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I have just returned from jogging. It’s surprising to write those words. I think it was likely many years since the previous time. However I found out recently that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to do sweaty exercise regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the reason to exercise has been my physical health. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to be thinner. At times I ran to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from those feelings, not addressing it. Sometimes, I ran because I wanted to enhance in running. This was what it meant to me then to develop a better life.

Exercising with new motivation currently got me thinking about the ways I’ve interacted with my physical self over my lifetime and how this is changing as I move from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve valued my own body, not truly. I’ve appreciated it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: seeking approval; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5K run. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it embodies my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

Much has been discussed for ages about the separation between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What has struck me most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from birth, because physical development requires psychological development and the reverse is true. The newborn’s physical sensations – like the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the brain to develop the capacity to recognise hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by eating; and the emotional comfort and contentment regularly delivered by feed after feed nourishes the infant’s psyche similar to the food fuels them bodily. Likewise psychological experiences – for instance the desire to get up and reach for something, and the persistence to try again and again – are the reason and method physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interconnected in mutual development as unified as DNA strands.

But I’ve observed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body may exist in a distinct connection – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My mind might utilize my physique to hold and manifest things that my consciousness considers unwanted or intolerable. During therapy we’ve become aware that there are certain emotions that I fear are too much for me; in place of feeling these psychologically, I subconsciously shift them into bodily form, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I often had this as indigestion – not connected to my diet, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but when it was brought to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and sensitivity and rage and terror could be felt and expressed verbally instead of transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems now.

The most severe episode I endured this intense reflux, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was losing my mental stability. I visited a general practitioner, who scheduled all sorts of scans and tests, but no issues were found medically abnormal. It was an alternate medic who told me that the cause could be psychological. My analyst concurred. I was shocked, but I recognized it was accurate.

When a patient experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting if told that it may have a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their symptom isn’t real. Naturally that does happen – some face their pain dismissed or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it’s possible that the physical symptoms are genuine – no question – and the source is psychological, the unconscious utilizing the physical self to manifest certain suffering or anger or any feeling the conscious self is unable to bear. At times, it’s easy to think our experience is only valid only through expression in physical form. We often undervalue our minds as individuals, in social contexts and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the shocking elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

Life lessons have shown me that an improved existence cannot be built if we remain trapped unawares in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that are rooted in disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These dynamics are often easier to spot “externally” in the general public. It’s perhaps more challenging to think about their origins, and to identify these shapes personally and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our psyches.

However persistence pays off. When I put my jogging shoes back on following many years, venturing out not for bodily change, or to get rid of a feeling, or to improve a running record, {it