We often hear clients say, “It wasn’t until I stopped that I realised how exhausted I was” or “I'm so overwhelmed. I don't even know what I need.” Amid the push and pull of daily life, it can be really hard to tune into your body signals. It’s even more challenging if you live with long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, menopause, autistic or workout burnout, or another condition in which fatigue is a common symptom. Symptoms often come in clusters and can feel like they all blend together. It can make it difficult to notice early warning signs or to tell the difference between a ‘normal’ dip in energy and the start of a fatigue crash.
Interoception
Developing the skill of being able to sense, interpret, and respond to your body signals can be really useful to manage fatigue (Chen et al., 2021). This is called interoception. This is the process by which your brain receives and makes sense of the information from inside your body such as changes in heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, energy levels, and emotional states. These signals give us important clues about what our body may need to support its wellbeing.
Tuning into subtle shifts in our internal state can be challenging when struggling to manage your energy. Often the sensations that come with fatigue are unpleasant. Therefore, bringing attention to them can feel overwhelming, and there’s often a worry that noticing them may make them worse. When so much energy is already taken up getting through daily tasks, turning inwards and responding can feel like another demand. Research shows that interoception can be even more challenging for people who have experienced trauma and/or are neurodiverse. For those with a history of trauma, the body may have learned to ‘tune out’ sensations linked to distress as a way to stay safe (Price & Hooven, 2018). Similarly, individuals who are neurodiverse often experience differences in sensory processing that can make internal cues feel either overwhelming or hard to detect (DuBois et al., 2016). These disruptions can affect emotional awareness and regulation, making it harder to identify what the body needs in moments of stress or fatigue.
It’s a skill that we recommend approaching with gentleness, curiosity, and self-compassion. Working with a specialised therapy service, such as Flourish with Fatigue can provide tailored guidance and support to approach interoception in a safe and manageable way.
Traffic Light – Mapping body signals
One way to begin developing the skill of interoception is by using the analogy of a traffic light. Just as traffic lights guide drivers, the colours give clear simple cues: green - when energy and symptoms feel manageable or less present, amber - when energy is starting to dip, and symptoms are becoming more noticeable, and red - when energy is very low, and symptoms are feeling strong. You can even add colours in between these categories for more nuance.
In each of these states, your body is sending you signals in the form of physical sensations, thoughts and feelings.
- In green, you might notice that your breathing is smooth, perhaps a feeling of excitement, or a thought like “I hope this good feeling lasts.”
- In amber, you may become aware of tension, such as a headache or tightness in your muscles, feel more irritable, or think “I should probably take a break, but I just want to finish this first.”
- In red, you might struggle to think clearly, feel overwhelmed, or have thoughts such as “Everything is too much.”
To help you to identify these physical, emotional, and cognitive signals, it may be helpful to visualise a time when you were in each of these states or next time you are in each state, write down some of the messages that you notice.
Traffic Light – Mapping helpful strategies
By mapping your internal sensations onto this visual framework, you can begin to gain insight into what your body might need in each state.
Green
In green, what strategies may help you to stay steady and sustain that state? It’s understandable to be excited about feeling well and want to make the most of it. While it can be a good time to gently reintroduce activities, it’s also a valuable opportunity for you to grow confidence in managing your routine and for your body systems to build up reserves.
Ideas:
1) Noticing your energy before saying yes. Sometimes saying yes may still mean making adjustments to how you are going about doing it.
2) Building in pauses or rests in your day even when you don’t feel you need them.
3) Maintaining helpful routines around sleep, nutrition, movement, etc
4) Acknowledging your accomplishments even if they feel small.
Amber
In amber, what strategies can you put into place that will minimise the likelihood of symptoms escalating and ideally help you to move towards green? It’s natural at this stage to feel worried that things might get worse, which can lead to either pushing through or stopping completely. This is a good time to listen to what your body needs and make adjustments to support your energy.
Ideas:
1) Asking yourself “What do I really need right now? What adjustments can I make to take things more gently?”
2) Slowing down or changing how and what you are doing
3) Taking a restorative break such as a nap, lying on the floor listening to music, gentle breathing, or fresh air
4) Giving yourself comforts such as nice food and drink, comfortable clothes, a hug, etc
5) Talking to yourself in a compassionate way as you would a friend (eg “It’s okay to slow down – I’m listening to my body.”)
Red
In red, what strategies can you put into place that help support you to recover, and ideally move back towards amber? It’s understandable to feel disheartened or even angry. It can feel deeply unfair to be pulled in opposite directions: wanting to keep going while your body insists on stopping. When your body is sending strong messages like these, it is an important time to focus on rest as this is key for healing.
Ideas:
1) Asking yourself “What are the essential things I need to do right now?”
2) Granting yourself permission to stop all non-essential activities and rest
3) Creating a calming environment with low stimulation
4) Asking for and accepting help
5) Talking to yourself kindly (eg “I know this is difficult. Resting is the most helpful thing I can do right now.” )
Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what will help in each colour state, and what works one day may not be so helpful the next. This is typical. Managing fatigue is about trying out different strategies, and offering yourself kindness when something doesn’t work so well, and celebrating when you find something that does support you.
Using the traffic light analogy is a practice in developing your interoception- the skill of noticing, interpreting, and responding to your body signals. This gentle framework can help you to develop the body awareness and practical skills to restore balance so that, over time, you are spending less time in red and more time in green with the confidence to manage each stage.
If you find it difficult to tune into your body or respond kindly to what it’s telling you, therapy can be a supportive space to explore this further. Flourish with Fatigue offers a compassionate approach to help you reconnect with your body, understand its signals, and find ways to live with more ease and self-trust.
References:
- Chen, W. G., Schloesser, D., Arensdorf, A. M., Simmons, J. M., Cui, C., Valentino, R., Gnadt, J. W., Nielsen, L., Hillaire-Clarke, C. S., Spruance, V., Horowitz, T. S., Vallejo, Y. F., & Langevin, H. M. (2021). The Emerging Science of Interoception: Sensing, Integrating, Interpreting, and Regulating Signals within the Self. Trends in neurosciences, 44(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2020.10.007
- DuBois, D., Ameis, S. H., Meng-Chuan Lai, M.-C., Casanova, M. F., & Desarkar, P. (2016). Interoception in autism spectrum disorder: A review. International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, 52, 104–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2016.05.001.
- Price, C. J., & Hooven, C. (2018). Interoceptive awareness skills for emotion regulation: Theory and approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT). Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 798. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00798