Do you struggle with Interoception? How does it manifest in your life?
I experience this with hunger, from both sides. I don't know when I'm hungry and I don't know when I'm full. Sometimes I'll go an entire day without eating and I'll only know I'm hungry when I start getting moody and have no energy. I'll know when I'm full when I feel like shit from overeating.
My wife has often said, with more than a grain of truth, that if she didn't live with me I'd never eat or drink anything.
I rarely feel hungry or thirsty - it's usually my stomach making noises that alerts me to the fact. Annoyingly, unless I have a dehydration headache, I generally can't tell whether I'm hungry or actually thirsty.
Yep, very familiar. at times it almost feels like my body is not very well connected to my brain.
With all information that does not or very late get processed. (like I only notice I am hungry like 2 or 3 hours after I should have eaten something, and than it just completely takes over everything and I cannot think straight)
Hunger is annoying, but with a schedule managable, same as habits of going to the bathroom, cold you dress according the weatherbulletin. But Heat and knowing where some of my bodyparts hang out is something that I struggle with regularly. For cold you just put on another layer, for heat at a certain level there are no more clothes left to take of. And with my body, at some days it's worse than others. with elbows that hitting doorframes, or other passerby's, small (scrape) wounds or bruises that appear on my body of which I have no clue about their orgins. It doesn't tend to be big things, so I can keep ignoring it and pretending it just is part of me. But on some days I wonder, but what if it did was something big, would I notice it?
Broke my leg, didn't realise until they went to send me home and tried to put me on crutches that my arm was also broken. Had a 'sore tummy' every now and then. Turns out it was a serious condition and I shouldn't have been able to hold down a job or go to a gym daily. I also am never full unless I'm absolutely stuffed. Was happy to get the autism diagnosis and have interroception explained to me, made everything make so much sense.
I don’t have an issue with eating because I have pretty strong eating habits established (except I sometimes skip my 4pm lunch because I am too focus on my work). But it’s a very different story when it comes to clothes, especially because weather changes quickly where I live (even during the same day). I try to establish some rules linked to the weather, but I do not always do it very well (and it’s worse when I forgot to look at the weather, it’s not a strong enough habit at the moment).
It does not bother me a lot in practice, but people tend to tell me something is wrong (hot and I have no shirt, or cold and I have a shirt).
I know other autistic people like this but I'm honestly the exact opposite - hypersensitive to pretty much everything. I would rather be the opposite if I'm honest, it is very tiring to have to keep managing myself so that I'm not in discomfort.
a lot of things I recognize pretty easily and are pretty sensitive too, however for me it's my social tired meter. It's taken me a long time after finding out that i'm Autistic to start recognizing patterns that I may need to step away. Another thing is physical pain, it's really hard for me to exercise and stuff because I can't ever tell if i'm pushing myself enough, too much, or not enough.
I resonate with both of these. It's been wild in recent months learning to listen more to myself and give myself permission to say no to socializing or to remove myself when I need to. I steeled myself to more pushback even than I've received.
I had to actually look up the definition of that word. I may very well have had this when I was young because I know I walked late and crawled late so this is a possible explanation for that. But my memory is hazy. I know sometimes I have difficulty with where I am in reference to other people or objects.
That's ok I think we're all still learning how this works and I was afraid I messed up posting
There is something of a learning curve with Lemmy. I've been using it on my own server now for just over 24 hours. Basically, I am liking it though. I know it's still somewhat clunky but I suspect it will get better with time.
I have some major frustrations that I'm hoping will get sorted out over time. I'm not really spreading the word about it to my friends yet because I don't want them to try it out and then bail. I'm happy with it enough that the satisfaction of sticking it to spez as a placeholder for my anger at all billionaire capitalists makes it worth it.
I'm waiting for it to mature before I evangelize it as well. The current state of it could frustrate somebody less technical.
I struggle with this quite a lot, particularly with eating. I've been underweight the majority of my life and still am, and often realize I simply do not feel hungry, even if I'm starving. I've also broken bones, when I didn't realize it was severe. But progress has been made with eating more consistently, and we chug along :)
Honestly, I'm not saying do this because replacing functions with vices is very not good and I am fully aware of it. That being said what worked for me is marijuana, it helps me to feel like I WANT to eat at the very least, even if I don't feel hungry. When I'm high it makes food more appealing to me as well, so it helps to supress my extremely picky eating habits. Of course, this is making a habit in and of itself which is why i don't necessarily recommend it, but I'll wean myself off of it.
I am neutral on marijuana as I know people who use it to their own detriment as well as people who get true benefit from it. It's not good for me as it makes me anxious with no positive benefit but I'm glad you found something that helps
I don’t really notice that I’m thirsty, so I used to go full work days without drinking anything other than a glass of water that my colleague gave me at lunch, then feeling strangely tired when going home.
The end result was a kidney stone. After that painful experience, I always have a bottle of water in my office, and make sure that I drink one bottle before lunch and another in the afternoon.
On days off from work, I still forget to drink, because I don’t have my water bottle there to remind me.
I do not feel thirsty nor do I feel when to stop eating. I also have trouble pinpointing where I feel pain. I feel it but can only tell you the general area. I have problems with balance and not sure if this falls under interoception but I see 3 images. My left eye, right eye and the composite. Edp when tired.
I stopped smoking weed recently as a self-medication, and now I can't interpret what my stomach is sending lmao. So weird.