You Might Have Had to Override Your Body’s Signals

Your body has been speaking to you your entire life. The question is: when—and why—did you have to stop listening?

Interoception has become something of a buzzword in conversations about trauma, nervous system regulation, and mental health. Simply put—and I do mean simply, because the science is rich, nuanced, and still evolving—interoception is your brain’s ability to notice, interpret, and make sense of the signals coming from inside your body. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, temperature, pain, emotion, and even the subtle changes in your breathing or heartbeat are constantly informing your brain about what’s happening within you. It’s sometimes called our “eighth sense” because, unlike our external senses that help us navigate the world around us, interoception helps us navigate our internal world.

Every moment, your body is asking a simple question: What do I need right now? Food. Rest. Movement. Connection. Protection. Interoception allows us to notice the whispers of those needs before they become screams.

But while conversations about interoception often focus on how to improve it, I find myself asking a different question:

What if, at some point, you had to stop listening?

As children, our nervous systems develop in relationship with others. Before we had a fully formed sense of self—before we had much agency—our brains were learning what was safe to notice, express, and respond to. If our internal experience was repeatedly dismissed, ignored, or if our instincts and intuition were interrupted—or even punished—we learned that what was happening around us mattered more than what was happening within us.

Little by little, we began orienting away from ourselves and toward the external world. In many ways, this is the beginning of a subtle split from self, not because something is wrong with us, but because adaptation asks us to prioritize belonging, safety, or survival over authenticity.

Maybe you heard:

“You’re fine.”
“Stop crying.”
“You just ate.”
“You can hold it until we get home.”

Or perhaps no one said these things at all. Maybe life’s circumstances interrupted those internal messages, and somewhere along the way, the wires got crossed.

From a neuroscience perspective, this makes perfect sense. The brain is remarkably efficient. Experiences that help us stay safe, connected, or accepted become reinforced over time. If ignoring hunger helped you get through school, pushing through exhaustion earned praise, or disconnecting from your body helped you survive overwhelming experiences, your nervous system learned to repeat those strategies. These adaptations aren’t failures. They’re evidence of a nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The challenge is that nervous systems don’t automatically update when circumstances change.

Many of us continue overriding our bodies every day. We skip meals because work comes first, ignore the urge to use the bathroom until the meeting is over, reach for another coffee instead of noticing fatigue, push through pain, or say, “I’m fine,” before we’ve even paused to check whether we are.

Eventually, overriding ourselves becomes so familiar that it feels normal. Our interoception adapts accordingly—not because our bodies stop communicating, but because we’ve become so practiced at overriding the signals that tuning them out becomes our default setting.

Skipping lunch might seem like small stakes, but the implications are much bigger than a missed meal. Over time, the habit of overriding ourselves begins to shape how we relate to emotions, pain, relationships, our sense of self, and our lives.

If your nervous system spent years learning to override its own signals, reconnecting isn’t something that happens through willpower or affirmations. Awareness can’t be forced. More often, it emerges as the nervous system begins to soften.

This is one of the reasons I’m drawn to somatic work. As a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and Certified Bodywork Therapist, I draw from Somatic Experiencing®, therapeutic touch, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, attachment theory, and principles from Polyvagal Theory. Rather than asking people to think differently, I’m interested in helping them become curious about what their bodies have been communicating all along.

Sometimes that curiosity begins with something that seems ordinary.

Shallow breath.
Clenched jaw.
Tightening in the belly.

These moments might seem small, but they’re often the beginning of a reorientation to self.

Therapeutic touch can be a powerful part of that process. When offered collaboratively and with consent, it provides the nervous system with new sensory information and co-regulation. Rather than asking you to think differently, it offers an opportunity to experience your interoception in a new way.

The body has been speaking all along. Sometimes it simply needs the right conditions to be heard.

If any of this resonates with you, or you’re curious about how somatic work and therapeutic touch can support that process, I’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re navigating stress, trauma, chronic pain, or simply feeling disconnected from yourself, you’re welcome to reach out with questions or learn more about working together. Sacredlysomatic@gmail.com