There are many spiritual meanings to the butterflies or birds flying in your stomach. Nervousness, joy, fear and excitement are some of the emotions that make our stomachs do flip-flops. Although there are many spiritual meanings for why your stomach is filled with butterflies, the key idea is that you can’t ever make sense of getting butterflies in your stomach or why they have appeared from nowhere.
“Have butterflies” or “have butterflies in your stomach” means you have a nervous feeling in your stomach. The expression can also be used with “get,” as in “get butterflies.” Below are some examples of how this expression is used.
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Spiritual Meaning Of Having Butterflies In Your Stomach
Before his big speech, he had butterflies in his stomach.
Some of the kids had butterflies before the school play.
Even after 15 years of performing in front of an audience, he still gets butterflies before a show.
The students are sure to get butterflies before their first job interviews.
She gets butterflies in her stomach every time she has to speak at a meeting.
I hate it when I have butterflies in my stomach.
I know you have butterflies in your stomach but I’m sure you will do great.
He had butterflies all morning at his new job.
Butterfly In Stomach Meaning Love
When you’re first catching feelings for someone special, there’s a good chance you’ll also catch some butterflies. Not the legit insects, of course, but the fluttery sensation that crops up in your tummy when you make eye contact with your crush from across the room, Bridgerton-style.
And you’re not just imagining it: There are a few physiological reasons why you experience fluttering in your stomach when you’re around a prospective or brand-new love interest—or even a long-term partner. Here, relationship experts break down the science behind the butterflies in your stomach.
What Triggers Butterflies In Your Stomach?
Both internal and external factors can cause that fluttering feeling, says Alexandra H. Solomon, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, clinical assistant professor in the department of psychology at Northwestern University, and expert on love and relationships. Thinking about a crush and wondering what your first date will lead to, getting an out-of-the-blue compliment from a new partner, and brushing hands can all bring about that tingling sensation in your gut, she explains. “It kind of creates that rush of anticipation and anxiety,” says Solomon. Translation: Butterflies can take flight in your stomach both when you’re nervous about what’s to come and when you’re sexually aroused.
What’s more, a moment that once gave you butterflies can have the same effect years down the road. For example, Solomon says she still feels butterflies when she thinks about a rom-com-like moment that took place with her husband nearly 30 years ago. And reminiscing on these types of swoon-worthy scenarios can prove beneficial. “Those early shiny moments become the foundation for a long-term relationship,” says Solomon. “They become the positive memories that help you when you’re having a difficult or frustrating moment or things are far more ordinary and mundane than perhaps they were in the beginning.” (
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The Science Behind Butterflies In Your Stomach
So, what’s actually causing that fluttering in your stomach? The sensation may be due to increased levels of the substance norepinephrine throughout your body’s central nervous system, says Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist, senior research fellow at The Kinsey Institute, and expert on the science of romantic love. Norepinephrine functions both as a hormone and neurotransmitter (re: a molecule that sends messages between nerve cells), and it’s released in response to stress and, potentially, attraction, according to research published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Remember: Your brain struggles to determine the difference between fear and arousal, and research shows norepinephrine, which is primarily linked to danger and fear, may also be associated with romantic attraction.
Whether it’s activated when you’re anxiously waiting for your date to arrive or when your S.O. strokes your arm, this surge in norepinephrine kickstarts your body’s fight-or-flight response. In turn, your heart rate increases, you feel more alert and energetic, and you may even lose your appetite—characteristics that are all commonly associated with romantic love, according to the Philosophical Transactions research. In addition, you may feel those butterflies in your stomach, says Fisher. These physiological changes are supposed to help you survive stressful and life-threatening situations, but when it comes to love, this sudden focus and alertness is believed to help you impress the potential mate you’re swooning over, according to information published by Oakland University.
