Neuroception refers to the physiological processes through which internal and external cues are evaluated for safety, danger, or life threat, both situationally and relationally.
It reflects the system’s innate capacity to sense, at a physiological and affective level, whether conditions support social engagement, require mobilisation, or call for withdrawal and immobilisation. In this way, neuroception is continuously scanning Self, Other(s), and the World around us for cues that shape how the system organises in response.
As such cues arise, the system reflexively shifts autonomic states in service of survival, protection, and adaptation. These shifts may support openness and connection, movement and action, or forms of shutting down and retreat when overwhelm is experienced as inescapable.
Neuroception initiates a physiological signal, a sensation, that precedes perception and interpretation, laying the groundwork for how experience comes to be sensed, perceived, felt, and understood within and between Self, Other(s), and the World around us.
