How Interoception Affects Women with ADHD: Understanding Body Awareness
In this week’s episode, we’re diving into a fascinating and often overlooked area of ADHD: interoception. This is our ability to sense and interpret internal bodily signals like hunger, heartbeat, or emotional shifts. Understanding interoception is key to emotional regulation, self-awareness, and reconnecting with our bodies, especially for women with ADHD.
I’m joined by Caroline Williams, a science journalist and author, whose new book, Inner Sense, brings the emerging science of interoception to a mainstream audience. Caroline has written for The Times, The Telegraph, and The Guardian, and is a former feature editor at New Scientist. She’s also the author of Override and Move!, the latter named a New Scientist Book of the Year.
My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is OUT NOW!
What You'll Learn:
- What interoception is, and how it differs from exteroception and proprioception
- Why those with ADHD often struggle to regulate internal signals
- How tuning into bodily cues helps with decision-making, intuition, and reducing stress
- Caroline’s motivation for writing her book
- The role of the vagus nerve in interoception
- How affective touch (like gentle stroking) supports calming and connection
- How hypermobility may impact interoception and sensory regulation
- Why ADHD brains and bodies can respond more strongly to stress, and how this links to RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria)
- How to find compassion for your needs and gently support yourself through dysregulation
- The emerging conversation around GLP-1 medications, fullness, and potential ADHD applications
- Tools to strengthen interoception: body scans, exercise awareness, reminder apps, floatation tanks, and more.
Timestamps:
- 02:41 - Understanding The Science Behind Interoception
- 10:19 - Exploring Interoception and Its Impact on Mental Health
- 14:07 - The Importance of Interoception in Therapy
- 24:26 - Understanding The Difference Interoception Can Make
- 26:50 - Understanding Heart Sensitivity and Anxiety
- 34:33 - The Role of Interoception and Appetite Regulation
- 39:22 - The Impact of Interoception on Body Awareness
- 46:36 - The Power of Compassion when Navigating Neurodivergence
Whether you’re newly diagnosed or deep into your ADHD journey, this episode offers empowering insights into how listening to your body can become a powerful part of your emotional wellbeing.
Links and Resources:
- Order my book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit
- Join the Waitlist for my new ADHD community-first membership launching in September! Get exclusive founding offers [here].
- Find my popular ADHD webinars and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
- Follow Caroline on Instagram: @carolinewilliams_science
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a well being and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Speaker A:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:Today I have with me a fantastic author journalist.
Speaker A:Her name is Caroline Williams and she is a science journalist and former feature editor for New Scientist magazine who researches the links between the mind and the body, something that we talk about a lot on this podcast.
Speaker A:And she is also the author of a book called Override and a book called move, which was a New Scientist Book of the Year.
Speaker A:And she's also written for the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian and has appeared on BBC Radio.
Speaker A:And she's here today to talk about her new book which I have in front of me and is fantastic.
Speaker A:It's called Innocent Events and it's the first to bring the science of interoception to popular audience.
Speaker A:So we're going to be breaking it all down.
Speaker A:I can't wait.
Speaker A:I've got so many notes.
Speaker A:So Caroline, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker B:Hello.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:I'll do my best to break it all down, but yeah, I think you.
Speaker A:Will because you've done it beautifully in the book and it has so much detail and lots of science.
Speaker A:But I am quite if I can read it, I think anyone can read it.
Speaker B:So yeah, it's not supposed to be hard work, it's supposed to be entertaining and interesting and, you know, a guide to something you may not have heard of before.
Speaker B:You know, who's heard of interoception and why it matters and why I think we're going to be hearing a lot more of it.
Speaker A:I agree with you 100% and it's something that I've heard about on the podcast quite a bit and I know you've talked about research from Dr. Jessica Echols in the book and she's also been on the podcast twice.
Speaker A:So we've talked about it.
Speaker A:It's been dotted and sprinkled into conversations.
Speaker A:We talk, we talk about the nervous system a lot and we talk about emotional regulation A as well.
Speaker A:And I think this brings so much of it together and helps all my amazing listeners who are so clued up and so well educated and actually so self aware of how interoception impacts them.
Speaker A:I think it's going to be brilliant.
Speaker A:So anyone who has not heard of interoception and understands, you know, how this impacts us on a day to day basis, perhaps you can just break it down and explain to us what it actually is.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a terrible word for something that's actually not as complicated as it sounds and more interesting than it sounds as well, it sounds like, you know, sort of an accounting term or something.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:So interoception is sort of like a catch all term to describe the way we sense and interpret signals and changes from within our own bodies.
Speaker B:So our senses that we're all more familiar with, they are exteroceptive because they're receiving information from the external world.
Speaker B:Proprioception is the sort of sense of where your body is in space so you can know without checking where your arms are, where your legs are.
Speaker B:And it's sort of like, you know, when you know you're going to topple or whatever.
