The Pains of a Life Without Intuition




How many times have you heard the phrase “listen to your heart” or “listen to your gut?” Meant to be reassuring, this expression suggests that we let our internal compass guide us. But what about neurodivergent people who cannot rely on said intuition? With the media constantly portraying emotions as something we should automatically know, autistic people like myself feel disconnected from ourselves and the world around us. It is a lonely and confusing experience when our hearts race, but we don’t know why. We wish we could have it easy like those neurotypical people who seem to be one with their body and mind. Now, with psychological terms such as interoception and alexithymia becoming more well-known, we can finally put words to our struggles and examine the ways having no intuition plays out in our lives and the decisions we make in them. Interoception is the ability to recognize feelings in your body. If you’ve felt your heart rate speed up, hunger cues, or “butterflies” in your stomach, this is interoception. Alexithymia, meanwhile, is the inability to recognize or understand emotions. Interoception and alexithymia are closely tied, and about half of autistic people are thought to struggle with them, including me. This is why I don’t feel hungry, I know that I am hungry only when my stomach is audibly growling. Because I eat meals at the same time every day, it’s easy to predict when I will need to eat next. This also explains the appeal of my favorite college pastime, finding new crushes on campus. Before I met my husband, I collected them like Pokemon, craving the rush of dopamine and norepinephrine, the chemical that makes our hearts race and our palms sweaty.