Interior Movements

Faith for all defects supplying - where the feeble senses fail. - Pange Lingua

Something I'll be talking a lot about is "internal experiences." In ACT, we differentiate between the internal and external experiences we have. But what does that mean?

If something is an external experience, it is happening outside of ourselves. Someone else could see it, too. We would probably be able to take a picture of it happening or record it on our phone. Events such as a rainstorm, a conversation, an accident, or eating a meal would all be external experiences.

Internal experiences happen within us. This might be feeling sad, singing a song in our head, recalling a memory, or feeling our heart race. Others might get clues as to what is happening or we could tell others about these things, but they happen within us.

Internal experiences are important in ACT because they are often important sources of information. When we are attuned to the present moment, we are the most likely to notice our internal experiences.

Internal Experience, or Sources of Information

Perception

One source of internal experiences is through sensations, which produce our perceptions. This is the connection between us and the external world. It's how we become aware of our environment. Each sense has a different mechanism behind it, but in short our bodies take in the world through our specialized organs and in our minds produce the perceptions of smell, taste, touch, hearing, and sight.

Something you may not realize is that we have some ability to change how much focus we are putting on input from any one of our senses. Or said a different way, we sometimes can control what or how much we perceive. When something first occurs (like a TV that is turned on) we typically will notice the change to the environment. However, we can habituate, or get used to, some sensory input to the point where it sort of disappears into the background.

If you have a moment to do so, take a minute and try to play with your attention. See if you can become aware of all of the noises in the space you are in. Which weren't you really paying attention to before?

Take a deep breath in. Do you smell anything? Right now I am at my office, and I don't smell anything after hours of being here. But the first thing I always smell walking through the door is a pleasant earthy smell that comes from an open basement door and my office plants. After a few minutes, it fades then is gone.

When we are experiencing a lot in our day-to-day life, or especially if we're feeling stressed, it's possible for us to miss a lot of this information as our attention is elsewhere. We're out of the present moment.

(Although sometimes it's actually harder to filter out things when we're overwhelmed - think of wanting to scream at your roommate for CHEWING so loudly. But that's another topic for another time).

Interoception

Another source of internal experience is interoception. This is a big word for a simple concept: to become aware of sensations within your body. This is the connection between parts of ourselves, particularly our bodies and mind. It is important for the care of ourselves, including experiences such as hunger, thirst, sleepiness, fullness, alertness, and sexual arousal, and our awareness of things such as heartrate, respiration, and sweating.

If you're still up for it, try playing with your attention to some of these. How thirsty are you? Were you aware of that before you read this?

What about hunger? If you turn your attention to your stomach, do you feel hungry? Can you differentiate between your stomach feeling empty and the desire to eat because you're bored? Are you a person who forgets to eat and then only notices you're hungry when on the verge of passing out?

We also have varying levels of interoception. Again, when things shift we are more likely to notice; we notice changes more than constant states. You may also be able to recall times in your life where it was suggested you ignore these internal experiences. ("Go play and distract yourself till dinner!")

It may be that you also encourage yourself to ignore some of these bodily messages in the present. I'd encourage you to not get too far down the path of labeling this behavior good or bad, or right or wrong. Just make an observation if this is something you do. If you really don't feel like you can help it and need to analyze, try asking yourself how ignoring experiences is helpful to your goals (or if it's not).

Neuroception

Finally we have neuroception, which is an experience which comes out of the trauma literature. It is the concept of having awareness, beneath the level of consciousness, of safety and danger in our environments. This is proposed to be the source of the "uneasy" feeling when you're walking at night, or wariness when introduced to someone whom everyone else likes but you just don't feel sure about.

As noted above, we are not always consciously aware of our internal and external environments. With this, what begins a cascade of recognition of "threat" or "friend" in the mind could be so subtle as to be "undetectable." Maybe you can remember a time when you couldn't say why you knew something was wrong, but you did.

This one isn't all bad news, either. As noted above, signals of safety can also be quickly sensed and responded to. Whether it's an infant responding to a parent, or a client responding to a therapist, a safe presence is often felt at this deeply interior level.

Interior Movements

The importance of these in ACT is definitely not all there is, either. In the Catholic tradition we speak of discernment and attending to interior movements. Being able to focus our minds and attend to our experiences is more than a basis of responding to the world. It is a way of listening to God.

Of course, part of discernment is learning to attend well and to do so in prayer. All of these experiences, as noted above, may and often do have very earthly or biological bases. It is also possible that they are directly from God, but they can also be very much NOT of God.

Regardless, we meet at another crossroads where the spiritual and mental well-being intersect, and isn't that interesting?