Speaker B:Introception is all about receiving information from inside your own body.
Speaker B:So it's fully private experience.
Speaker B:And the reason it's important is because the whole reason really to have a brain in the first place is to kind of make sense of this information from the outside world, but also from the inside world to help us work out how to act in the world, how to feel, what we need to do.
Speaker B:So it's the basis of every decision, every motivation, every emotion.
Speaker B:And yeah, it's not really been factored in for a long time because of the brain centric sort of focus of neuroscience.
Speaker B:But it's starting to come in now which makes everything a little bit more complicated to understand, but it also opens up new avenues for treatments and understanding differences.
Speaker B:Like an adhd.
Speaker A:Yeah, so when you say that, does that mean is to do with like gut feelings as well.
Speaker A:So that feeling that we get when something's a bit off or, and I know a lot of people with adhd, we struggle to access our, maybe our intuition, our gut feelings because our brain likes to override a very busy brain and we are then riddled with self doubt.
Speaker A:Does that involve our gut and what we sense?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:So you know, we will have this.
Speaker B:Everyone sort of gets the idea of intuition and gut feelings and you know, but there's never really been like a solid bit of science to hang it on that That's a real thing.
Speaker B:I think of it as.
Speaker B:There are sort of three types of interoceptive signals.
Speaker B:So there's the ones that you will never feel like you can't.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter how good you are at sensing your own body, you'll never know what your kidney is doing right now.
Speaker B:That's just not going to happen.
Speaker B:We're not wired for that.
Speaker B:There's the ones like heartbeat fullness, you know, breathing sensations which we can tune into.
Speaker B:And people vary in how much they do and how available those sensations are to them.
Speaker B:So they're sort of.
Speaker B:You can call on them, but if it's urgent, eventually you'll.
Speaker B:You'll feel.
Speaker B:You'll feel it and it'll burst through to consciousness.
Speaker B:And then the gut feelings in the intuition, they're sort of somewhere in between.
Speaker B:So the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio describes them as background feelings.
Speaker B:So a bit like when you're watching a movie and the background music changes and it changes the mood and you feel a bit uneasy and you're not really sure why and you haven't really clocked it.
Speaker B:It's kind of like that, but physical.
Speaker B:You know, there may be changes hormonally in your body or in your nervous system, or something's going on, but maybe it's sort of like just on the edge of consciousness.
Speaker B:And so people also vary at how loud those changes and sensations have to be before they can tune into them.
Speaker B:And there does seem to be evidence that people with ADHD are less able to draw on those sensations, but are potentially more likely to notice them.
Speaker B:So you're sort of feeling it, but not really getting it, and then also lacking in the ability to regulate them and understand them.
Speaker B:So there's a lot going on and there may be many different aspects that could be potentially acted upon to help people.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that's really validating because I know for.
Speaker A:Maybe for myself, but lots of people I speak to is that we can be quite trusting and we might miss those cues of maybe not quite seeing something for what it is.
Speaker A:But like you say, we struggle to access what that something might be and we have to bring someone in.
Speaker A:So sometimes with my husband, I need his opinion to.
Speaker A:I'm like, I think this is the situation.
Speaker A:I think that person is like that.
Speaker A:But I'm not sure because I kind of want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker A:But then there's something in me, but I struggle to access it a little bit.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think sometimes we can.
Speaker B:You Know, just as your eyes and ears can deceive you, sometimes your gut reactions can deceive you.
Speaker B:So I remember there's an example of somebody I used to work with at New Scientist, sadly no longer with us, but an amazingly lovely, caring human being.
Speaker B:But something about him reminded me of somebody I did not get on with and, you know, let's name him my stepdad wound me up and, you know, there was something about him that reminded me of my stepdad.
Speaker B:And so I reacted defensively and, you know, so that my gut feeling was, oh, he's out to get me.
Speaker B:That wasn't the case at all.
Speaker B:And so sometimes if you don't have access to what's triggering the way you're feeling, then it's very difficult to make sense of that.
Speaker B:So, yeah, becoming more aware potentially can be helpful.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think to just be able to break this all down and to understand how it can impact us.
Speaker A:You know, maybe from sort of more of a physiological perspective of thirst, hunger, needing the toilet, temperature, sensory overload.
Speaker A:Like all these different things are happening to us every single day.
Speaker A:And we are then getting home maybe from wherever we've been and all that's been coming at us and we wonder why we shut down or we can't have a conversation, or we just need to kind of hide away for an hour.
Speaker A:And I think when we understand all of this, you know, maybe we've gone into hyper focus and we've not hydrated, we've not gone to the toilet, all of that.
Speaker A:And we've not, because we've been so busy hyper focusing, we've not noticed our body's cues.
Speaker A:And I do think that's very common in the neurodivergent, you know, community.
Speaker A:But we might not know that's happening and then not understand why we feel the way we are and blame ourselves for something.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I mean, the whole thing, you know, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 48, so after a lifetime of going, why am I like this?
