How to Trust Your Inner Compass: Using Interoception for Aligned Decision-Making
How do we know what’s right for us at any given moment? We face large and small choices everyday to the point of overwhelm, to the point of running on autopilot––but are we saying yes to things that aren’t in our best interest? Are we saying yes to things that aren’t in line with our passions, our dreams, our integrity? At the same time, are we saying no to things that might be a path forward in the direction of our true calling? Are we saying no to things based on outdated rationals and stories of unsafety?
Interoception: Our Inner-Sensing Abilities Need Help
The answer is YES, and from a biological perspective, the reason is because we have poor interoceptive awareness. Interoception is how we sense what’s going on inside ourselves … our “inner-ception.” Just like exteroception is how we sense the world around us with our five external senses. And our culture, technology and medicine have progressively made us into poor interoceptors. And so it follows that we’re not always able to confidently make decisions from a place of deep knowing.
In more detail, interoception describes our awareness of internal bodily signals, including the detection of sensations such as hunger, thirst and heartbeat. Interoception is a process by which our brains/minds make sense of these signals, which serve as a running commentary or mental map of the body’s internal world across conscious and subconscious levels of perception.
For those of us who have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)––or developmental trauma––our ability to adequately process, integrate and trust in bodily signals is hindered, and often we grow into adulthood with this distance or disconnection from what’s going on with our bodies, unable to tap into that inner sensing.
This disconnection can manifest in a lot of different ways. As I’ve examined my life and how this has shown up for me, a major theme consistently shows up which is this feeling of numbness. Attaining a state of numbness through chronic and sustained substance use, food restriction and inattention to any kind of self care. As well as a numbness caused by making life choices that weren’t aligned with my true calling, staying in relationships and jobs that kept me numb to the ability to make change happen in my life. Take a moment to reflect on your life and how you may have felt disconnected from your body and inner sensing.
Cultivating a Felt Sense Practice
Thankfully this inner-ception, this ability to tune into the signals of our bodies, is highly trainable and reparable. Interoception is clearly modifiable as proven by the number of research studies that can be found on the topic as well as clinically tested interventions targeted at improving interoceptive awareness. Training our inner sense can be used to help us form a better, healthier sense of our own bodies and improve self-understanding.
And a way into our inner world is to practice tapping into what’s called a “felt sense.” A felt sense is a special kind of internal bodily awareness and is an unclear, preverbal sense of something. A felt sense doesn’t come to you in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single bodily feeling. Imagine it like the single feeling you might get from experiencing a painting or work of art––taking it in as a whole.
And so consider being able to tap into your felt sense of an important situation you’re dealing with, or the felt sense of a question or request that’s being made of you. This felt sense practice can actually help you discern between what’s truly right for you in any given situation. Your true “yes” and your true “no” are felt from within instead of through analysis and scenario planning, weighing options or playing devil’s advocate with yourself.
“Your body, with its sense of rightness, knows what would feel right. The feelings of ‘bad’ or ‘wrong” inside you are, in effect, your body’s measurement of the distance between ‘perfect’ and the way it actually feels.”
Eugene Gendlin, Focusing
How Do You Feel a True Yes and No?
For me, in my healing journey, the first time I came across this concept was in Martha Beck’s book “The Way of Integrity”. I remember sitting down with the book, allowing myself to get into a meditative state, and first repeating the prompt “I am meant to live in peace” over and over again. After a few moments, I started to feel my heart expanding, like a tingling brightness around my chest. And I sat with that feeling that was truly lovely for a few minutes, really letting it sink in. And then she prompted me to think of something I don’t love doing, could be anything, and so I went with “I am meant to do the dishes”. And pretty soon, I felt a sensation in my lower abdomen, a heavy, dense kind of feeling.
And as she puts it, the body wants to be in truth, the body wants to be in integrity. This is why lie detector tests work––the body’s energetics respond accordingly to what’s true for you and what isn’t. Even when your thoughts think differently, your body has its own truth which is always for your highest and best good.
“Above all, please learn to trust your inner teacher, the burst of relaxation and freedom that rings through your whole body. However your sense of truth feels to you, it will never let you down.”
Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity
Body Awareness Exercise
Here’s an adaptation of Martha’s exercise for you to try out:
Find yourself in a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted for 5-10 minutes and grab something to write with.
Spend a few minutes thinking about and writing down a few things you consistently make yourself do, even though you don’t really want to do them. This can be something small or large, it doesn’t matter for this exercise.
Now pick one of these things to work with in this practice, just go with the one that stands out the most for you.
Now close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, and with this activity in mind, say to yourself, “I am meant to do [this thing].” For example, when I first did this activity it was “I am meant to do the dishes.” Mentally repeat this phrase over and over.
And as you repeat “I am meant to do [this thing],” notice any physical sensations. Scan your body, noting the feelings in your muscles, joints, stomach, gut, skin surface and so on. Write down anything you notice.
Tip: sometimes it can be hard to describe body sensations, if you need suggestions here’s a list.
Now let go of the thought you’ve been mentally repeating to yourself. Instead, mentally repeat this sentence: “I am meant to live in peace.” Don’t question it, just repeat it in your mind over and over again.
As you repeat “I am meant to live in peace,” again, notice your physical sensations. Scan your whole body with your attention and write down what you’re feeling physically. Write down anything you notice.
Now take careful note of the body sensations that you jotted down for both of the prompts. The takeaway from this exercise is that the body sensations you felt for the first prompt are how your body tells you “no”. And the body sensations you felt for the second prompt are how your body tells you “yes”. You’ve just identified your felt sense of what is and what is not true for you.
The sensation you get when you state that you are meant to live in peace is your true YES. It is what is true for you.
Ongoing: How to Check in With Your Inner Compass
And so, if you got through that exercise all the way, first of all, well done! Amazing job taking an important step in learning how to tune into your inner compass. And then secondly, you might be wondering how you can integrate this practice into your life moving forward. It’s simple:
When you are seeking guidance, pause and check in with your body as you just did.
Use a present tense statement like “I am meant to work at [job/company]” or “I am meant to live in Hawaii” etc…
Allow the time you need to really drop into your body and to get in touch with body sensations.
Contrast your statement with “I am meant to live in peace” to help you train your somatic memory to what sensations correlate with what is true for you.
Keep at it, over time you’ll be able to tap into that felt sense faster and with more assurance of what it’s trying to tell you.
“Felt sense” is a phrase coined by psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin in the 1970s. He developed a practice called “Focusing” which takes this concept much further than what I’ve shared here. https://focusing.org/
Martha Beck has spent the last several decades offering “powerful, practical and entertaining teachings that help people improve every aspect of their lives.” She was a “life coach” before there was a term for it. She’s brilliant, has published many great books and definitely worth checking out. https://marthabeck.com/books/
