Hey everyone, Kelly Mahler, occupational therapist, and I am here to celebrate 2024. We had such an amazing year with all of you and have learned so much from our communities. We have a free online course that summarizes the lessons we learned in 2024, so if you want to check that out, it’s linked here. But I’m also going to give a quick summary in this blog of the topics that we’ve covered and what I’m walking away with from each topic.
January: 30 Days of Interoception Activities
In January we launched 30 Days of Interoception Activities, and along with our social media discussions, we provided a free activity booklet that gave 30 interoception building activities. We had no idea that thousands of people were going to be interested in downloading this resource. It’s still available. If you missed out on the activity, it’s linked here. We had a lot of fun during this month with people doing the activities along with us, and what became so evident is even though we were doing the exact same activities, we were all having different body experiences and it really just drove home the fact that we all have different inner feels and we are all correct and valid in our inner experience.
February: Interoception, ARFID, and Feeding Differences
In February, we covered the topic of ARFID and feeding differences and its intersection with interoception. And I think I am probably going to say this each month, but we were blown away by the community response. This topic really resonated with a lot of people. I joined forces with Naureen Hunani, who is an autistic nutritionist and dietician, and we did a whole course together on interoception and ARFID. What I walked away with from that month—so many things to be honest—but just how important it is for us to hone in and focus on felt safety around feeding and meal times. That safety, that interoceptive felt safety where our body feels safe, is where a lot of things can come online. That’s where our appetite comes online. If we feel unsafe, our appetite is most likely affected. So if we feel safe, we might have more of an appetite, we might be more available to notice and be driven by internal signals such as hunger, thirst, interest, curiosity. We also might be willing to take greater risks and maybe try to find additional safe foods, et cetera. So the emphasis on felt safety around feeding was really what I walked away with as the power lesson in February.
March: Interoception, Concussion, and Traumatic Brain Injury
In March, we launched into the topic of traumatic brain injury, concussion, and interoception. And wow, during this month I realized that we need to do a better job. Interoception is really non-existent in most concussion or TBI treatment programs out there. There’s not a lot of talk about interoception yet in this space. However, interoception significantly affected during many brain injuries leading to outcomes such as alexithymia and emotion regulation differences. A concussion or brain injury can really destroy the contact or the connection that many people have with their body. Relying on your body, noticing body symptoms and body signals, is not only important to our everyday life. It also is very important to the healing and recovery process. For example, many times, a person is asked to rest when their body needs it. Well, how is a person to determine if their body needs rest? That takes interoception! So the healing process relies on interoception, which could have been impacted by the injury and there is little to no support to get it back online so a person can use it reliably for healing.
We also know that many people with a concussion or TBI report high rates of alexithymia and emotion dysregulation, and that the underlying reason for that is interoception, yet it’s not being addressed in most common approaches. So we need more interoception in this space. And thankfully my friend Megan Chemidlin and I brought a course together to hopefully conquer that need.
April, May, & June: Interoception, Monotropism, and Masking
Then we moved on and spent three months talking about monotropism, masking and interoception. I was joined in these months by my friend Kieran Rose. We did a course on monotropism and interoception. And we did a course on masking and interoception. The response, again, was really overwhelming in such a good way. Many people were interested in these topics, and were happy that we are bringing a spotlight onto these topics. Monotropism, or the ability to have a deep attention or focus into one area is such a gift, but also we talked about the costs that it can bring, especially when you’re monotropic living in a polytropic world. We talked about how there is so much invalidation of the monotropic processing style that you can start to begin to doubt yourself. You might become disconnected from your body in order to survive the world.
And the same thing goes for masking. Masking many times is a result of that invalidation of people not understanding your experience in the world, of not celebrating your experience in the world. To survive that, many times people need to mask, which means to dissociate, disconnect, or to hide their authentic self in order to get through the world. And that’s very disruptive to the interoceptive experience and the interoceptive self. There are so many connections we learned about between monotropism and masking and interoception. I’m walking away from those three months a much smarter person, but also a person that knows that I have lot more learning to do in this space.
July: The Interoception Olympics
And in July, we covered the Interoception Olympics. We wanted to have a little bit of fun, so we discussed the overlap of interoception & the olympics and we also launched the Interoception Olympic Activity Cards. This deck of 39 cards blend the energy of Olympic sports with interoception practices. Each card features a unique Olympic sport activity with prompts designed to help individuals or groups notice their body signals during the activity. They are used by lots of people including educators, therapists, and parents and have been offering fun, playful interoception practice. People have loved the fact that these cards are a fully digital resource and can be downloaded and printed at home immediately following purchase.
August & September: Interoception and Gestalt Language Processing
Okay, on to our next topic that we covered in 2024. It was another big one, in fact we spent two months on it, and that was all about Gestalt Language Processing and Interoception. This time I was joined by my colleagues and friends, Rachel Dorsey and Caroline Gaddy, both phenomenal speech therapists, both autistic, and both with amazing content to share. They designed an entire seven-hour course on this very topic in fact. And the community was so responsive to us covering this topic and really learning more.
I did not know a lot about Gestalt language processing until the last few recent years I didn’t really understand just how much meaning is behind echolalia and scripts my clients often use. I was missing so many opportunities to connect with them, to validate their inner experience, to explore and be curious about what it is they were expressing about their interoception experience. And so I’m so grateful and so thankful to Caroline and Rachel for leading this conversation and helping us to all be better in this space. Please check out their course. It has changed my practice.
October: An Interoception-Based Approach vs. A Compliance-Based Approach
In October, we kicked off the topic of an interoception-based approach versus a compliance-based approach. We explored the differences and the similarities between both of these approaches and how each approach affects the body, felt safety and the ability to develop body wisdom. I’ll give you a hint. One approach is rooted in curiosity and compassion and really seeking to understand and support a person’s internal experience. And the other approach is the opposite, where it really lacks curiosity for the inner experience. It is focused on the outside behavior. External forms of control are used with the goal to help a person “behave”. There’s really no compassion or consideration for each person’s internal experience.
Do you know which approach is which? I can’t leave a cliffhanger here (lol). Okay, so it is the interoception-based approach that is all about curiosity and compassion, and it’s the compliance-based approach that is opposite. We offered a free poster during this month. It’s still available if you want to check it out here. We’ve had thousands of people download it. Please post it everywhere. It’s really just a starter conversation about: Am I operating in line with an interoception-based approach, or am I operating within a compliance-based approach?
We acknowledged throughout this month that this conversation represents a big shift in our systems. Systems like the educational system, the medical system and even parenting approaches, are many times are rooted in compliance. I don’t want to be naive and say that we are all going to wake up tomorrow and be interoception-focused and compliance is going to go away. That’s not a realistic approach. So, our poster was designed to help us all take little tiny baby steps towards an interoception-based approach and a better world.
November: Interoception and Alexithymia
And then finally, in November, we brought back a topic that is probably one of our most popular topics, and that is interoception and alexithymia. And in this month, I was so pumped to collaborate with David Gray-Hammond, who brought his own experience with interoception and alexithymia to a live course we taught together (which is still available in recorded form). This course also featured interviews from over 20 alexithymic people, so it was strongly influenced by the actual lived experience of alexithymia. The course offered very practical strategies, with a focus on supporting alexithymia in a way that is validating and honors each person’s internal experience.
All in all, it was quite a year, I have to say. 2024, I learned a lot. And I just want to say a big heartfelt thank you to every single person that joined us in this journey. Can’t wait for 2025.
Until next time.