Speaker B:You know, it's nice to know that there's something actually going on.
Speaker B:You're not making the whole thing up.
Speaker B:But you know, that, that sensation of kind of like stopping what you're doing, then going, oh my God, I'm starving.
Speaker B:And you've been irritable for an hour, but you've no idea that you were hungry because you, you know, hyper focusing.
Speaker B:But then the thing with interception is it's tempting to think that everyone needs is more, more contact with what's going on that actually can be, can be Unhelpful.
Speaker B:Because if you spend more time inside your own body, then you're not reacting to what's going on on the outside.
Speaker B:So what actually, what the healthiest way to be is to have access to actually feel what is going on in your body, but also to be able to disengage from that.
Speaker B:So it's like an emotional version of potty training.
Speaker B:So you sort of.
Speaker B:You notice a sensation, you go, okay, I need to deal with that.
Speaker B:You go and do whatever you need to do, you come back and you get on with your day.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's been dealt with.
Speaker B:That homeostatic need has been dealt with.
Speaker B:Move on.
Speaker B:You don't spend the whole day going, oh, my God, I'm such a terrible person, I needed the toilet.
Speaker B:You just do it, deal with it, move on.
Speaker B:And I think the trouble with anyone who has trouble accessing their body signals is that if you don't have access to what's going on, you can't deal with it and move on.
Speaker B:And it might just kind of carry on in the background, kind of making you feel slightly anxious for reasons that you can't quite put your finger on.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's that.
Speaker A:It's that feeling of.
Speaker A:Sort of feeling unsettled, but not quite knowing why you're unsettled.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:And I wonder, perhaps maybe you can tell us a little bit about what drove you to write this book.
Speaker A:Was it a personal thing or was it just something you were noticing in the.
Speaker A:In the conversations you were having?
Speaker B:A bit of both, really.
Speaker B:I mean, my sort of.
Speaker B:My books are always personal in some ways, because I started with.
Speaker B:With Override, where, you know, I'd noticed as a science journalist that there was a lot of talk about neuroplasticity and, you know, change your brain.
Speaker B:But I also knew that the science that was coming through suggested that, you know, these brain training apps and books and all that wasn't really the way to achieve changing yourself from the inside.
Speaker B:It wasn't quite as simple as that.
Speaker B:So I thought, okay, well, what, what should we be doing then?
Speaker B:So I went around a bunch of labs and asked them.
Speaker B:I chose five things, which, looking back, it reads very much like a cry for help from someone who has ADHD undiagnosed and wants to try and work out what the hell to do with their brain.
Speaker B:So it was like, how do I improve my attention span?
Speaker B:How do I become less anxious?
Speaker B:How do I use my creativity more effectively so that I can get ideas on demand, not just at a random point when I can't use them.
Speaker B:Why do I keep getting lost?
Speaker B:Why am I so rubbish at math?
Speaker B:All these things?
Speaker B:And so I went around and sort of tried various sort of interventions.
Speaker B:Some of them were more effective than others.
Speaker B:The emotional ones were the ones where I got the most success.
Speaker B:And also the ones that involve something to do with changing, something to do with my body seemed to be the ones that were most interesting.
Speaker B:So that combined with the thought of, okay, I never feel more sensible and I never feel more grounded than after I've done yoga.
Speaker B:I never feel more myself than when I'm out walking with the dog.
Speaker B:I started to think, well, what is it about movement?
Speaker B:There must be more than just endorphins about why moving changes the way you think and feel.
Speaker B:And so that's why I got into writing Move, which then led me to interoception, which was also this emerging area of neuroscience that was starting to kind of become talked about in scientific journals and at conferences, but not really known among, you know, the general public.
Speaker B:And so it just, when I started diving into it, it seemed to offer a new way to tackle some of the most difficult problems that we face in these times.
Speaker B:You know, Mental health issues, body issues, overeating, undereating, our sort of sense of self and agency in the world, in a very scary world, you know, everything that seems to ail us these days has something to do with a problem with interoception.
Speaker B:And so that's why I ended up going into inner sense.
Speaker B:But, you know, they often say that you, you sort of are drawn to things that are true about you.
Speaker B:And so I think my interest in all things to do with emotional regulation and the mind, body connection is very much something that makes sense to me because the kind of the cognitive approach of, oh, well, you think like that, you feel like that.
Speaker B:How about you think a different way?
Speaker B:Has never really worked for me.
Speaker B:I'm like, well, I have thought of that.
Speaker B:I thought of rationalizing my way out of anxiety.
Speaker B:It doesn't work because I know it's stupid.
Speaker B:Doesn't change the way I feel.
Speaker B:So it sort of resonates with me as something that, that actually has more scope to help treat things and help people who are suffering in ways that we can't currently help.
Speaker B:Pain, fatigue, you know, all these things.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely, all of that.
