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I recently came back from jogging. It’s shocking to state this fact. I think it could have been ten years since the previous time. Yet I recently discovered that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts regularly.

This is the first time in my existence that my motivation to be active has been my physical health. When I was younger, I exercised because I wanted to be thinner. I also jogged to manage nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, not addressing it. On other occasions, I exercised because I sought to get better at running. That represented the definition to me then to develop an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation now sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from being a young person to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not truly. I’ve prized it just for its functions and the objectives it served me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5K run. Until today, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been written through history about the split of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What has struck me most compelling is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated right from the start, because bodily growth requires emotional evolution and vice versa. A baby’s physical sensations – such as the physical sensation of hunger – propel the brain to develop the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed supports the young mind in the same way the nutrition sustains them bodily. So too psychological experiences – for instance the urge to get up and reach for something, and the determination to try again and again – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Since infancy, mind and body are interconnected in mutual development as unified as a double helix.

However It’s become clear, in treatment with my therapist, that my mind and body might experience an alternate dynamic – a less unified and more exploitative. My mind can use my physique to retain and express things that my mind views undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware how there are specific feelings that I am afraid are too much for me; instead of sensing them in my mind, I unintentionally push them to my physical self, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but acted as a form of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised to my attention through therapy, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and terror could be felt and articulated in place of changed into physical sensation, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues today.

The toughest period I endured this intense reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I felt I was forfeiting my sanity. I went to the GP, who arranged all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but everything was medically abnormal. It turned out to be an alternate medic who informed me that the origin might be mental. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was shocked, but I recognized it was correct.

When a patient endures a physical symptom, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it could have a psychological cause. It can seem as invalidation, the idea that their symptom isn’t real. Certainly that does happen – people can have their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the source is mental, the inner mind employing the physical self to express some pain or fury or whichever sentiment the conscious self is unable to bear. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions is only valid only through expression in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being personally, as a society and within our culture; how else do we accept the terrible elimination of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

My experiences have taught me that a better life cannot be built while caught unconsciously in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and in relationships, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to identify “out there” in wider society. It’s likely more challenging to consider where they come from, and to recognise these shapes personally and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

Yet it’s worth persevering. After donning my running shoes back on after such a long decade, going outside not to get a better body, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a running record, {it