Dopamine, a substance closely related to norepinephrine, may also play a role in launching your butterflies. Known as the “feel-good” hormone, dopamine makes you feel happy and motivated, and it’s released when you engage in pleasurable activities, such as sex or spending time with a potential partner, according to the Cleveland Clinic. And both of these chemicals may be linked with feelings of romantic love, which, in general, “produces a lot of physical reactions, among them butterflies, a dry mouth, weak knees, stammering, and other responses,” says Fisher.
These chemicals may also originate in the gut itself, which could create those butterfly feelings, according to Solomon. “There’s a profound connection between our brains and our guts,” she says. According to information from Loyola Medicine, the enteric nervous system (ENS), also known as the body’s “second brain,” has its own nervous system. The ENS is connected to your actual brain via nerve pathways and shares the same neurotransmitters (including dopamine) to communicate and, in turn, control digestion. Thanks to this direct line of communication, stress and other emotions can impact the gut, according to Loyola Medicine. “That’s why sometimes if you feel nervous, you’ll have GI distress or have that ‘gut feeling,'” says Solomon. For the same reason, feeling aroused, excited, or anxious about spending time with your potential or new partner could create swoon-like sensations in your stomach.
Are Butterflies In the Stomach a Good Sign?
To some folks, a lack of butterflies could be seen as a red flag that their potential partner isn’t a good match or that the spark has left a marriage. Others believe experiencing the fluttering feeling is a warning sign, though it shouldn’t be perceived this way, says Solomon. “There’s a train of thought from dating coaches who will say that butterflies in your tummy is actually a red flag, meaning that this is somebody who’s activating your old traumas and the butterflies in your tummy are actually your woundedness recognizing their woundedness,” says Solomon.
On the flip side, not experiencing butterflies shouldn’t be perceived as a red flag, either. If you’re not noticing any butterflies, you might simply be a person who steps—not falls—into love, she adds. “Perhaps it’s just that you are more discerning, a little more restrained, and you don’t do a lot of highs and lows,” she explains. “I think there are individual differences in how we enter intimate relationships that have more to say about who we are as people and less to say about who the other person is and the viability of the relationship.”
In the end, a feeling of butterflies in your stomach—or a lack thereof — shouldn’t determine the fate of your relationship. “I neither want people to think the absence of butterflies is a poor prognostic indicator nor do I want people to think that the presence of butterflies is a poor prognostic indicator,” says Solomon. “I think it’s one piece of a much larger, more complicated puzzle.”
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FTR, it’s totally normal for those butterflies you experienced when you first started dating to fade as time goes on. Early in relationships, couples often have a lot of spontaneous sexual desire—that feeling of “I want to jump your bones right this second.” But as the relationship progresses, that sexual desire generally shifts to become more responsive (think: you’re not really in the mood, but it’s Saturday night and you normally do the deed then), says Solomon.
“That’s a shift that’s expected, and it would be accompanied by a decrease or disappearance of the butterflies in the tummy feeling,” she explains. “It doesn’t mean you’re broken, your partner’s broken, and the relationship is doomed. It just means that you’re ushering in a phase where you have to—and you get to—actively work together to cultivate a happy, healthy, erotic environment.”
Still, the idea of those swoony sensations fading can be disheartening. That’s why Solomon encourages you to instead focus on what you’re gaining in the relationship, such as the comfort and safety of having your “person” in your corner. “You may be losing your butterflies, but what you’re gaining is a person who is in the front row of your life—a supporter, a cheerleader, a companion, and a lover,” she says.
Butterflies In Stomach Psychology
If you have ever been nervous about something that is about to happen, then you may have felt the sensations of nausea and “fluttering” — the recognizable and odd sensation deep in your gut known as having “butterflies in the stomach.”
Perhaps you were about to give a speech to a large audience, were in the waiting room for a big interview, were about to step up and take a key penalty shot or were about to meet a potential love interest. Rather than actual butterflies bouncing around your large intestine, of course, there is, of course, something more scientific going on—and it’s all down to your nervous system.