Speaker A:And I think as I have been in this space now for quite a few years, I'm noticing how important it is to have this conversation about the brain, body, conn and to really hone in on sort of more of the somatic work because we have all these emotions, like you say, we have this anxiety, we have all these, these worries and we need grounding a lot more.
Speaker A:And we, we feel it in our bodies.
Speaker A:You know, we feel the palpitations, we feel the, the jaw, we feel the migraines.
Speaker A:We feel everything so acutely in our bodies.
Speaker A:I don't know one neurodivergent person that hasn't got physical health conditions, health symptoms with their adhd.
Speaker A:And I know it's so much of it is connected and we have to just go.
Speaker A:That's why so many people will say, oh, I've only just discovered my ADHD, you know, in my 40s and 50s, and I've been in therapy for 20 years and nothing's helped is because just the talking alone doesn't work.
Speaker A:We have to ground and move it through our bodies and find ways to check in, create that awareness and notice and find whatever movement or therapy or anything that.
Speaker A:That works.
Speaker A:I mean, I'm similar to you, Caroline, that I have to do yoga at least once a week.
Speaker A:That's my, my sort of my, my anchor.
Speaker A:I walk the dog every single day and I do a lot of tapping eft because for me, that is a somatic release.
Speaker A:That is a way for me to be able to check in, notice and then, and then release whatever's going on in my body.
Speaker A:And it's really, I think actually EFT works very well with interoception because we always tuning into what we feel and it's always, it's always very.
Speaker A:Where do you feel that in your body?
Speaker A:Is it in your throat?
Speaker A:Is it in your neck?
Speaker A:Is it in your shoulders?
Speaker A:And we hone in and that we don't need to rationalize that we just kind of go, yeah, there's a lump in my throat and there's.
Speaker A:And we, and then we feel it move through our body and, and that's why, you know, I do believe anything somatic now that we work with is going to be the future for, for therapy and for healing and, and all of that.
Speaker A:So I'm really, really happy to hear that you have this book that you've brought out into sort of pop culture as opposed to just staying in sort of more of the scientific realm.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, I really, I really do think that we are with interoception now where, when I was a science journalist 20 years ago, nobody outside of science and science journalists who hung out at conferences were aware of the gut brain connection, the microbiome that just wasn't a thing out in the world, but it was really a thing in science.
Speaker B:And then, you know, fast forward 10, 15 years and it's everywhere.
Speaker B:Everyone knows about it.
Speaker B:It's a word that everyone knows.
Speaker B:I kind of feel like interoception is that it's there.
Speaker B:It's sort of on the cusp of becoming a thing.
Speaker B:People in science have been talking about it for a long time.
Speaker B:You know, neuroscience conferences are just like, booming with interoception.
Speaker B:I feel like it's kind of ready to move forward because I think we're all ready to hear it.
Speaker B:So interesting you talk about tapping.
Speaker B:So I did look into tapping and there wasn't enough research for me to have an opinion either way.
Speaker B:But there is research into effective touch, which I think is possibly similar mechanism potentially.
Speaker B:So effective touch is a kind of touch that we all know how to do just innately.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:It's stroking sort of lightly at a speed of, I think it's naught to 3 centimeters per second.
Speaker B:I can't remember.
Speaker B:It doesn't really matter what the exact speed is.
Speaker B:But basically it's how we stroke someone.
Speaker B:If we want to calm them down, if we want to say they're there, don't worry.
Speaker B:And how you stroke a cat.
Speaker B:And we have specific neurons in our skin that fire only for that.
Speaker B:And they fire most strongly at human body temperature and at this particular speed.
Speaker B:And they are associated with feelings of safety and comfort and social support.
Speaker B:And so it's being used as a potential treatment for pain.
Speaker B:So we can take more pain if there's someone there, sort of like saying they're there, it's okay.
Speaker B:Social support.
Speaker B:We're social species and we need that.
Speaker B:And so you can even, you know, reduce anxiety and think just by sort of stroking yourself.
Speaker B:Just, it works better if someone else does it to you, but you can sort of just stroke your.
Speaker B:Your arm very gently.
Speaker B:So that's a similar kind of thing that's being really taken seriously now as a.
Speaker B:A way to sort of tip the nervous system over into calm.
Speaker B:And yeah, there was one study in someone with chronic pain where 15 minutes of that a day and it sort of, it resolved.
Speaker B:So, I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not.
Speaker B:I don't want to say, don't overstate the case, but it's a really interesting thing that you can use these.
Speaker B:And even though it's the skin, they still count as interoceptive because of the pathways it takes to the bit of the brain that tells you how you're doing in the world and are you safe and do you need to take any action to make yourself safer?
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Is that connected to the vagus nerve?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:So the sensory nerves in the skin don't go via the vagus nerve, they go through the spinal cord.
Speaker B:So there's three routes of intercepted signals.
