Interoception and Neurodivergent Burnout: When You Only Notice Your Body at Breaking Point
You are fine until you are not.
You work, parent, study, scroll, help others.
You forget to eat or eat whatever is around.
You stay up too late.
You push through sensory overload because it is easier than explaining.
Then suddenly:
💥 you cannot stop crying
💥 you cannot get out of bed
💥 your body hurts everywhere
Looking back you see warning signs.
In the moment you saw almost nothing.
If you are autistic, ADHD, AuDHD or otherwise neurodivergent, this pattern may be linked to interoception and alexithymia.
This article explores:
🌱 what interoception is in simple terms
🧊 what alexithymia means in daily life
🧯 how both connect to ND burnout
🧰 gentle ways to notice your body earlier without turning self care into a full time job
🧠 What Interoception Is
Interoception is your ability to sense internal signals from your body.
That includes signals like:
🍽 hunger and fullness
🚰 thirst
😴 tiredness
🌡 temperature and heart rate
😣 pain and discomfort
In many ND adults interoception is:
🌫 delayed or fuzzy
🌧 very intense but hard to interpret
🔕 almost silent until signals are extreme
You might not realise you are cold until you are shaking.
You might not feel hungry until you are faint or angry.
You might not notice stress until your body refuses to function.
🧊 What Alexithymia Is
Alexithymia means difficulty identifying and describing feelings. Many autistic and some ADHD adults relate to it.
You may experience for example:
🪫 knowing you feel bad but not having precise words
🧱 answering “I do not know” when asked how you feel
🌪 reacting strongly but only later understanding that it was anxiety or anger
Alexithymia interacts with interoception. If the physical signal is fuzzy and you also struggle to label feelings, it becomes hard to know when you are:
🌱 stressed
🌱 anxious
🌱 sad
🌱 tired
You only know that something is off.
🌊 How Interoception Difficulties Feed ND Burnout
Burnout is rarely a surprise in hindsight. The steps were often visible from the outside. When interoception is off, your brain does not register them as they happen.
Some common routes:
⏰ Missing Early Strain
If you do not feel tiredness clearly, you may:
🌱 say yes to extra work or emotional labour
🌱 keep working long past your optimal point
🌱 stay in noisy or intense environments far too long
Your system is quietly draining. You only notice when the tank is almost empty.
🍽 Ignoring Hunger and Thirst
If hunger and thirst are weak signals, you may:
🌱 skip meals during work or study
🌱 rely on caffeine or sugar spikes to function
🌱 get headaches and dizziness without linking them to food or water
This increases sensory sensitivity and reduces emotional resilience, which makes everything harder.
😣 Minimising Pain and Discomfort
If you tend to endure discomfort as normal, you may:
🌱 sit in painful positions for hours
🌱 live with chronic pain that quietly steals energy
🌱 ignore illnesses until they become severe
Pain is a constant drain on your capacity, even when you are used to it.
🌪 Confusing Emotional and Physical Signals
If you cannot easily tell emotional states apart, you may:
🌱 interpret anxiety as motivation to work harder
🌱 see low mood as laziness
🌱 miss early signs of meltdown or shutdown
By the time you recognise burnout, you may already be deep in it.
🧭 Step One
Shift From Self Blame to System Understanding
You might be used to telling yourself things like:
💭 “I should have noticed sooner”
💭 “I am so bad at listening to my body”
From a nervous system point of view it is more accurate to say:
🌱 “My interoceptive signals are quieter or more confusing than average. My system needs different strategies.”
This is not about excuses. It is about accurate problem definition. You cannot use the same approach as someone who reliably feels hunger or stress early.
📓 Step Two
Map Your Personal Late Signs
Even if early signals are fuzzy, you probably have recognisable late signs.
Common late signs include:
🌫 difficulty focusing on words on a screen
💢 sudden irritability at small things
🥴 dizziness, nausea or headache
🧊 numbness or feeling disconnected from your surroundings
You can start by noting:
🪞 “What do I feel in my body when I already know I have over done it”
Examples:
🌿 “My jaw is tight and my shoulders are up near my ears”
🌿 “My skin feels prickly and all noises are too loud”
🌿 “I stare at my phone and scroll without taking anything in”
Write three to ten late signs somewhere you can see. These become your first target signals.
🌬 Step Three
Introduce Very Gentle Body Check Ins
People often suggest deep body scans and long meditations. For many ND adults this is too much, especially in burnout.
