Mental health is often approached from a purely cognitive angle – it can feel like you’re told to ‘think your way through’ an anxiety attack. If you struggle with mental health conditions like anxiety and depression, you know how ridiculous this sounds. When your anxiety is flaring, or you’re in a depressive episode, consciously thinking your way to calming down can feel downright impossible.
Hi, I’m Kelly Mahler, and as an occupational therapist and interoception groupie, I believe that cognitive approaches to mental health can neglect one of the most important and powerful tools for emotional and physical regulation – Interoception. This term is the perception and awareness of how our body feels, and it can provide key insights into how to approach, regulate, and understand mental health conditions.
The Shortcomings of Mind-First Approaches
Mental health conditions aren’t just in the realm of thoughts and the so-called ‘higher brain.’ They would be a lot easier to treat if they were. We know that conditions like anxiety and depression come from chemical imbalances, trauma responses, and other avenues that are grounded in our physical bodies. It’s so frustrating for me when other mental health professionals ignore that the body is this incredible tool for approaching mental health conditions.
While cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and other mind-focused forms of mental health treatment have a lot of value for clients, my research has shown me these approaches have some shortcomings and gaps that interoception can help bridge. A few of these gaps and shortcomings include:
- CBT requires a lot of mental focus, which mental health conditions can directly interfere with.
- Other forms of mental health treatment structure and regular practice, both of which can be difficult to navigate for neurodivergent clients.
- These methods push exposure therapies, which exacerbate anxiety and discomfort more than they help regulate emotion.
- They also take a ‘here and now’ approach that focuses on current issues and problems while not addressing underlying issues and causes and not building long-term solutions.
Many of these shortcomings will fade over time as the client becomes more familiar and develops better habits during treatment. However, if they start out getting in the way of treatment rather than moving it forward, are they really worth the trouble? I believe that there are simple, body-first methods to help solve these issues and help support clients through their mental health journeys.
How Interoception Can Bridge the Gap
For people with mental health conditions, their inner experience might be difficult – or even uncomfortable – to connect with. Anxiety might cause intense and overwhelming body signals, depression might cause them to fade into the background, and trauma can cause a person to shy away from their inner experience. These responses can interfere with mental health treatments because if you struggle to recognize how you feel, then mind-first approaches are just thought exercises that are separate from the reality of how you feel.
Interoception bridges the gap between mind and body by getting you in touch with the body signals that arise from these neurological and psychological sources. Interoception is the best tool for approaching mental health conditions from a more holistic approach.
The Interoception Curriculum
Even small physical actions can have oversized effects on our mental state for various reasons. Maybe you find a ‘harsh’ smell comforting or an ‘annoying’ sound relaxing. So many mental health practices take a one-size-fits-all approach to self-regulation that has never sat quite right with me. My interoception curriculum is directed towards developing your bodily awareness so that you can find self-regulation techniques that are easier for you to connect with and act upon as you go along your mental health journey. This curriculum is separated into three major sections:
1 – The Body Lessons
I like to start my interoception training by encouraging my clients to explore body sensations that accompany actions – dancing, playing with water, and simple movements. An outward-in approach begins with simple, safer-feeling exploration that gets clients comfortable with the idea of sensations.
2 – The Emotion Lessons
When we are more familiar with our body signals, we can begin to use them as clues to emotional states. Every person is different, which is why we can’t just rely on common terminology and terms, which can confuse us. This stage in the curriculum becomes more self-guided as we explore emotional body signals.
3 – The Action Lessons
Then, we can start to develop behavior regulation techniques and actions that help ground, calm, or cheer us. An individualized strategy will always work better than a standardized one – breathing techniques and counting strategies can help, but maybe something else works better.
Many of the courses, activities, and tools that I have developed are based on this framework. I encourage everyone to find their own personalized methods of self-exploration and self-regulation.
Develop Self-Directed Regulation by Developing Self-Awareness
When we involve the entire body in our treatments for mental health conditions, we see far more successful outcomes in both the short and long term. This full-body approach toward mental health not only provides a direct approach to managing symptoms but also helps us catch early signs of flare-ups by keying us into more personal warning signs.
Additionally, interoception practices are physical, and humans are physical creatures. Think of all the little physical tips and tricks we use for getting into a certain mindset – “chew gum when studying and taking tests to get better grades” or “wear a tie when you work from home to focus better.” But not everyone finds these tips and tricks helpful. I focus on self-guided and self-directed exploration of solutions and regulation techniques – everybody is different, so every method should be tailored to match!