[libribook.com] Traumatic Scar Tissue Management 1st Edition

Interoception
Damasio (2003) and Craig (2010) suggest a link between sense of self and
interoceptive awareness. Interoception, subconscious signaling from free nerve
endings in the body’s viscera and other tissues, informs the brain about the
physiological state of the body. Interoception is central to regulation of
homeostasis and thus to motivated behavior, emotion and sociality (Schleip &
Jäger 2012, Warner et al. 2014).
According to Schleip and Jäger (2012):
While sensations from proprioceptive receptors are usually projected via
their somatomotor cortex, signalling from interoceptive endings is
processed via the insula region in the brain, and is usually associated with
an emotional or motivational component. Attentiveness to one’s physical
and emotional inner bodily experience is a result of good interoceptive
awareness. Refining interoceptive awareness can help improve emotional
understanding and self-regulation: a big step toward overall health.
A potentially integral but under-researched approach to building self-awareness
and self-regulatory capacity is the development of interoceptive awareness of
attunement to and skills for shifting SNS-driven hyperarousal. Emotional
regulation strategies, particularly those focused on somatic experience, facilitate
the reduction of stress disorder presentations, such as those associated with
PTSD (Cloitre et al. 2012, Warner et al. 2014).
Unfortunately, somatic approaches to trauma therapy are not commonly included
as first or second line treatment protocols; the gap likely a by-product of a dearth
of somatic intervention research outcomes and failure of intervention developers
to consider and utilize somatic-based approaches (Warner et al. 2014). Although
current understanding of complex trauma presentations highlights somatic
dysregulation as a major area of difficulty in trauma recovery, utility of
somatically-based approaches has been under-addressed in the emerging models
of treatment (D’Andrea et al. 2013, Ford et al. 2013, Kisiel et al. 2014, Warner et
al. 2014).