Interoception Work: Why "I Don't Know” is a Valid Answer

If you’re using The Interoception Curriculum and hear client responses like “I don’t know how I feel” or “I’m fine” or “My hands feel normal,” you’re not doing it wrong—these are common (and meaningful) starting points. This post explores why those answers happen and how to adapt the curriculum in ways that honor safety, trust, and lived experience.

What If “I Don’t Know How I Feel” or “I Feel Fine” Are Actually Powerful Answers?

When offering Focus Area Experiments from The Interoception Curriculum, it’s common to hear responses like “I don’t know how I feel” “I feel fine” or “my hands feel normal.” At first, it might feel like a roadblock—but these answers are often rich with meaning. They can signal the need for deeper safety, trust, and reconnection before true interoceptive awareness can grow.

As an occupational therapist who specializes in interoception, I’ve heard these phrases countless times. And each time, they remind me: interoception isn’t something we can “teach” in the traditional sense. Every person’s inner experience is uniquely their own. Our role isn’t to prompt the “right” answer—it’s to create safe, supported space for exploring what’s truly happening inside.

When Some Clients Genuinely Don’t Know How They Feel

First of all, someone might genuinely not know how their body feels. Many people with interoception differences—whether their body signals are muted, intense, or mixed—may find their internal signals confusing, numbed out, chaotic or unreliable.

Additionally, they may have lived in environments where they were forced to suppress or disconnect from their bodies in order to survive compliance. When someone has been in survival mode for a long time, it can take time—sometimes a lot of time—to feel safe enough to reconnect with their body and begin noticing sensations again. That “I don’t know” can be a very real and honest answer.

If I suspect the response is genuine and the person is open to continuing, I might offer an experiment designed to evoke stronger body sensations to see if that supports noticing. Or we might simply explore a different body part. Sometimes, just repeating the same experiment over time for familiarity can also be helpful—especially when it still feels meaningful to the person.

When Some Clients Default to “Fine” or “Calm” Responses

There are clients who might repeatedly say vague things like, “My body feels fine,” “My mouth feels okay,” or “The experiment feels good.” Often, when this happens I wonder if my clients are on a quest to give what they believe is the “right” answer — not necessarily what they truly feel.

Somewhere along the line, well-meaning people may have unintentionally taught them that their body should feel a certain way — like angry should feel like tight fists and a loud voice — or that their ears shouldn’t feel a certain way in loud environments.

These messages send the idea that there’s one “correct” way to feel. So when their inner experiences don’t match that, they often default to giving an answer they think is expected.

Many people have also been taught — implicitly or explicitly — that only feeling “fine,” “good,” or “calm” is acceptable. Anything else might not earn a token or reward, might get them ignored or might delay access to a preferred activity. So feeling and expressing anything outside of those “fine” states can be associated with shame or even punishment.

Undoing Before Doing: Creating Safety in Interoception Work

Often times, when it comes to using The Interoception Curriculum, there’s a lot of undoing that needs to happen before the doing. We need to help people feel safe in their bodies, and safe with us — safe enough to trust that we will believe and validate whatever they tell us. Safe enough to be genuinely curious together about what’s happening on the inside. That’s the foundation of effective interoception work.

How to Build Trust and Support Genuine Body Signals

To adapt interoception work, we must build trust. We need to allow plenty of time, extend deep patience, and create the space for individuals to explore their bodies in a way that feels safe and meaningful.

Most importantly, we need to communicate that there is no wrong way to feel, and that we’ll be here, ready to listen, when they’re ready to share.

Until next time!