#Interoception

[chronicsymptomsyndrome]

yay water

time to drink water woo hoo yay

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

The 8 Senses

The Autistic Teacher

[mynameiselicomics]

Discomfort.

[neuroticboyfriend]

tip for people with chronic pain/fatigue: lay down occasionally. haven't laid down in the past 3-5 hours? do it (if you can) and see how you feel. i've found that i'll lay down in bed just to be in my room, but then i get hit with an instant wave of relief because just sitting on the couch was too much for my body, and i didn't realize it.

when you're in pain or fatigued for a long time, your awareness of your body may get wonky - especially if you already struggle w/interoception due to neurodivergency. so. test it, sometimes. you can apply it to other things too: sit if you're standing. stop doing a task if you've been doing it for a while. have a small snack to see if you're hungry. etc. etc.

[desultory-suggestions]

Just a reminder to check in with yourself. How is your body feeling? Do your muscles feel tense? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Are you hungry? When we get busy it’s easy to neglect our needs, so take a little time and give yourself what you need to make your day brighter.

[galacticscrotum]

I didn’t fully realize the extent to which I am affected by sensory overload until I decided to accommodate myself anyway. Wearing headphones in public keeps my anxiety so much lower.

It’s kinda ironic that the reason I didn’t notice I’m autistic is because I’m autistic. My struggles with interoception made it hard for me to recognize my sensory issues.

[scretladyspider]

ableist NTs: adderall is basically meth! you just need a planner and a cup of coffee. You don’t need “focus pills”, just try harder! Buy a calendar! ADHD is made up by big pharma to sell drugs!

me the other day when I didn’t take my meds: do I have to pee? I think? I think I have to pee. Okay, body, get up. Please get up. Have I eaten yet? I think I might be hungry. But didn’t I eat this morning? Okay body, let’s get up and pee. Okay. Any minute now I’ll go to the bathroom and eat. Oh my gosh it’s four pm. Why won’t my body move? It’s like I’m stuck in concrete. do I have to pee? Oh dizzy. It’s ten pm?! Maybe I should eat…

[self-care-club]

I struggle big time with interoception, knowing how I feel and what I need in the moment. I made up this acronym to help. Whenever I feel my tension rising, I go through this checklist.

If you struggle to identify your emotions, check out this post.

[etherealspacejelly]

why is my interoception so fucking bad. ill be sitting there like "ough ouch owie my stomach hurts so bad !! ＞﹏＜ what could possibly be wrong with me???"

and then i go to the bathroom and take a shit and im fine.

[jennhasadhd]

Time Warp: *Hours vanish*

Me: *Stomach growls* "Missed the hunger cue...again."

ADHD Brain: "Productive day, right?"

Interoception: *Still on vacation*

[yuribeam]

my family’s disabled. EDS and tethered cord confirmed in some but everyone has roughly the same progression of symptoms. my mom and sibling have already had tethered cord release surgery and we’re in the process of looking at my spine.

im in the process of figuring out what’s normal and what’s not, how to identify sensations, how to take care of myself, how to cope with a body that works less and less. i am also autistic, so for me, that means identifying specific feelings and sensations can be difficult

so earlier today i was woken up from a nap by my mom telling me she’s leaving for dinner with my stepdad. im always down for pad thai so i get myself up, together, and out the door in about five minutes. which is not really enough time to assess how my body is feeling, which is difficult for me anyway.

before dinner im already feeling a little lightheaded and clammy and i figure i just need to eat, which i do, and it is in fact worse. i excuse myself for the restroom, thinking it’s because my stomach’s been weird, don’t feel better. silently rushing my mom to wrap up chatting with my family bc i feel like i need to be home. make it home, curl up on the recliner, feel some sharp pains along my spine, watch a little star trek, eat some leftovers, yknow 

then my mom comes into my room before bed and says that she recognized how i was feeling at dinner. cold but feeling overheated, clammy, pale, almost a bit dizzy, hungry but not hungry, needing to put my head in my hands and shift around, uncomfortable but unable to pinpoint what's wrong. she says, i've felt like that a lot too, for decades, and i always think did i eat enough protein did i drink enough did i do something wrong to trigger something i can’t recognize, and actually?

i think it’s just pain. 

which is currently kind of blowing my mind a bit to realize, that although i know people with chronic pain will not recognize their pain the same as able bodied people

i am more likely to feel the side effects of pain than the pain itself 

put another way, i am experiencing my body reacting to pain whether or not i feel more or less than usual of what i think of as pain (sharp, shooting, twinge, spasm, pointy ache..).

