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I recently came back from a jog. It’s shocking to write those words. I believe it could have been many years since the previous time. However It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts regularly.

This is the first time in my life that the driving force to be active has been my health status. When I was younger, I jogged because I desired to lose weight. I also jogged to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I exercised because I aimed to get better at running. It signified what it meant to me back then to create an improved existence.

Running for a different reason currently sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve related with my body during my years and the way it’s evolving as I transition from being a young person to middle age. I believe not I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its roles and the purposes it served me: aiming to appeal; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5km. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it embodies my life, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been discussed for ages about the division of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are naturally unified from birth, because physical development requires mental growth and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the brain to develop the skill to recognise hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and contentment repeatedly brought by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind just as the food nourishes them physically. Similarly mental events – for instance the wish to get up and attain a goal, and the resolve to persist through effort – are why and how the body develops power. Since infancy, mind and body are interconnected in mutual development as connected as a double helix.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my therapist, that my mind and body might experience a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My mind may employ my physique to retain and display aspects that my psyche views undesirable or intolerable. In analysis it emerged that there are particular emotional states that I worry I cannot bear; rather than feeling these mentally, I unintentionally shift them into my body, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – unrelated to what I’d eaten, but was a form of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I failed to handle in my mind. This wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and rage and alarm became palpable and put into words rather than converted to physical sensation, it disappeared. I rarely suffer with digestive issues currently.

The worst time I endured this intense reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I felt I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went my doctor, who organised all sorts of examinations and assessments, but there was nothing medically abnormal. The situation was another doctor who informed me that the cause could be mental. My therapist concurred. I was stunned, but I also felt it to be true.

Whenever someone endures a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted if told that there might be an emotional origin. They might feel this as being disrespected, the idea that their condition isn’t real. Certainly that does happen – people can have their pain dismissed or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it might be that the bodily signs are genuine – certainly – and the source is psychological, the unconscious using the physical self to manifest emotional hurt or anger or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we may believe our feelings only has value when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our psychological well-being on a personal level, collectively and as a culture; how else do we accept the appalling killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

My experiences have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, internally and socially, that originate in disrespect, use and transaction. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to identify “externally” in wider society. It may be harder to reflect on their origins, and to identify these shapes within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the economy of our psyches.

Yet it’s worth persevering. After donning my running shoes back on following many years, going outside not to get bodily change, or to eliminate a sensation, or to surpass a personal best, {it