Speaker B:One major root is the vagus nerve, but that's sort of more visceral organs as a heart, the stomach, the major blood vessels, and that the vagus nerve, you know, wanders around the body and sort of connects with all these internal organs down to as far as the sort of the stomach and the intestines and then skin, muscles, fascia, goes through the spinal cord and up.
Speaker B:But they, but they all come to the same place and then get passed on to the insula, which is the part of the brain, the interoceptive cortex, which does the.
Speaker B:Putting that together with everything else and making sense of it.
Speaker B:And the third route is in the blood.
Speaker B:So we've got hormones going in the blood and they, you know, they all end up in the same place and they all get interpreted.
Speaker B:So it's a little bit more complicated than our external senses because we have eyes and a visual cortex.
Speaker B:We don't have a fear cortex.
Speaker B:We don't have, you know, an organ that tells us when we're scared.
Speaker B:It's sort of more of an amalgamation of lots of information put together and interpreted by the brain.
Speaker B:And then the body updates the brain and the brain sort of changes its predictions and it's like a very much a back and forth.
Speaker B:So when we talk about body brain connections, it sounds like these things are separate and one's taking information from the other and telling it what to do.
Speaker B:It's not, it's very much a cycle, it's very much a back and forth.
Speaker A:It's like feedback.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:And it never stops.
Speaker A:So I mean, I'm thinking straight away from sort of like an evolutionary perspective is a baby, like the minute a baby's born, the skin to skin touch and that's so powerful.
Speaker A:And a child, any, you know, anyone that we care for, that's a child child, the stroking and the patting and straight away it's touch, isn't it?
Speaker A:And we don't even think about it.
Speaker A:Sort of like just innate there for us to, to stroke a baby and to comfort them.
Speaker A:And it's interesting that we don't see that for ourselves.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And also I think the important thing about the developmental side is that when we're born we, you Know, we have these homeostatic needs.
Speaker B:So we have these needs for Hung.
Speaker B:You know, we're hungry, we're cold, you know, we need.
Speaker B:Whatever, whatever we need, we can't do anything about it.
Speaker B:All we can do is cry and hope that somebody responds with the right thing.
Speaker B:And this is how we learn to, to regulate based on what happens.
Speaker B:You know, this kind of back and forth between the carer and then these systems sort of develop like that.
Speaker B:And so as long as it's, I mean, it's never going to be perfect because you don't speak, you know, wow, wow, wow.
Speaker B:But you know, it was a mother, but you, you kind of, you do your best and as long as your parent is good enough at caring and at least helping you regulate, that's how we learn to do this.
Speaker B:And this is one of the reasons why early life stress and trauma have a knock on effect on mental health in later life.
Speaker B:Because if you're not setting that up, you know, in a healthy way, you're punished for your expressing your needs.
Speaker B:So you might then just cut off from those needs or you know, they're just not being met for whatever reason, then that doesn't develop properly.
Speaker B:Which isn't, by the way, the same thing as what some people say is all ADHD is trauma based.
Speaker B:I'm not saying that at all because I think that's not helpful to parents of children with ADHD who feel like they've done something wrong when they haven't.
Speaker B:And it's not helpful for people with ADHD who already feel like they're wrong.
Speaker B:And you know, it's not necessarily a defect.
Speaker B:But all I'm saying is that we learn to regulate through things like social touch and the presence of other people and that sort of thing.
Speaker B:And also in parenting, there's been some studies where if parents can help children verbalize what they're going through.
Speaker B:I see that you're very angry at the moment and sort of do that, then the children's mental health benefits and so does the parents.
Speaker B:So there's a lot less stress in that environment.
Speaker B:So just sort of bringing the body in and saying, okay, what are you feeling right now?
Speaker B:Okay, what should we do about that?
Speaker B:That can be a really useful thing to give kids a skill for life that they can then draw on.
Speaker A:Yeah, it goes back to connection and safety.
Speaker A:It goes back to feeling like you're being heard and you're listened to.
Speaker A:Again, I'll go back to people feeling the physical sensations.
Speaker A:We know that hypermobility, chronic pain, fatigue, I know, you mentioned the fascia.
Speaker A:So much of this is connected with neurodivergence and being able to understand our own body cues.
Speaker A:And I. I liked the word that you used in the book.
Speaker A:You said these nebul feelings that can be really hard to pin down.
Speaker A:And it can be really hard for us to understand, okay, why there's that pain again.
Speaker A:But why have I got that pain?
Speaker A:Where's it coming from?
Speaker A:Do you think that understanding our interoception is kind of like a bit of a roadmap to what we're experiencing and have experienced, especially with maybe our nervous system as well?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, the work that Jessica Eccles is doing is really, really interesting because what she's finding is in people with hypermobility, there may be interoceptive signals such that because the blood vessels are more stretchy, the blood isn't returned to the heart so much.
Speaker B:So the heart often has to race to keep blood going around the body.
Speaker B:And so that could be interpreted unconsciously as anxiety.
