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Interoception, defined as one’s ability to detect and interpret internal, bodily signals such as heart rate, hunger, thirst and satiety (Craig, 2002), has been theoretically implicated in the development of numerous neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, including both anxiety and autism (Ehlers & Breuer 1992; Paulus & Stein, 2010; Quattroki & Friston, 2014). However, the evidential basis for these theories is mixed (Adams et al., 2022; DuBois et al., 2016), despite preliminary evidence that interoception based interventions are efficacious in those with both autism and anxiety (Quadt et al., 2021). The aim of this current study is to gain a better understanding of how interoception may be linked to experiences of anxiety in autistic adolescents who self-report experiencing significant anxiety in their day to day life, using interview-based reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2013). This age group was selected as adolescence marks the peak emergence of anxiety disorders (Kessler et al., 2005), and puberty may mark a critical period for the development of interoception (Murphy et al., 2017). The findings from this study may inform the development of clinical interventions. References: Adams, K. L., Edwards, A., Peart, C., Ellett, L., Mendes, I., Bird, G., & Murphy, J. (2022). The association between anxiety and cardiac interoceptive accuracy: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 140, 104754. Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2013) Successful Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide for Beginners. SAGE Publication. Craig, A.D.B. (2002). How Do You Feel? Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body. Nature reviews. Neuroscience. 3. 655-66. DuBois, D., Ameis, S. H., Lai, M. C., Casanova, M. F., & Desarkar, P. (2016). Interoception in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A review. International journal of developmental neuroscience : the official journal of the International Society for Developmental Neuroscience, 52, 104–111. Ehlers, A., & Breuer, P. (1992). Increased cardiac awareness in panic disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 101(3), 371–382. Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K. R., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of general psychiatry, 62(6), 593–602. Murphy, J., Brewer, R., Catmur, C., & Bird, G. (2017). Interoception and psychopathology: A developmental neuroscience perspective. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 45–56. Paulus, M. P., & Stein, M. B. (2010). Interoception in anxiety and depression. Brain structure & function, 214(5-6), 451–463. Quadt, L., Garfinkel, S. N., Mulcahy, J. S., Larsson, D. E., Silva, M., Jones, A. M., Strauss, C., & Critchley, H. D. (2021). Interoceptive training to target anxiety in autistic adults (ADIE): A single-center, superiority randomized controlled trial. EClinicalMedicine, 39, 101042. Quattrocki, E., & Friston, K. (2014). Autism, oxytocin and interoception. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 47, 410–430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.09.012