The Sims Exercise

Published on 2026-08-01 by Emma Juettner

Interoception is the ability to notice the internal sensory cues of your bodily needs and emotions. When you notice that you need to use the bathroom, or that you're feeling hungry, or that you have a tight, anxious feeling in your chest-- that's interoception! (Where's our School House Rock song about that?)

Historically, I have not been great at interoception. I often don't realize that I'm hungry or thirsty until I'm REALLY hungry or thirsty. It can be hard for me to notice when I'm starting to get tired. And sometimes, it's difficult for me to identify what emotion I'm feeling and where it's coming from. I've found that this makes emotional regulation challenging, because if you don't understand how you feel or why you feel that way, it's really hard to know what regulation strategies might be most effective.

I also enjoy playing The Sims 4. One thing I find really satisfying about it is that, at any given time, you can see very clearly exactly why your Sim is in a particular emotional state. There is a detailed UI which shows all the factors affecting their emotional experience.

I've often thought that it would be useful if my own body had a similar UI, where I could have all of my body's internal sensations laid out in an interface that's easy to make sense of and contains recommendations for how to feel better. Then I realized... with some time and focus, I can kind of replicate that same organizational structure myself with pen and paper. It's not perfect; there's no red bar that will alert me to when I am in dire need of social interaction, and I can't see an exact time of when a particular mood will expire. But it's been very useful to me at times when I just feel Vaguely Bad and want to narrow down what's making me feel that way and what I can do about it.

A brief disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional of any sort. I have no qualifications to say that this exercise is a useful intervention, other than that it has helped me. So, take it for what it is.

The Sims Exercise

This exercise is basically a set of prompts to help you notice what is going on in your body, make sense of it, and figure out concrete actions that can help you feel better. You go through the categories one by one and do a braindump of everything you can think of within that category. Write down your answers somewhere-- usually there's lots of little things that are influencing your state of mind, and it's hard to hold them all in your head at once. None of these questions are meant to be judgemental; they are neutral questions to ask yourself about your current experience. There is no wrong answer, and there is no answer to feel ashamed of. You do not need to show anyone else your answers. You also don't have to answer all the questions, and you can make up questions of your own that are more useful to you.

Needs

This is the panel in the lower right-hand corner of the Sims 4 UI. The six listed needs are Bladder, Hunger, Energy, Fun, Social, and Hygiene, but I tend to think of this category more broadly as "what are my fundamental needs, and are any of them not getting met currently?"

Some questions you might prompt yourself with here:

• Do I need to use the bathroom?
• Am I thirsty?
• Am I hungry?
• Am I tired? This can include physical, mental, or emotional tiredness.
  • Did I have a good night's sleep?
  • Do I feel sleepy?
  • Do I feel physically exhausted? This might look like aching muscles, feeling a strong impulse to lie down, or something else.
  • Do I feel mentally exhausted, like it's a struggle to think?
• How clean does my body feel?
  • Have I bathed recently? Do my skin and hair feel clean, oily, dry, etc?
  • When did I last change my clothes? Are they clean, stinky, somewhere in between?
  • When was the last time I brushed my teeth or otherwise looked after my dental hygiene?
• Am I physically well? Injured? Sick? In pain?
  • If I have any chronic health conditions, how are my symptoms? Am I in a flare-up?
• Have I taken any medications that I need to take?
• How much time have I spent around other people vs alone lately?
  • If I've spent time with people, were they people that I like and feel comfortable around?
  • Have I spent time with people in-person/online/via phone call?
• Have I done anything purely for fun lately?

Moodlets

These are the little squares that appear below your Sim's image in the lower left-hand corner. They're color-coded by mood; green is happy, dark blue is sad, red is angry, orange is tense, etc. But importantly, when you hover over them, they tell you about a recent event or environmental factor that is affecting your Sim's mood in a particular direction. So for example, in the two screenshots below, my Sim is feeling happy from a good workout, and stressed because they've been working too hard at their job. You might also get moodlets like feeling happy because you talked with a close friend, or uncomfortable because you're in a messy room with lots of dirty dishes, or inspired because you saw some really cool art recently.