Speaker B:And the way she explained it to me is like, you might not have twigged that if you've had a big meal, all the blood's run to your stomach.
Speaker B:You don't really get.
Speaker B:That's what's behind the feeling.
Speaker B:You just know that you feel weird and anxious.
Speaker B:And so having just the knowledge that that happens, I guess, is part of it.
Speaker B:But what Jessica Records is doing in her studies is training people to be able to tune into their heart specifically at a lower level.
Speaker B:So if, you know, everyone feels their heart, if you've run up the stairs, okay, so you can feel it at that level, but people different on how sensitive they are to it at lower levels.
Speaker B:And so the training essentially gets people to raise their heartbeat, tune into it as it goes back down again, and just practice that.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And when people learn to interpret, to feel their heart more accurately, they're better able to put it into context at a lower level before it has to spiral out of control and be like, oh, my God, something awful is happening.
Speaker B:I need to.
Speaker B:Which can be really confusing and unsettling because objectively, there isn't anything to panic about.
Speaker B:It's just that your blood's in the wrong place.
Speaker B:Yeah, so.
Speaker B:So I think that's quite a.
Speaker B:That's quite promising thing for people with hypermobility, but also for everyone, because it's also possible that if people are just naturally less sensitive to their heartbeat, if they have been sedentary and aren't really used to feeling their heart rising and going low again, maybe that could be feeding into anxiety in a way that.
Speaker B:That they're not really recognizing.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it just opens up this door that there's a possible way of just reinterpreting things so that your brain can deal with it at a sort of unconscious level before you even have to get the panic bell rung to.
Speaker B:To be anxious and freak out.
Speaker A:No, that's right.
Speaker A:It's really interesting what you're saying about the heart.
Speaker A:I always struggle to feel my heartbeat.
Speaker B:Yeah, Yeah, a lot of people do.
Speaker B:And that's kind of quite normal, I think.
Speaker B:I think 40% of people struggle to feel it at rest to some extent.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's really normal.
Speaker B:What's important.
Speaker B:So the research that.
Speaker B:So Jessica Eccles works a lot with Sarah Garfinkel, who's at UCL now, and what her research has shown, which has fed into this training study, is that it isn't so much what you can objectively feel whether you are good at feeling your heart, it's more whether your belief about how you.
Speaker B:Whether you can feel it or not matches up with the reality.
Speaker B:So if there's a big gap, if you feel your heart very accurately, but you have not, you think you're rubbish, then that gap seems to be linked with.
Speaker B:With anxiety.
Speaker B:Because basically what your brain is working with unconsciously isn't the same as what you're working with consciously.
Speaker B:So this is a mismatch.
Speaker B:So it causes like a, you know, a bit of an error signal in the brain which can come through as anxiety.
Speaker B:And the other way around, you know, if you think you can't feel it and you can feel it, if you think you can't feel it, you can't.
Speaker B:Can't and you can.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that difference.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So what they're trying to do with the training is bring those two things back together so that what you are feeling is what you think you're feeling.
Speaker B:So you're working with accurate information.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And that's validation, isn't it?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:And I think it's also important to know, you know, things don't always have to provide an answer to be useful.
Speaker B:Like, it's been really helpful for me finding out about rejection sensitivity, for example.
Speaker B:So I took part as a volunteer in a study at ucl, Sarah Garfinkel's lab, and a guy called Benedict Greenwood, who's doing the research, so he was looking at social rejection in people with and without adhd.
Speaker B:And so it's this really horrible task I had to do.
Speaker B:So it's Set up as if you're in an online meeting with people and you've recorded beforehand quite a personal video where you said, oh, the thing I like about myself is this.
Speaker B:The thing I'm most proud of is this, you know, really kind of saying things about yourself.
Speaker B:The most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you, whatever.
Speaker B:And then those videos are played to strangers and you see somebody else's, and then you have to rate whether you like each other, and then you get to hear afterwards whether or not they liked you.
Speaker A:That sounds terrific.
Speaker B:It's brutal.
Speaker B:And all the time they're kind of measuring your blood pressure, your heart rate, your sort of skin conductance, which is a measure of stress.
Speaker B:The initial results have come out that sudden, it's still being looked at is that there does seem to be evidence that people with ADHD are more emotionally reactive.
Speaker B:So when it feels like it hurts more, it really does hurt more.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that, that to me was really interesting, you know, really validating.
Speaker B:So, like, I'm not oversensitive.
Speaker B:It's genuine.
Speaker B:If anyone else felt like this, they would feel the same way as me.
Speaker B:And that sort of gives you permission to be a little bit wobbly occasionally when something goes wrong and just sort of, you know, maybe you need more time to get back on an even keel than other people or whatever.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So rejection sensitivity does seem to be real.
Speaker B:You're not oversensitive.
