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I just got back from a jog. It’s shocking to state this fact. I believe it could have been ten years since my last. However I found out recently that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the driving force to be active has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I ran because I wanted to slim down. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, not addressing it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to get better with jogging. That represented what it meant to me then to build an improved existence.

Running for a different reason currently sparked reflection about the methods I’ve connected with my body during my years and the way it’s evolving as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its functions and the aims it served me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; running a faster 5km. Until today, I failed to grasp that my body is me, it is my existence, instead of a tool for outcomes.

Much has been explored through history about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What resonated most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected from the beginning, because physical development requires psychological development and vice versa. The newborn’s physical sensations – for example the physical sensation of hunger – propel the mind to cultivate the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that can be sated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed supports the infant’s psyche just as the milk nourishes them bodily. Similarly mental events – like the desire to stand up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as connected as a spiral.

But I have noticed, in treatment with my analyst, that my mind and body can be in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness may employ my physical self to store and express things that my psyche considers undesirable or unacceptable. In my sessions we realized how exist specific feelings that I am afraid I cannot bear; in place of experiencing them in my mind, I subconsciously shift them to my physical self, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to my diet, but was a form of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness by my analyst, and my fear and insecurity and anger and terror became palpable and expressed verbally in place of changed into physical sensation, it vanished. I seldom experience from stomach problems currently.

The most severe episode I experienced this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I consulted a general practitioner, who scheduled all sorts of scans and tests, but everything was medically abnormal. It was an alternate medic who suggested that the root might be mental. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone is suffering a bodily issue, they can be offended at the suggestion that it could have a psychological cause. They might feel as invalidation, hearing that their condition isn’t real. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – some face their symptoms discounted or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it might be that the corporeal issues exist – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the subconscious employing the physique to convey some pain or fury or any feeling the mind is unable to bear. Sometimes, we may believe our emotions only has value only through expression through the body. We continually disrespect our mental states personally, in social contexts and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the terrible elimination of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have shown me that a better life cannot be built when we are stuck without realization in modes of connection, internally and socially, that originate in disrespect, manipulation and dealings. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to recognize “externally” in the general public. It’s perhaps harder to consider their origins, and to see these forms within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our psyches.

But persistence pays off. After donning my jogging shoes back on after such a long decade, venturing out not for physical improvement, or to eliminate a sensation, or to beat a 5km time, {it