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I recently came back from jogging. It’s surprising to write those words. I think it might have been a decade since my last. However It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my existence that my motivation to be active has been my physical health. In my youth, I exercised because I wanted to lose weight. I’ve also run to alleviate feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to enhance at running. It signified the meaning to me at that time to create a better life.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the methods I’ve related with my physical self during my years and how this is changing as I move from being a young person to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it only for its capabilities and the objectives it provided: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker 5K run. Until today, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my life, instead of something that produces results.

A lot has been explored through history about the split of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize here. What I’ve found most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected from the beginning, because physical development necessitates psychological development and the reverse is true. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – like the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the mind to develop the skill to identify hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment nourishes the young mind similar to the food nourishes them physically. Likewise emotional occurrences – like the wish to rise and grab an object, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Starting at birth, our body and mind are interlinked in mutual development as connected as a double helix.

Yet I have noticed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a distinct connection – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My mind may employ my physique to store and express things that my psyche deems unwanted or unbearable. During therapy it emerged how there are certain emotions that I am afraid I can’t handle; instead of feeling these in my mind, I subconsciously shift them into my body, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I often had this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but acted as a type of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process mentally. This was not a deliberate decision, but when it was brought to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and insecurity and rage and terror were experienced and expressed verbally in place of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from indigestion currently.

The most severe episode I had this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I went my doctor, who arranged various diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. The situation was another doctor who informed me that the root may be psychological. My analyst agreed. I was surprised, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone experiences a physical symptom, it can be upsetting upon hearing that there might be an emotional origin. They can experience this as being disrespected, being told that their symptom is imagined. Certainly that does happen – individuals may experience their symptoms ignored or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it could be that the physical symptoms are genuine – without doubt – and the source is psychological, the inner mind utilizing the physique to manifest emotional hurt or fury or any feeling the mind cannot tolerate. At times, we might assume our experience only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our minds personally, collectively and culturally; how else do we accept the appalling reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have shown me that an improved existence cannot be built when we are stuck unconsciously in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and socially, that stem from devaluation, use and exchange. These dynamics tend to be simpler to identify “externally” in wider society. It may be harder to think about their origins, and to identify these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our minds.

However persistence pays off. After donning my running shoes once more following many years, venturing out not to get bodily change, or to get rid of a sensation, or to improve a personal best, {it