Speaker B:It's potentially in the way that your body reacts to stress potentially more strongly than other people's do.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to, I guess, that theory of back, however many hundreds of, you know, thousands of years ago that our genetic makeup was more of the hyper vigilant hunter sty makeup, where it paid to be very kind of like highly, highly watchful and vigilant and looking out for threat.
Speaker A:And however that's morphed into our lifestyle, I don't know, I'm not a researcher, but it kind of, it makes sense that there is a validation that.
Speaker A:Because I know from experience and from speaking to other people that when we experience rsd, we feel it in our body.
Speaker A:It's not just a, oh, they hate me.
Speaker A:And I'm like, now I'm internally in my brain sad.
Speaker A:It's, oh, my God, I can feel it in my neck and my chest and my throat and it feels like I've been knocked over by a brick.
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:Like, I feel it and my face goes bright red and all of that.
Speaker A:Like, it's a whole physiological Experience and so I'm really happy to know that there's evidence and research I'm hoping that might kind of like tee up with our experiences.
Speaker A:I have a feeling it probably will because I know that people, people, whether it's perceived or real rejection we do feel in our body and it does take us longer to get over and sometimes there is a bit of recovery that we need to do around that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I think so some of the research suggests that not only are people more sensitive, you know, to these, to these kind of like rejections, but also the self regulation isn't there.
Speaker B:So you've got a double whammy, you've got the body going ah.
Speaker B:And, and the ability to go okay, so that person maybe doesn't like you.
Speaker B:Does it really matter?
Speaker B:Get on with your day is not as good as it might be.
Speaker B:My experience of it is slightly different to yours.
Speaker B:I, I just go into total shutdown and hide under a blanket.
Speaker B:That's my, my go to.
Speaker B:My toxic coping strategy is to hide.
Speaker B:And I suppose, you know, evolutionarily that's not very useful at all.
Speaker B:But you know, in terms of a group, you do want somebody in the group who's hypersensitive to, you know, some kind of war breaking out.
Speaker B:You don't want everyone to be like that, otherwise it'll be chaos.
Speaker B:But you know, so it's nice to know that we're good team players but it doesn't make it any easier to be that person who's the, I don't know, antenna for perceived rejection.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So as we sort of finish, do you have any sort of practical tools for, for people to do these check ins or to tune in so they can be more aware of their own interoception.
Speaker A:Do you do anything that is quite easy to do on a daily basis?
Speaker B:Yeah, well the, the training study that they're doing with Jessica Eccles and Sarah Garfinkle, I mean they're working on an app that hopefully will, will arrive at some point but it's really quite, you know, easy enough to sort of do some of it at least.
Speaker B:So this morning I was walking the dog, I walked him up a hill, got my heart rate going and then I sat at the top of the hill, there's a little bench and sort of tried to tune into my heart as it, as it goes down to normal.
Speaker B:It was slightly scuppered by the dog barking at me this morning because he got impatient and to, wanted, wanted to move on.
Speaker B:But anyway, but that's something you can do Quite easily just, you know, do or add on to some exercise you already do.
Speaker B:Come home from a run before you start the stretches, maybe just, you know, feel what's going on in your heart as it sort of goes back to normal.
Speaker B:Meditation is particularly somatic based meditations.
Speaker B:So whether that's a body scan or there are a few out there that ask you to sort of go inward and notice any places of tension, any places of ease and sort of like just to interrogate that.
Speaker B:There's also things like I played around with an app called the Random Reminder app that kind of pings you.
Speaker B:You can set how many times a day you want it to ping you.
Speaker B:And it would just say, you know, tune in or interoception.
Speaker B:And then it would, it would just remind you to kind of go, okay, how am I feeling right now?
Speaker B:And that might just be like, okay, what do I need?
Speaker B:Maybe I just need a cup of tea, maybe I need a stretch, maybe I need a quick walk, maybe, maybe I'm hungry, you know, but just, but just having that external trigger to say, okay, just notice you have a body and ask what it needs briefly can be quite useful.
Speaker B:Yeah, so there's lots of things, there's interesting, slightly less accessible maybe, but flotation tanks, it's like a way to supercharge your interoceptive awareness.
Speaker B:Because what happens is you're floating in body temperature water.
Speaker B:You can't feel the air is the right temperature, so you can't feel where the air and water begin and end on your skin.
Speaker B:And when you know, if it's dark, you have earplugs in.
Speaker B:There's literally nothing for your brain to take from the outside world.
Speaker B:The only way it can go is inside.
Speaker B:And so you become much more aware of your heart and your breathing.
Speaker B:And for me, what I always feel in there is the strength of my, my muscles and my limbs.
Speaker B:And so that seems to help with body image.
Speaker B:So there's research in Tulsa that I went to have a look at.
Speaker B:They were doing it with people with eating disorders.
Speaker B:Their body image was way better after sessions of, of floating because they're feeling themselves from inside.
Speaker B:So it's feeling getting closer to your sense of self from the inside, not from what it looks like on the outside.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker B:So when you feel your heart in a flotation tank, it's not like when you've run up a hill.
