question about interoception discrimination disorder

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I've read that :

Is this because they don't feel hunger or because they confuse hunger with something else, or because they don't pay enough attention to their bodies(meaning they have external oriented thinking)?


I also read:



source: corticalchauvinism.com/2017/02/20/internal-sensory-stress-and-discomfortpain-in-autism/

What does this, mean? does the individual with discrimination difficulties not notice the symptoms of anxiety, like accelerated heartbeats?
What does the phrase "an individual who has discrimination difficulties has a “vague” or “general” feeling of an internal sensation but cannot locate (discriminate) details of this feeling." mean other then the example offered?


Also can you explain what the following passage means?



source: sinetwork.org/the-other-senses-interoception/


Also, another quote from another site:



source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception

Does this mean that for people with interoception discrimination disorder is hard to localize the pain?
For example if they feel a pain in the stomach, do they know it's in the stomach, or they think it's somewhere else?
When they hear a noise in their belly are they confused and can't tell if they feel it because of hunger or because they have to trow up, or because the have to go to the bathroom?
Also can they differentiate between the different types of pain, like throbbing, cramps and so on?


And at last:



source: sense-ableconnections.com/proprioceptive-1

Do people with this disorder know when they have a fever before somebody else tells them that they have it?
How long does it take them to figure out the various symptoms of the fever and how they are connected?
And do they know how to distinguish the symptoms of the fever from something else?
Do they eventually notice that they are cold or warm after a couple of minutes of being in a place where the temperature is uncomfortable?
If they wait until the last minute to go to the bathroom, is it because they confuse the feeling of having to pee with something else?

Can people with this disorder learn to recognize the physical symptoms of discomfort and their emotions, as they grow older?

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for posting those references - it actually helps me understand myself a little better. I certainly experience this sort of difficulty discriminating and interpreting sensory-related input, especially from within my body. It's as if the sensations are floating in a sea of all possible sensations - If I think about it, I could be feeling hunger pangs or my stomach could be burning or it could feel full or I might be feeling pressure in my gut. Or my muscles might be feeling a little sore in a good way or they might be actually injured or they might feel tired. I might be feeling like I have a fever or I might feel like my blood sugar is low or I might be somewhat overheated or it might be the onset of nausea or it could be a headache coming on. I seldom notice bladder fullness until it's really full. It's like the sensations are not integrated and it's really hard to interpret them. I also have sensory processing disorder and sensory integration disorder, which are related to external sensory input as opposed to interoception. I've even had some sensory integration therapy. But I have to be really careful because of my impaired ability to discriminate interoceptive sensory input. For example, I have caused severe intervertebral disk damage by running, have torn my retina by bench pressing too much weight, came within a hair's breadth of dying from tuberculosis (that went to my abdomen) while running and exercising right up until the TB caused a collapse of a segment of intestine and damage to internal organs. It's hard to keep my weight stable because to be honest, I can't really tell when my stomach is full. I have a vague sense that I might be feeling something, but if I try to focus on exactly what, it could be one of many possibilities. I worked in science and engineering and in those terms I would describe it as a very low signal-to-noise ratio. I would compare it to trying to pick out a very faint voice on a phone line with loud static. I tend not to pay too much attention to my body (as you ask about) because it doesn't provide much accurate information - so I exercise the way I think would be safe, rather than what feels safe. I go to the doctor when I think something might be amiss rather than when I feel something is wrong. In extreme cases I can tell I'm in great pain, but problems like dizziness or digestive problems or heart problems (I have all those) are problematic to detect and address. I have a great doctor now but in the past I've had very close calls where the doctor doesn't understand what I'm trying to analyze and describe - I nearly ended up in a coma from thyroid failure because of this.

I don't know if I have the said disorder.
I do have difficulty detecting my internal states. The signals from my body are weak and easy to lose in the noise of other signals. In a quiet alone time I can detect them but external noise and people trying to interact with me are way "louder" than the tiny whisper of my body.

Sounds like alexithymia only physical than emotional.


I don't have the same issue. I won't able to answer your questions.

If anything, I have the opposite -- I'm introceptively very sensitive to the point of moodiness on small internal changes
I'm able to distinguish sensations, and as to where, usually when and why -- I don't have a serious issue on the outside and this is exactly why I know I'm my own worst problem.
Then sensations that I've yet to name or describe, but I do know it's there and it's not the same as the usual terms, and some definitely not how would a NT felt or at all.
Added to that, I'm also proprioceptively sensitive and my touch has the least filters. So I'm as well aware of what my body is doing.
But the knowledge of body language context is another matter.

The issue I might have is from the outside, and what others might be thinking if seeing me doing or acting in certain manners.

Yet all the same -- I couldn't seem to regulate or in control. I've been fighting the sensitivity for a long as I could remember.
Sometimes I wish I could just not sense these internal subtleties so I could just have the broad and simple terms for it. It just gets heavier by bits, and several bits are 'heavier' than a lumping chunk.
Except that wouldn't be wise...

And if I forced myself, it's like trying to suffocate myself, suppressing myself, almost no different from telling a very exerted lie -- it's different from actual restraint.

It seem, in my point of view as someone who can do internal orientation, it parallels to external orientation; it's no different from being autistic and able to read social cues really.
Knowing what and how it felt and yet couldn't seem to to approach this 'appropriately' unless one starts masking -- in which is just as suffocating as is unnatural to 'act' in NT's term of being concern.


Interceptive or not, there are humans still thinking over external behavioral and assume things.
But I do think it's better not to be a stranger to ourselves and our own body.

Alexithymia and proprioceptive/interoceptive differences may well be related. This was explained to me by the Occupational Therapist who interviewed me as part of my diagnostic assessment for autism, and I've since read a few research articles about it (for example; <here> and <here>.)

The way it was described to me is something like this. The emotional part of the brain doesn't always "talk" to the "conscious/aware" part directly - instead it releases hormones/neurotransmitters etc., which change the way that our body behaves (say, the "butterflies in the tummy" feeling of anticipation.) The conscious bit of the brain then reads these physical changes to work out what the emotion is. So, if this "body reading" is impaired, it can cause "emotion reading" to be impaired, too.

Some of the research takes this further. During child development, reading other people's emotions, by observing their behaviour, usually comes before the child starts learning to read their own emotions - it's the examples from the people around them that teach them how to tell emotions apart. But having a different sense of one's own body, makes it hard to "translate" other people's physical experiences into our own - so the learning process itself is more difficult.

I notice this a lot in myself. I walk and move strangely seemingly because I can't make sense of someone else's body movements when they try to physically demonstrate something to me; I just have to rely on trial and error to work out the movements. It's not unusual that people around me can tell that I'm e.g. stressed out long before I do myself - so the physical reactions are there; but they skip my attention. I'm also a long way up on the Alexithymia "spectrum".