I thought of general pain or the constant background pain as just a low ache that maybe comes with some stiffness and soreness, but I am feeling it through other senses and manifestations as well

so im really rethinking about how to recognize and predict and categorize and classify pain. it made me think of the emotions wheel, which you probably recognize a version of if you’ve had therapy 

and i think something like this with words for physical sensations like restless, queasy, tight, collapsible, unsteady, foggy, tensed, and probably better words i’m not thinking of, would be a helpful start to identify how to communicate what is going on with my body 

is this relatable to anyone? how do you recognize and communicate feelings in your body that you’ve gotten used to but are not medically “normal”? what words would you put on the sensation wheel? 

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Autistic Traits I Struggle to Describe to Non-Autistic People

Neurodivergent_lou

[autism-affirmations]

[neuroticboyfriend]

tip for people with chronic pain/fatigue: lay down occasionally. haven't laid down in the past 3-5 hours? do it (if you can) and see how you feel. i've found that i'll lay down in bed just to be in my room, but then i get hit with an instant wave of relief because just sitting on the couch was too much for my body, and i didn't realize it.

when you're in pain or fatigued for a long time, your awareness of your body may get wonky - especially if you already struggle w/interoception due to neurodivergency. so. test it, sometimes. you can apply it to other things too: sit if you're standing. take a break a task if you've been doing it for a while. have a small snack to see if you're hungry. etc. etc.

[snakeautistic]

Interoception and I do not get along clearly considering my complete lack of it!! You don’t know how often I’ll go through the day being like “huh why do I feel kinda bad” and only realize it’s because I haven’t had any water based on the color of my pee 😨. I used to also just forget to eat because I don’t really get hungry, though I’m getting better at that. Also when it comes to like,, taking a piss because I don’t realize I have to until it’s almost too late so I have to RACE to the bathroom. It’s actually so bad and this is embarrassing but I’ve pissed myself once or twice in the not so distant past because of that.

[alpaca-clouds]

The Pain Scale is kinda useless

Yes, this has to do with neurodiversity. But also about general disabilities, about sexism and racism and other things.

I spend a lot of time last week in hospital, because I had a biking accident last week and was in the ER, as well as going to two check ups, the last one earlier today. And there I once again realized how useless the painscale is.

See, the entire idea of the pain scale is that you should tell doctors the pain you are in on the scale of "no pain" to "worst pain imaginable". But... the thing is that this runs into several problems:

How bad the worst pain imaginable is varies a lot depending on what the worst pain someone has ever experienced is.

People, who have to fight chronic pain, generally have a very shifted pain scale.

A lot of neurodiverse, especially a lot of autistic people, have problem with interoception - so actually telling what they and their body feel. And this can at times include pain.

And then of course there is the issue that because of a lot of people who genuinely just at the moment are experiencing their worst pain imaginable, even though for someone else it might just be a 5 or 6, makes doctors always like "Yeah, sure" when someone arrives and tells them "yeah, I am at a 9". While also saying: "So, its not that bad," when someone arrives saying "Yeah, I am at a 4 or 5?"

Just two examples for me. Earlier last year I had done something to my back and I was in so severe pain that I barely could move. But of course I did not call the ambulance, but had my roomie bring me to the hospital. So, I hobbled into the ER there, and when they asked me about my pain, I was like "8 to 9?" And they were like: "Oh, you came here on your own, it could not have been that bad."

Another one was last week. You should know, that as a teen, I had a really, really bad internal infection, with really the most horrible pain imaginable. Like, "I was screaming until they gave me morphium" bad. So, trying to focus on how my body was feeling, I came to the conclusion: "4 or 5?" And the doctor was like: "Well, than it cannot be so bad." Welp, psych. I ended up having a fracture. And the doctor just looked at me like: "... How can you still move?" And I was just: "Well, I know much worse pain."

And it should be noted. I have had several fractures during my life and... I never considered the pain of a fracture as that extreme. I do not know whether it is because of messed up interoception or something. But yeah. I move around quite fine with a fracture.

Really, I kinda feel like even for doctors it is not really the most useful evaluation tool. Because I see a lot of doctors go "Well, it is not that bad that you need treatment" if you are telling them a number smaller than 5, but as soon as you go above 7, they basically go: "Press X to doubt".

And that is without going into the problems of sexism, racism and the like. Because when a woman talks about her pain, doctors will go like: "She is just very sensitive." Meanwhile if the person is not white they will also assume other things. And of course men in general often are made to underplay their pain, to be ruff and manly.

Don't get me wrong. I know why the pain scale exists. But... I do not think it is very useful as it is right now for the reasons named above.