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I have just returned from a run. It’s surprising to write that statement. I believe it could have been a decade since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my life that the driving force to exercise has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I aimed to lose weight. I also jogged to cure feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I exercised because I aimed to enhance at running. It signified what it meant to me back then to develop a better life.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the ways I’ve interacted with my physical self during my years and how this is changing as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve honored my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the purposes it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it embodies my life, as opposed to something that produces results.

A lot has been discussed through history about the division between body and mind – which it’s comforting 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 bodily growth demands emotional evolution and vice versa. The infant’s physical sensations – like the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the mind to cultivate the skill to identify hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed nourishes the child’s mind in the same way the nutrition sustains them corporally. So too mental events – like the urge to stand up and reach for something, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as connected as DNA strands.

Yet It’s become clear, in treatment with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects might experience an alternate dynamic – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche may employ my body to hold and display aspects that my mind deems unwanted or intolerable. During therapy we realized how exist specific feelings that I fear I cannot bear; rather than sensing them in my mind, I unintentionally force them into bodily form, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I often had this as indigestion – unrelated to my diet, but was a form of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. This was not an intentional act, but once it was raised to my attention by my analyst, and my anxiety and vulnerability and anger and panic became palpable and put into words rather than changed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems currently.

The most severe episode I had this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was slipping away from my mental stability. I visited my doctor, who arranged all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It was a different physician who suggested that the origin could be psychological. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I also felt it was correct.

If an individual endures a bodily issue, they can be offended if told that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience this as being disrespected, being told that their illness is fabricated. Certainly that does happen – some face their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms exist – certainly – and the source is mental, the subconscious employing the physique to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment awareness is unable to bear. Occasionally, we might assume our experience only has value if manifested in physical form. We often undervalue our mental states as individuals, as a society and culturally; for what reason do we accept the shocking reduction of mental health treatments through health services?

My experiences have shown me that a better life is unattainable while caught unconsciously in patterns of interaction, inside us and in relationships, that are rooted in disrespect, exploitation and dealings. These interactions are often easier to identify “in the world” in wider society. It’s perhaps harder to reflect on where they come from, and to see these patterns inside us and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my jogging shoes back on after such a long decade, going outside not for physical improvement, or to escape a sensation, or to improve a 5km time, {it