Here's some questions you can ask to find moodlets that might be affecting you:

• Are there things about my environment that are affecting my mood?
  • Am I physically safe? Are there any hazards to my health or wellbeing in my immediate environment?
  • Is it too hot? Too cold?
  • How much sensory stimulation is there around me?
    • Is it noisy? Quiet?
    • Is there a lot going on visually (e.g. lots of clutter, a crowded space, etc)?
    • Are there any smells?
    • Is it bright? Dark?
    • Is it messy, cluttered, tidy?
  • How's the weather? Cloudy, sunny, stormy?
• Could any recent events be affecting my mood?
  • Have I had social interactions that felt good? Social interactions that felt bad? Few/many social interactions?
  • How's my work life been going lately? Have I had to work overtime to meet a deadline? Have I solved a problem that made me feel proud? Do I feel like my work lately has been serving a useful purpose? Am I being treated well by my employer?
  • Have I spent much time outdoors recently?
  • How much time have I spent on "should do" tasks (work, chores, etc) vs "want to do" tasks (leisure, just-for-fun creative projects, hanging out with friends, etc) in the past few days?
  • Have I been more active or more sedentary lately?
  • Have I had any major life events recently? Births, deaths, job changes, moving, new relationships, breakups, etc.
  • Have my usual routines and habits been consistent, or have they been disrupted by anything?
  • What's going on in politics/current events at the moment?
• Are there any upcoming events that might be affecting my mood?
  • Am I nervous or worried about an upcoming work presentation, a doctor's appointment, a difficult conversation, etc?
  • Am I enthusiastically anticipating a fun event, a vacation, a visit with someone I care about, the completion of a project I'm working on, etc?
  • Do I have a long list of to-dos that I need to complete?

Whims

This final category is for things that you feel like doing. In the Sims 4, these would be the little thought bubbles that appear over your Sim's head. It doesn't matter if these are practical or even possible; just think of anything that you'd really like to do right now.

• Are there any specific activities that sound really fun to me right now, like reading, or knitting, or playing a video game?
• Am I craving a particular food or flavor?
• Do I wish I could talk to or spend time with a specific person?
• If I were living my dream life, what would I be doing right now?
• If I didn't have to stay on top of all my current obligations, what would I be doing right now?

Potential Actions

You can stop at Whims if you're just looking to take an inventory of how you're feeling. But personally, I like to go on to this next step because a lot of the time when I do this exercise, I'm having a really hard time deciding what to do next. I end up feeling paralyzed by the complexity of all the different things I'm feeling. This part helps me to break out of that paralysis.

I go through the lists I made of needs/moodlets/whims. For each one, I try to think of whether there are any possible actions that would improve how I feel about that specific thing. These can range from big to small actions, but I prefer for them to be concrete and easily achievable if possible. You don't have to have an action item for every need/moodlet/whim; sometimes you just feel sad or upset about something and there's not much you can do to change it. And for positive moodlets, maybe there's no action needed in that area and you're already doing great. But for now, just go down the list and write down whatever actions you can think of. Don't worry about whether you can actually do all these actions right now, that's the next step.

Here's an example of what this part of the exercise might look like:

• Need: I'm feeling kind of hungry. Possible Action: Eat some of the yogurt I have in the fridge.
• Need: I'm starting to get a headache from looking at my phone for too long. Possible Action: Take some ibuprofen. Possible Action: Take a walk around the block to give my eyes a break from screens.
• Moodlet: My kitchen is full of dirty dishes, which is making me stressed out. Possible Action: Spend 10 minutes washing dishes.
• Moodlet: I've gotten out of my usual exercise routine, and it's making me feel achy and sluggish. Possible Action: Take a 5 minute dance break. Possible Action: Go for a bike ride.
• Whim: I'm craving sweets. Possible Action: Bake some blueberry muffins. Possible Action: Have a popsicle from the freezer.
• Whim: I really want to see a new movie that came out recently. Possible Action: Schedule a time when I can go see it.

There are many possible actions you could take for any given emotional factor! My list will not look the same as your list.

Action Queue

Now we've got a menu of potential actions we could take in order to feel a little bit better. From here, we can narrow it down to: what can I actually do right now? I like to pick a few actions from the list (mostly very quick/easy items, with maybe one or two harder ones) that I could do within the next hour or two, and list them out in the order I plan to do them. This kind of corresponds to the action queue in the Sims, where you can line up a series of tasks that you want your Sim to complete in order.

Here's what my action queue might look like for the example I gave above:

• Eat some yogurt.
• Take an ibuprofen.
• Take a 5 minute dance break.
• Spend 10 minutes washing dishes.
• Take a walk around the block.
• Schedule a time to go see the movie.

And voila! I've gone from just "I feel generally bad and I don't know what to do about it" to "I have a step-by-step set of specific instructions for how to make myself feel a little bit better within the next hour."

Obviously the effectiveness of this exercise will vary depending on the types of challenges that are making you feel bad and the range of actions that are feasible for you to take. Sometimes life is shitty and you have limited options to fix it! But I find (and I think the science backs me up on this one, but citation needed) that figuring out small ways to exert my agency feels really empowering, and makes me feel a lot better even in the face of problems that I can't really do anything to fix. Ironically, treating myself like a Sim makes me feel more in control of my own life and happiness.