You can start much smaller.
🕰 Micro Check In Moments
Pick one or two transition times, for example:
🌅 after waking
🍽 before or after a meal
🌙 before bed
At those times ask just three simple questions:
💭 “Am I hungry or thirsty”
💭 “Am I too hot or too cold”
💭 “Is anything hurting more than usual”
You do not need to fix everything immediately. The goal is simply to practice asking and noticing.
🧍 One Body Area at a Time
Full scans can be overwhelming. Focusing on one area can be easier.
For example, once a day:
🦶 notice your feet on the floor for a few seconds
🧣 notice the feeling of your clothing on your shoulders
🫀 notice your heartbeat for three breaths
This builds the skill of noticing without demanding full insight.
🍽 Step Four
Use External Structure for Food, Water and Rest
If signals are unreliable, it is sensible to lean on external cues.
Possible supports:
🌱 regular meal windows
you do not need perfect times, just rough anchors such as morning, midday, evening
🌱 water reminders
a bottle placed where you work
gentle phone reminders if those help rather than annoy
🌱 rest cues
alarms to start winding down in the evening
planned pauses between intense tasks or meetings
Think of these as crutches for interoception. They do not mean you have failed. They acknowledge that your internal sense of timing is different.
🧊 Step Five
Connect Feelings, Context and Body
Alexithymia often improves a little when you link physical sensation, life context and emotion labels in very concrete ways.
You can experiment with a small note format such as:
📝 “Today my chest feels tight, my shoulders hurt, and I am having many worry thoughts. Context is presentation tomorrow. This might be anxiety.”
or
📝 “Today I feel slow and heavy, moving is hard, and everything feels pointless. Context is three weeks of intense work. This might be exhaustion plus low mood.”
You are not trying to be perfectly accurate. You are simply practising:
🌱 noticing
🌱 connecting
🌱 naming
Over time this can help you spot early patterns, for example:
🌿 “When I forget to eat at work, I always feel hopeless in the evening.”
which changes what you address.
🧯 Step Six
Plan for Early Interventions, Not Only Emergency Response
Once you know some of your late signs and context patterns, you can design small early actions.
Examples:
🌤 if you often realise only at meltdown point that an environment is too loud
make a rule that you put on earplugs or headphones as soon as a room reaches a certain noise level, not when you are already desperate
🍽 if you always crash mid afternoon
pre plan a snack or break for one hour before the usual crash time
treat it as essential maintenance
🛏 if you notice that staying up past a certain time leads to two bad days
set an alarm that says “future me wants us in bed by now” and aim for that on most nights
These are not about strict discipline. They are small kindnesses you offer your future burned out self.
🧑⚕️ When To Seek Extra Support
Interoception and alexithymia can be influenced by:
🌧 trauma
🌧 chronic illness
🌧 anxiety and depression
If you notice any of the following, it may help to involve a professional:
🚨 frequent fainting, heart symptoms or severe pain that you tend to ignore
🌑 long periods where you feel nothing at all then suddenly self harm or consider it
🕳 inability to describe feelings even enough to ask for help
An ND informed therapist, occupational therapist or doctor can:
🌱 rule out physical conditions
🌱 help you build safe noticing practices
🌱 support you in pacing and burnout recovery
You deserve support that respects your ND profile, not pressure to notice everything in the same way as others.
🌈 Bringing It Together
Interoception and alexithymia are not abstract research words. They describe very real experiences of:
🌫 only realising you are hungry, exhausted or in pain when you crash
🧊 not knowing what you feel until it explodes or implodes
🧯 sliding into burnout because early warning lights never seemed to switch on
For autistic, ADHD and AuDHD adults this often combines with:
🎧 sensory overload
🧮 executive function overload
🎭 years of ignoring body needs to survive expectations
Your body is not your enemy. It has been sending signals in the only way it knows. You simply did not have tools or context to understand them.
You do not need perfect mindfulness or constant tracking. Small, repeatable shifts can help you notice earlier, such as:
🌱 mapping your late signs
🌱 adding micro check ins at natural pauses
🌱 using external cues for food, water and rest
🌱 gently linking sensation, context and emotion words
These changes will not prevent all burnout. Life will still be demanding and unpredictable. They can reduce how often you only realise what is happening when you are already at breaking point.
You are allowed to treat noticing your body as a skill you are learning now, not as something you failed to do in the past.
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