We have received funding from South Norfolk and Broadland Council’s Health and Wellbeing Partnership to run 2 interoception groups.
We will be running 1 group in South Norfolk (school to be confirmed) and 1 group in Broadland (school to be confirmed) in early 2026. We are able to provide fully funded e-learning for education staff at South Norfolk and Broadland high schools to support understanding of this topic and how to support young people.
This group is about exploring and identifying our body signals and emotions. We identify the body signals that you can experience, then connect these to your emotions, before developing personalised strategies to help manage emotions you may find difficult.
Interoception is our internal sense of how we feel – the foundation of emotional awareness and regulation. Many young people struggle to recognise or name their emotions. This group helps participants:
- Notice body signals (e.g. racing heart, shallow breathing)
- Identify what those signals mean (e.g. anxiety, anger, or excitement)
- Develop personalised, sustainable regulation strategies
Referral Criteria:
Ideal for students who:
- Struggle to identify or manage emotions
- Find it difficult to stay in class or come into school
- Are on CAMHS waiting lists, recently discharged, or do not meet thresholds
- Would benefit from early intervention
- Please note: this group is not suitable for students in current therapy without further discussion.
The group would be most suited to individuals who find it hard to identify body sensations or differentiate between emotions that they are experiencing.
What is Interoception?
Interoception is our eighth sense. It is the sense that helps us to answer the question “How do I feel?” and lets us know what is happening inside our body. Our interoceptive awareness allows us to notice body signals and identify how we feel based on those – this includes identifying sensations linked to things such as ‘hunger’, ‘thirst’, ‘tired’ and ‘cold’ as well as emotions such as ‘anxious’, ‘happy’, ‘sad’ and ‘excited’.
About Interoception Group
The Interoception group is an experimental group where people are encouraged to explore and identify their body signals and emotions. It has three stages – in stage one we identify our body signals (this is the first eight sessions of the group), in stage two we connect our body signals together to identify our emotion (this is the following three sessions of the group) and in stage three we regulate our emotions (this is the final four sessions).
For example:
In stage one (exploring body signals): I might know my hands are sweaty, my legs feel restless and my heart is beating fast.
In stage two (connecting body signals to identify the emotion): I might know that for me personally, that combination of body signals is normally a sign that I’m feeling quite anxious.
In stage three (regulating emotions): I act on the emotion by doing something that makes me feel better – for me that might be talking to a friend or going for a walk, but for other people that might be something completely different.
During the group we will work through these stages together – first getting to know what body signals you can identify and experience, then connecting these to emotions that you’re feeling, and finally once you know what emotion you’re feeling – developing a list of strategies that help you at the time (which will be personal to you). Each sessions will be fully interactive – no PowerPoints , we promise!
It is important to know that there isn’t a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ way to feel any emotion – we all feel things differently and this group aims to help you identify how you are feeling, not how you ‘should’ feel things.
To read more about interoception visit our blog