Anxiety & the “Gut Feeling”
Have you ever had that “gut feeling” about something where you literally felt it in the pit of your stomach? Sometimes people use that term to reference a feeling of certainty or intuition, but other times it’s anxiety showing up!
If you’ve ever wondered “why do I feel anxious?” it’s probably because your body’s natural alarm system was signaling there is a problem that needs your attention. Anxiety is an emotion that triggers for sympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response (most people just refer to it as the “fight-or-flight” response, but the last 2 are also valid!). This response in your body kicks on automatically when your brain senses the potential for danger, regardless of how “real” the potential danger is. Sometimes you might know it’s just your brain overthinking, but your body responds the same as it would with something dangerous right in front of you!
What does fight-or-flight anxiety feel like?
Whether it’s spotting a bear in the woods on a hike, remembering we forgot to pay a bill that was due yesterday, or we see a missed call from that family member who likes to “stir the pot.” The fight-or-flight response happens automatically, your brain tells your body that you either need to get ready to “fight the bear or run-and-hide from the bear.” Your body speeds up your heartrate, shifts your breathing to the top portion of your lungs and makes you breathe more quickly, tenses muscles, and prioritizes blood flow to your core and important muscles necessary to fight-or-flight from the bear. It also halts digestion because your body is using it’s internal resources in other places it deems more important for your survival in the moment.
Can anxiety cause gut issues?
For many women I work with, anxiety is feeling that shows up in the GI-tract. Whether that “gut feeling” is butterflies in the stomach, nausea, needing to use the bathroom more often, or changes in your appetite or eating patterns, anxiety could be playing a role. In my chat with Kristen Bunich, RD above, she talks about the number of serotonin receptors that live in our gut, and how sometimes it can feel like our gut knows “something’s wrong” before our mind realizes it.
The “nervous stomach” thing can be such a challenge, because the mind and the body are influencing one another all the time. In the case of anxiety + a queasy stomach, it can be a tough game of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Sometimes anxiety can cause your GI system to need to empty itself, leaving you feeling like you can’t venture too far from somewhere with a bathroom. But sometimes your GI system may be unsettled for other reasons, and it triggers anxiety about needing to use the bathroom in public or worries about getting sick while your out. In both cases, it can escalate to avoidance of things when we feel anxious, and we end up missing out on experience we might otherwise really treasure.
How do I heal my gut for anxiety?
So many women think it’s normal to have that “nervous stomach”, but there are lots of ways you can change this so it doesn’t have as much of an impact on you as it does now. It’s possible to not miss out on so many things just because the worry is showing up in your gut! Kristen, The Intuitive Dietitian shares some strategies you can use to nourish your nervous stomach (check out the 6:04 minute mark in the video above!), including maintaining nutrition and gut health. Breathing exercises can also help the body relax though, which also helps the gut settle as well.
How do you release stress from your gut?
In order to get digestion back “on” and the rest of our body to feel at rest, our body’s need to turn on our parasympathetic nervous system, also known as the “rest and digest” system. Both Kristen and I shared some great tips on how to calm our bodies before eating, to support the body in being able to focus on digestion. She shares some tips on taking some intentional breaths before eating, and bringing sensory fidgets to support the body in calming down.
One of the tips I shared is how deep belly breathing can help calm the body. To do this, take a deep breath in through your nose, focusing on filling up your belly with air first, then focusing on your ribcage expanding as it fills up, and lastly filling up the very tip top part of your lung. When we breathe deeply like this and expand the depths of your lungs, your body starts to send messages back to your brain that you’re safe and no longer in danger, which then begins the process of activating the rest of the rest-and-digest system.
We can even kick the breathing up another level by doing “trapezoid breathing”:
Since the heartrate slows down ever so slightly as we breathe out, this breathing exercise helps us maximize that. With this method, we exhale a little longer than we inhale, holding for just a moment in between.
For me, I usually count to 4 as I breathe in, hold for 2, count to 6 as I breathe out, hold for 2, and repeat. You can adjust the numbers as you need to, finding the right intervals for you! It’s okay if the speed of your counting changes. If you don’t use a clock with a second hand or a musical metronome, your counting is likely to slow down the more breaths you take.
An important note is that that we don’t hold or extend the breath for too long, since we don’t want our body to start panicking that it can’t breathe! Take a moment and try out some different number combinations and see what works best for you!
Looking for more support with that Gut Feeling?
Kimberleigh Hagar, LCSW with Mindfully Balanced Therapy offers online therapy for women in NC, IL, & SC, specializing in overthinking, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome. Kristen Bunich, RD with The Intuitive Dietitian offers online nutrition services for women in NC and in-person in Charlotte, NC.