Speaker B:It's not pounding, it's not thudding, it's just there and it's just tapping away and it's not saying anything.
Speaker B:It's just there and it's just lovely because you're like, okay, I'm here.
Speaker B:I've got this.
Speaker B:It's all fine.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's hard to describe, but I absolutely love it.
Speaker A:It's just being able to reconnect, isn't it?
Speaker A:I mean, I think that's what's amazing about the human body, is that some people, I do get quite powerful sort of interoceptive signals.
Speaker A:I know what kind of headache I'm getting.
Speaker A:I know what the headache's from.
Speaker A:I know if it's like a been on tech too long, if I need to put my glasses on, if I'm overwhelmed, I kind of get.
Speaker A:I get what's going on there.
Speaker A:And I also notice the different types of ache I get in my.
Speaker A:My back.
Speaker A:Whether it's a stress ache or whether it's I need to move ache.
Speaker A:And I've kind of honed in a little bit to this language over the past few years because it's.
Speaker A:To me, it's like a language that I'm learning and knowing when I need to pull back, when I'm burnt out, when I need to stop working, when I need to rest more, all these types of things.
Speaker A:And it just takes a bit of awareness, doesn't it?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, I think it's good to speak the language of what you need, but I think, yeah, so where you are, I think, is a really good place to be, which is like, okay, I've listened, interpreted it correctly and do the thing.
Speaker A:Well, that's the thing, interestingly, when I always go back to the same things that I do, I mean, it's not.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:I've not quite got it, but I've started to listen and learn the signals and then kind of go, oh, what do I need to do?
Speaker A:Or sometimes I do listen and sometimes I don't listen.
Speaker A:And that just depends on whether I'm very sort of like in hyper drive, hyper focus, you know, mode, or I'm really noticing I'm at that cusp of burnout and I don't really have a choice.
Speaker A:Like, I do need to kind of like pull back.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I think it's just being aware that it's a thing and that it is maybe more of a thing in people with adhd, I think is important in itself to know, because I used to give myself a really hard time for needing a day occasionally to put myself back together, and now I just go, I need one of those days where I put myself back together and I do all the things that I need to do.
Speaker B:And I used to think, well, I shouldn't need to do that.
Speaker B:I should be able to work five days a week like everybody else.
Speaker B:You know, just stop being such a spoiled brat who wants a day off every now again.
Speaker B:But, you know, knowing that they're just is potentially a reason that I'm dysregulated and need to put it all back in its box is helpful.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you listen, you've written three books.
Speaker A:You clearly are.
Speaker A:You know, when you work, you.
Speaker A:You work hard and I know you traveled for this book and all sorts.
Speaker A:So I think we definitely need to be giving ourselves lots of compassion for having those moments where we do need.
Speaker A:Because what you've given to the world is amazing.
Speaker A:And so you do need 100% you're worthy of that, that, that rest and that.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:I'll take it.
Speaker B:I'll take it.
Speaker B:This.
Speaker B:Actually writing this book was a lot easier seeing as I had the, the diagnosis and the treatment came along during the writing of this book.
Speaker B:So, you know, people have always said to me before, well, how can you possibly have adhd?
Speaker B:You've written books, you know, no one who writes books, you know.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, and now I can still do it.
Speaker B:It's just that I hate myself slightly less when I'm doing it and I don't do it in an hour a day and the other seven hours banging my head off a desk.
Speaker B:It's just a little bit more.
Speaker B:A bit more a sane way of working.
Speaker A:I'm glad.
Speaker A:I'm really glad to hear it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, hopefully.
Speaker B:Hopefully.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I wrote my book knowing fully that I had ADHD and leaned into the whole ADHD thing and thank God I did, because if I didn't have that awareness, it would have been a very, very different story.
Speaker A:I think your book deserves that space for you to really get it out there and for more people to understand this.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And I will make sure that all the links of your books are in the show notes and so people can buy it straight away.
Speaker A:I just want to thank you so much.
Speaker A:It's been a really fascinating conversation.
Speaker A:Honestly.
Speaker A:I've really loved it and I've really enjoyed reading the book and I think that as we get more aware and more and understand these concepts more, it is going to filter out and become just something that we talk about the same way.
Speaker A:You know, five years ago, people weren't talking about neurodivergence the way they are.
Speaker A:It's going to become a lot more common.
Speaker A:So you, I think, have paved the way.
Speaker A:So thank you very much.
Speaker B:I hope so.
Speaker B:Well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker B:It's been, it's been great to chat.
Speaker B:I always like chatting to, to one of us.
Speaker B:It feels like, you know, there's an understanding, I think.
Speaker A:Thank you, Caroline.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is out now.
Speaker A:You, you can find it wherever you buy your books from.
Speaker A:You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.
Speaker A:I have narrated it all myself.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker A:And I will see you for the next episode.
