Anxious Children and Stomach Upset

Real or All “In Their Heads?”

Often, people who have anxiety report feeling sick and having “tummy upsets.” In the past, we used to think that these things were psychosomatic, meaning the pain was imaginary, or it was all in their head. Recent scientific discoveries have revealed that there is a very good reason why people with anxiety experience tummy upsets. The pain is not imaginary at all.

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First, let’s look at what anxiety is. We are hardwired to stay alive. If your brain perceives that you are in danger, such as if you see a shark or a tiger trying to attack you, your brain will activate the emergency response. Your body will activate the sympathetic nervous system, which fills your body with adrenaline, or adrenaline and cortisol. This means that your heart starts to beat much faster and your muscles become stronger. This is the response you want if you are in a life-threatening emergency.

Someone who has anxiety will have the same fear response you

get when you are being chased by a tiger but it goes off when there is not an emergency. When people have anxiety, their brain can misread a safe situation, such as being in a mall or walking down the street as a very dangerous situation. You don’t need to be in real danger to experience anxiety. It is important to know people with anxiety are not deliberately overreacting. Their brain genuinely believes they are in a life-threatening emergency.

The emergency response tries to throw everything it can into staying alive and it stops other things that are not necessary. One of these processes is digestion, digestion uses up about 15% of your body’s energy. If your brain thinks you are in a life-threatening situation it says, “You don’t need to digest food. That energy can be used for other things.” Our fear response turns off our digestive system. So, what do you think this means for anxious people experiencing tummy upsets? It means that this is not just imaginary pain. It means the pain is very real.

Organs that are involved in digestion include the stomach, but also the pancreas, liver, large and small intestine, bowel, the rectum, bladder and the gallbladder. If the processes of all these organs are stopped, no wonder we experience stomach pain when we are anxious.

There are three main things that can happen to the digestive system when we are anxious. People either want to wet or soil themselves. This is why anxious people often need to run to the bathroom. They may feel like they want to vomit, or in some cases, if people are really anxious, they may actually vomit. The last way this can play out is through sharp pains in the gut. In the past, we used to think that a mental illness would affect someone’s mind and the rest of the body would be okay. But that’s just not the way it works.

When I have taught this to parents, they start to see their child’s anxiety very differently. Before they heard this information, they often thought their children were making up “tummy upsets” to get out of school. Now they understand how real this pain is.

The good news is: We are finding better and better ways to treat anxiety. There is no one solution or technique that works for everyone, so I encourage you to try different things. There are lots of things for children such as play therapy, where children can use toys and puppets to work through their anxious feelings. There are some good authors that can help. I recommend the work of Bruce Perry. One of his books is The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog. Many of the techniques he talks about were designed to treat trauma but they work well for anxiety. The same is true for another great book called The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk.

When people with anxiety complain about pain, we must take this seriously and know that this is not imaginary pain.

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Michael Hempseed


Michael Hempseed is the author of Being A True Hero: Understanding and Preventing Suicide in Your Community, which has sleep has a major theme. The book is being used by the New Zealand Police, Fire and Emergency NZ, GPs, Counsellors, as well as many parents and teachers. Michael gained an honours degree in Psychology from the University of Canterbury in 2008.
Michael has lots of sleep resources on his website: www.beingatruehero.com