By: Laura Petix, MS OTR/LEPISODE 61

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Have you ever heard of interoception? It’s one of the 8 senses and it’s responsible for alerting us of our internal sensations, such as heart beat, hunger/thirst, fullness cues, aches, pains and other miscellaneous sensations. Have you ever said “I have butterflies in my tummy” or “My heart dropped”? Those sensations are interoception signals to your brain and it’s highly linked to emotional regulation. Listen to this episode to find out exactly how it’s linked to emotional regulation and some quick ways to start helping your child today.

This is a topic that might not be on the top of your mind when it comes to parenting, but it’s incredibly important for your child’s emotional well-being: interoception.


I recently just recorded a workshop for parents inside my Sensory W.I.S.E. Solutions program and it was so popular, I realized how many parents are missing this piece to the whole emotional regulation puzzle.


Interoception is one of the 8 senses.


It provides us with the ability to sense what’s happening inside the body, like our heartbeat or our hunger level. And it turns out that this ability is closely linked to emotional regulation. It is also closely linked to eating, sleeping, and pottying- but today our focus is on emotional regulation.


If you think about it- every single emotion you have is linked to a specific sensation inside your body. When you’re nervous or anxious, they talk about having your stomach in knots or having butterflies in your stomach. Sometimes people talk about “my heart skipped a beat!” or “My heart sank”.


Those are interoception signals.


When kids can understand, identify and effectively process these kinds of sensations inside their bodies, they’re better able to access emotional regulation techniques.


When kids have a hard time processing interoception input, they can have a mismatch of behavior linked to emotions. For example, they may overreact or even under-react to certain emotionally provoking events.


If you have a child who is sensitive to interoception- those sensations linked to emotions may feel more intense to them. So they literally experience feelings more deeply, stronger, more intensely- the butterflies in their stomach linked to excitement might feel more like dinosaurs stomping in their stomach.


The sensations linked with anger or frustration may be more intense to them, and so when they are blowing up or having a meltdown– they may be reacting more to the sensation of the emotion rather than the event that triggered it.


Other kids with interoception challenges may not experience the sensations so intensely, but rather they just have a hard time identifying where the sensation is coming from or what it is this is called discrimination. When the brain has a hard time discriminating between sensations, it misses the message and may overreact to a scenario.

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If you’re nodding along to this and you’re like OMG yes this is my child- how do I help them?


I’m going to share some tips but one huge preface- and that is that a lot of work with interoception revolves around communication/language, meaning you need to have a way to communicate clearly with your child and have them communicate with you as well.


If your child is not yet speaking or non-speaking, these strategies may be hard to implement because they do involve quite a lot of talking. But for younger ones, I would focus mostly on interoception accommodations like using timers, visual supports, etc- maybe I’ll interview Kelly Mahler in the future for more tips on this!


One of the main ways to improve interoception processing is with mindfulness practices. Teaching your child to pay attention to their breath and the different sensations in their body can help them become more aware of their emotions and better express them in an adaptive way.


Some kids need specific prompts for mindfulness, like “Close your eyes and put your hands on your belly. What do you notice in your belly? Does it feel empty? Is it shaking? Is it rumbly?”


You could also ask them to place their hand on their heart and make a beating sound with their mouth to match the pace of their heart. Just truly drawing awareness to very specific sensations- that is mindfulness and that is building interoception awareness.


As you move past that and they get better at describing the sensations, you can help them pair those sensations with the common emotional triggers they experience. So for example- maybe whenever they have to go to school in the morning they talk about their tummy feeling tight and squeezy and they usually have meltdowns around that.


You can talk about how the next time their tummy feels tight and squeezy, they can put their hand on their belly, close their eyes and fill their belly with air, and take a sip of water, etc.- this is where you pair the emotional regulation piece with the interoception.



This is not an overnight thing, but I can say that being consistent with this kind of language, and modeling it yourself as well can go a long way.


Before I go I wanted to leave you with 2 of my favorite interoception resources.


One of them is Kelly Mahler- she’s an OT and the queen of interoception, she has a curriculum that talks about how to teach interoception skills to kids- so give her website a look.


I also love this mindfulness-guided audio called “sitting still like a frog” and you can access the audio for free. Just head to google, type in “sitting still like a frog” and you should be able to pull up the website and the audio. I’ll put a link in the show notes as well.

