Everyone knows that feeling right? You have a sinking, nasty feeling in your gut when something emotionally bad happens. Your girlfriend says ‘we need to talk’ or you see your crush with someone else. What is happening and why does your body decide you need to feel super uncomfortable for hours and hours after something happens. Is it fight or flight?
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Why is it that when i get scared or something terrible happens I get sick to my stomach, sometimes vomiting. Wouldnt it make more sense to want to have the least amount of extra weight/food in your stomach when in a dangerous situation?
It is your fight or flight response “warming up”. When your girlfriend says you need to talk, the horrible feeling is mostly fear. Fear of what she knows(?), wants to talk about, fear that you will be alone in a few hours. So your body is preparing for the possibility of a fight or flight situation, both it might be beneficial to remove whatever you have in your stomach, so your body prepares you so you can do it quick. Thats why you get that dripping saliva feeling and you can literally feel your saliva glands (at the back of your jaw on both sides) pumping out saliva. Now your body just needs one signal from the right hormones, and you will vomit, and you will empty your stomach totally in one go.
I’m pretty sure this feeling is caused by blood flow being rapidly diverted from organs to extremities. When you get a wave of anxiety, like when your girlfriend says “we need to talk”, your body doesn’t understand that this threat is any different from being chased by a wild beast, except the shock in these cases may be far more extreme than a typical scare. So your body prepares for flight or fight, rapidly diverting blood to your limbs that you’d use to fight or flee. First of all, you can probably feel that change itself—at the very least, you probably feel your heart rate spike. But that also means your digestive system is not getting as much blood, causing nausea or vomiting in relatively extreme cases. This is what creates that feeling.
In your body you have two nervous systems. The voluntary nervous system that is directed by your mind and the autonomic system that works automatically.
It is a bit like a modern car. You have the steering wheel, throttle and brake that control the car but there are also things like the engine management unit, anti slip brakes and cruse control that take over the more complex tasks.
The autonomic system is in change of things like controlling breathing, digestion, heart rate and a whole lot of other things. The autonomic system also works off of hints given by your mind as to what it should be doing.
If you are in a relaxed state then the autonomic system will prioritize things needed for long term survival. Like digestion. However when the autonomic system is told that there is some sort of crisis happening it diverts energy away from long term survival to short term survival.
There is no point digesting a meal that can provide nutrients over the next few hours when a predator is about to eat you. The body does a star trek “Divert life support power to phasors” approach to get as much energy you can use your limbs to fight or flee whatever is threatening you.
However this system is very old and there is no way to tell that what you fear is bad news from your girlfriend and not a slobbering beast full of teeth.
So basically the sinking nausea feeling you are getting is the autonomic nervous system kicking into emergency power mode.
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