By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved
Have you ever been really nervous and
you felt a pain in your stomach or the feeling often described as “butterflies?” We’ve all felt that but do you know exactly
why you feel that? The reason you feel
this pain or sensation in your stomach is because your body is getting ready to
poop.
That’s right, butterflies in your
stomach is your body gearing up to evacuate your bowels. Now the question becomes why. Also, what is with the feeling of the hair
standing up on the back of your neck when you feel that something isn’t right?
The answer is that your subconscious
mind is continually picking up everything in your environment but your
conscious mind can only process a very small amount of things at any given
time. So while your subconscious mind
takes in everything it filters what it gives to your conscious mind and what
you are consciously aware of but behind the scenes your subconscious is processing
everything in your environment.
When you subconscious mind detects a
threat it singles your body to make the hair on the back of your neck start to
stand up and the stomach start to tighten and feel queasy in order to gear up
for a fight or flight situation.
We, after all, are just big primates;
big dumb animals that are simply a little more evolved than other species but
we still have all the programing we’ve developed during our evolution. Our mind knows that if we sustain a
penetrating blow to the body a major concern is puncturing our bowels and
getting an infection that will likely be fatal.
So, as part of our fight or flight response our brain says to us, “Hey,
we might just be in a life or death situation…it would be a good idea if we
pooped first to empty our bowels.” This
is also why some people poop or pee their pants if they get startled or scared.
A common response to fight or fight in
the animal world is to puff yourself up and make yourself look really big. Cats are great examples of this as they
extend their legs, arch their backs, and puff up their fur. At one point in time we had fur too and we
still have the “puff up” response written into our subconscious to a certain
degree. The hair standing up on the back
of your neck is essentially your body trying to puff up its fur to make you
seem larger by contracting the muscles at the base of your hair follicles.
Since your subconscious mind is aware
of so many more things then your conscious mind ever could be it is very
important that you pay attention if you ever feel the hair on the back of your
neck stand up or get the butterflies in your stomach, aka the “gut feeling,”
because it is not your body being weird, rather it is your subconscious mind
detecting a threat and getting you into fight or flight mode.