EPISODE 61
Interoception: the missing piece to emotional regulation
Laura (00:00):Those sensations that we talked about earlier that are linked to emotions. Remember like that heart sinking feeling or the butterflies in their tummy might feel more intense to them, so they literally experience feelings more deeply, stronger, more intensely. The actual sensations, the butterflies in their stomach linked to excitement might feel like...

Laura (00:00):Those sensations that we talked about earlier that are linked to emotions. Remember like that heart sinking feeling or the butterflies in their tummy might feel more intense to them, so they literally experience feelings more deeply, stronger, more intensely. The actual sensations, the butterflies in their stomach linked to excitement might feel like dinosaurs stomping in their stomach. The sensations linked with anger or frustration may be more intense to them, and so when they’re blowing up or having a meltdown, they may be reacting more to the sensation of what’s linked to the emotion rather than the event that triggered it. Welcome to the Sensory Wise Solutions podcast for parents where parents can get real actionable strategies to support kids with sensory processing disorder. I’m Laura, OT and mom To Liliana, a sensory sensitive kid who inherited my anxiety and my love for all things Disney. Consider me your new OT mom, bestie. I know my stuff, but I also know what it’s really like in the trenches of parenting a child with sensory processing disorder. Liliana (01:12):Okay, mom, enough about me. Let’s start the podcast. Laura (01:19):Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today is going to be a quick one, but it is something that I am very, very passionate about teaching parents, and it is one of the eight senses called in interception, and it’s a topic that might not be right on the top of your mind when it comes to parenting, but it is incredibly important for your child’s emotional wellbeing because in interoception is actually linked to emotional regulation. This has been such a hot topic in social media recently, not just within the sensory and OT world, but a lot of mental health specialists are talking about it because of its linked to emotional regulation. So I actually just recently recorded a workshop for parents inside my sensory wise solutions program, and it was so popular I realized how many parents are missing this piece to the emotional regulation puzzle. (02:14)So I’m going to give you a little taste of that today so you can start learning more about interception and maybe something further that you look into to help your child. So in interception, like I said, is one of the eight senses, and it provides us with the ability to sense what’s happening inside the body like our heartbeat or our hunger level. And it turns out that this ability is closely linked to emotional regulation. It’s also closely linked to eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom. But today our focus is on emotional regulation. So if you think about it this way, it’s all going to make sense. Every single emotion that you have is linked or associated with a very specific sensation inside your body. So when you are nervous or anxious, we talk about having your stomach in K nods or having butterflies in your stomach. (03:16)Sometimes people talking about are talking about my heart skipped a beat or my heart sink. Those are in interception signals. Those are in interception sensations. So when kids can understand and identify and effectively process these kinds of sensations inside their body, they’re better able to access emotional regulation techniques. On the other side, when kids have a hard time processing and interception, they might have a sort of mismatch of behavior that are linked to emotions. For example, they might overreact or even underreact to certain emotionally provoking events. So I’m going to talk specifics here. If you have a child who may be sensitive to interception, this is what that might look like. Those sensations that we talked about earlier that are linked to emotions, remember like that heart sinking feeling or the butterflies in their tummy might feel more intense to them. So they literally experience feelings more deeply, stronger, more intensely. (04:29)The actual sensations, the butterflies in their stomach linked to excitement might feel like dinosaurs stomping in their stomach. The sensations linked with anger or frustration may be more intense to them, and so when they’re blowing up or having a meltdown, they may be reacting more to the sensation of what’s linked to the emotion rather than the event that triggered it. So they’re not really melting down because someone took their toy. They’re melting down because when someone took their toy, it made their heartbeat fast, it made their stomach sink, it made their cheeks turn red and get hot, and those sensations are hard for their body and brain to tolerate. You could have another kid who has interception challenges and they might just not be experiencing the sensations, not so intensely, but they might have a hard time really identifying where the sensation is coming from or what exactly it is. (05:28)They might not know that it’s their heart beating fast. This is called discrimination. So being able to tell localize a feeling and identify or label what it is, and when the brain has a hard time discriminating between sensations, it can misinterpret the message and it might overreact to a scenario. It might also just automatically label anything it doesn’t know or can’t identify as dangerous and then react a fight or flight way to this sensation. So if you’re listening to this and you’re like mind blown, you’re nodding along to this and you’re like, oh