Interoception Skills to Heal Trauma

Interoception was a word I only learned a few years ago, and most of the therapists I know have no idea what it means. Interoception refers to knowing what your body is feeling, and while we all think we do that well, the reality is that many of us walk around without noticing our own bodily feelings. Where I learned about interoception? I learned about it getting trained as a trauma specialist, because bodily awareness is key to healing trauma. In Susan McConnell’s book, Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy, she helps to explain why like this: “As we separate from parts that reject or criticize the sensation and maintain our awareness, the body story is revealed. As the story is witnessed and the burdens are released, awareness of our body increases the awareness in our body. We inhabit our body. We are being a body rather than having a body.” In Internal Family Systems Therapy, healing comes from witnessing our pain from a place of compassion. In order to truly listen, we need to do more than just see what happened, more than just hear what happened, we need to feel it. So much of our experience is felt in the body, and that’s where a lot of trauma resides. That part of one’s story needs to be attended to in order to fully heal.

“As we separate from parts that reject or criticize the sensation and maintain our awareness, the body story is revealed. As the story is witnessed and the burdens are released, awareness of our body increases the awareness in our body. We inhabit our body. We are being a body rather than having a body.”

~ Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy, by Susan McConnell