Clever Body Systems
The human body is capable of looking after itself without too much voluntary thought. It quite happily regulates heart rate, blood flow and the distribution of nutrients around the body without you having to consciously intervene in any way—a process run by the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
The sympathetic and parasympathetic, also known as the “fight-or-flight” and the “rest-and-digest” branches, are the two roughly equal branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Both branches of the ANS are constantly active and act in opposition to each other.
The sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) system is responsible for increasing your heart rate, while the parasympathetic (“rest-and-digest”) system decreases it. So, the rate at which your heart is beating is the balance of the activity of the two branches of the ANS.
The dominance of the parasympathetic branch is why you feel content and sleepy after a giant lunch. Quite a bit of blood flow from the heart is directed to the stomach, and your ANS encourages you to sit down for a bit to let digestion take place.
‘Fight-or-Flight’
So what’s this got to do with butterflies? One of the major roles of the ANS is to prepare you for what it thinks is about to happen. This gives an evolutionary advantage, since if you see a sabre-toothed tiger about to pounce, you don’t want your valuable oxygen-filled blood to be busy with your last meal. Ideally, you would want this blood to be temporarily redirected to muscles in your legs so that you can run away slightly faster.
So, your “fight-or-flight” sympathetic system kicks in and becomes dominant over parasympathetic activity. This also causes a release of adrenaline, which both increases your heart rate (to pump more blood and faster), releases huge amounts of glucose from the liver, and shunts blood away from the gut. The blood is redirected toward the muscles in the arms and legs, which makes them ready to either defend you or run away faster—the “fight-or-flight” that you’ll probably be familiar with.
However, this acute shortage of blood to the gut does have side effects—slowed digestion. The muscles surrounding the stomach and intestine slow down their mixing of their partially digested contents. The blood vessels specifically in this region constrict, reducing blood flow through the gut.
While adrenaline contracts most of the gut wall to slow digestion, it relaxes a specific gut muscle called the “external anal sphincter,” which is why some people report a pressing need to visit a bathroom when they’re nervous. This reduction in blood flow through the gut in turn produces the oddly characteristic “butterflies” feeling in the pit of your stomach. It senses this shortage of blood and oxygen, so the stomach’s own sensory nerves are letting us know it’s not happy with the situation.
A nervous stomach can often be treated with home and natural remedies, as well as lifestyle changes.
Try herbal remedies
Certain herbs can ease a nervous stomach in some people as it’s happening. If you experience nausea or queasiness, ginger root may help. Chew a piece of root, drink ginger tea, eat ginger candy, or sip some ginger ale with real ginger in it for benefit.
Other herbs, like spearmint, peppermint, lavender, or lemon balm, are also well-known antispasmodics. They may stop spasms and tightening of smooth muscles that cause stomach butterflies, flatulence, cramps, and upset. Eat a raw leaf or two from a live plant, pop a mint that contains real mint ingredients, or enjoy these herbs in tea.
Avoid caffeine, especially coffee
The caffeine content of coffee can fuel nervousness and anxiety, making it worse. What’s more, coffee also stimulates the bowels, worsening bowel symptoms.
Wait to drink coffee until your nervous bowels calm down. Or try less stimulating caffeine drinks like green tea or oolong tea.
Practice deep breathing, mindfulness, and meditation
Mental exercises help you focus on your breath and bring you back to the present moment. This can manage stress and anxiety that cause a nervous stomach. Deep breaths can be especially helpful.
If you like meditation or have any other mental tricks that calm you down, give them a try.
Try calming diffuser oils or incenses
Herbal incenses, or essential oils used as aromatic diffusers, have been known to help some people with anxiety.
Purchase products with calming herbs like chamomile, lavender, vetiver, or rose. Follow the product’s directions. Combine this with some relaxing time and space for yourself when dealing with a nervous stomach.
Find space for yourself to relax
Ultimately, find time and space for yourself to clear your head and take control of your nervousness, even if it means total alone time. Don’t be afraid to excuse yourself, even from an important event.
If talking to a friend, family member, or loved one helps, do so during this time. Talking with someone you trust can help you overcome anxiety.