my God, yes, this is my child. How did you know this? How do I help them? I’m going to share some tips, some basic tips that I know that I’ve been learning about, but I have one huge preface for you, and that preface is that a lot of the work with interception does revolve around communication language, not only expressing language on the person’s side, but receptively understanding your interpretation of these things. (06:34)So this means you have to have a way to communicate clearly with your child and have them communicate with you as well. If your child is not yet speaking or is non-speaking, these strategies may be harder to implement because from what I see at least, I could probably still do some more research and it’s something I’m always looking into but it can be hard to implement because they involve a lot of talking. So for younger ones, I would focus mostly on interception accommodations. So if they have a lack of interception awareness using external accommodations like timers, visual supports that help kind of structure their day so that in interception can be supported by external tools. There is a woman who really owns this space. She’s an OT and an expert in interception. Her name is Kelly Mahler, and I hope to have her on the podcast sometime soon but if you can’t wait for that to come out, then definitely give her website a look. (07:39)She has a lot of resources there and focuses all on this, and I think she has a curriculum as well to help teach kids more about interception. So I will link her website in the show notes, but just a quick brain dump. One of the main ways to improve interception processing is with mindfulness practices, teaching your child to really pay attention to the sensations in their body to their breath. This can help them become more aware of which emotions are linked to that and to better express them in an adaptive way. So mindfulness is really tricky, but one way that you can help prompt a child to think about it is you could have them close your eyes. You could say, close your eyes, put your hands on your belly. What do you notice in your belly? Does it feel empty? Is it shaking? Is it rumbly? (08:30)Is it tight? You might have to give them the words. You could also ask them to place their hand on their heart and make a beating sound with their mouth to match the pace of their heart, or just really trying to pick a very specific part of their body and drawing awareness to very specific sensations. That is a simplified version of that’s at least getting started and it’s going to build that interoception awareness. Awareness is key. Noticing those things inside your body in every single part of their body. As you move past that and they get better at describing the sensations, then you can help them pair those sensations with the common emotional triggers that they experience. So for example, maybe whenever they have to go to school in the morning, they talk about their tummy feeling really tight and squeezy, and they usually have meltdowns around that. Then you can talk about how next time their tummy feels tight and squeezy, they can put their hand on their belly, close their eyes and fill their belly with air and take a sip of water and just this is where you pair the emotional regulation tools self-regulation tools, emotional regulation tools. You pair that with interception. (09:50)So this is not an overnight thing clearly, but I can say that being consistent with this kind of language and modeling it yourself can go a long way. So if you want to hear more about how this plays out with emotional regulation with an emphasis on more of how to apply the emotional regulation tools, then you can check out episode 15 of the podcast. So just go to the ot butterfly.com/fifteen or scroll down to episode 15. It’s called Tips for Building Self-Regulation Skills, and I will take you through the journey of how I went from Liliana telling me that she didn’t want to take deep breaths and I don’t want to be calm to now asking me to help her take deep breaths. So before I go, I want to leave you again with another interception resource. One of them was, well, I have two resources, but I already mentioned one of them. (10:42)One of them was Kelly Muller, which I hope to have her on my PO podcast episode soon. Her link to her website is also in the show notes, but another one is called Sitting Still Like a Frog. So it’s a book within accompanying. It was a CD at the time, but now I found it on her website and it’s free to access. So it’s called Sitting Still Like a Frog. You can type that into Google, but I have the specific page linked in my show notes and there’s audio there. It’s guided mindfulness activity for Kids. I believe they say it’s for ages four to 12, I think but all the audio is there for free, which is amazing. So just head to Google, type in sitting still like a frog or head to the show notes. Alrighty, that’s it for this episode. I said it was going to be short and sweet, but I hope it was helpful. I hope you learned something new today. I will be back next week. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider rating it and leaving a review, which helps other parents find me as well. Want to learn more from me. I share tons more over on Instagram at the OT Butterfly. See you next time.  

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Laura Petix, MS OTR/L

I’m an enneagram 6, so my brain is constantly moving. My OT lenses never turn off and I can’t “un-see” the sensory and other developmental skills that go in to literally every activity. I love taking what I see and breaking it down into simple terms so parents can understand what goes into their child’s behavior and skills.

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