the time to figure out what it might be in order to meet their need. I can only imagine the kind of anxiety that comes up for someone with alexithymia when asked to “tell me what you’re sensing right now?” and the only thing that comes to mind is “I don’t know…” (Funnily enough, when my friend and I talk about introspection, they usually have a much clearer idea of what’s happening in their body than I do, who doesn’t even have alexithymia (at least not nearly as intensely) because they’ve had to intentionally work at this for a long time - but it’s still another issue for them to put what they know into words for others though!)
Our relationship with our body can be really messed up: Society does a great job with how we learn to see our bodies. It works to divide us from them and also prioritises the thinking of the brain from the knowing of our bodies. So, it’s not surprising we don’t have a great relationship with them for many reasons including because of our gender (or what we’ve been told our gender should be) or even the high rates of eating disorders and disordered eating in neurodivergent spaces. We’re not always meeting our bodies’ needs when we’ve had to resort to overriding key physical (or emotional) sensations in order to have a sense of some control in our lives or protection from the world around us (for example). There might be some narrative therapy work on externalising problems, re-authoring and some co-regulation support that we might need to do alongside rediscovering our introspection too.
There are many ways that we can support our understanding of what our body is trying to say to us. Many of us, have been taught to override our body’s needs and that’s hard to rebuild that inner relationship with ourselves. I think that it’s important to remember that discomfort in our bodies is not a sign that we are bad people, but that we are people that have needs that haven’t been met. Taking the time to pause, gives us a chance to get to detect what we’re feeling and start to go through our own internal checklist of what it’s trying to tell us we actually need.
That way, we learn to respond in ways that align with who we are so we can act with more integrity.
Let me assure you that starting small is always enough. It’s enough to just scan your body right now to understand what feels comfortable or uncomfortable (and it can be the smallest part of your body like a pinky finger that feels comfortable or uncomfortable too). There might be parts of your body that don’t have a feeling at all, but you’re still feeling something and that’s data too. There might be a part of your body that’s not as painful as another part. That’s something to notice as well. It’s all data we can use to give ourselves what we need. Even if it’s something really small like adjusting or changing the chair we’re sitting in because it’s uncomfortable. That shows our body we’re listening more carefully and willing to support it. Every little thing we do adds up.
Introspection can be incredibly challenging for us neurodivergent people to understand but it’s still important to work through. Quite simply put, we cannot live at our best, be at our best and support others to be at theirs if we’re unaware of our own needs and therefore not meeting them. This society wants us to keep doing what we’ve always done. It would rather have us continue to force ourselves to conform to its expectations, ignore what we’re feeling and deny what we need, so we don’t reconnect to what we know and begin to do things differently.
Because different means things will change - and it doesn’t want that.
We must start trusting in the fact that we can relearn what our bodies are telling us they need so we can begin to reconnect to ourselves again.
In fact, I think it’s imperative that we do.
What have you found most challenging on your introspection awareness journey? In what ways have you found yourself stuck and have been able to overcome some of the challenges?