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I recently came back from a run. I’m amazed to admit those words. It seems it could have been a decade since the previous time. But It came to my attention that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise regularly.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to exercise has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to alleviate my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from those feelings, without confronting it. Sometimes, I exercised because I aimed to get better with jogging. That represented what it meant to me at that time to build an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent at present prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve related with my body throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from youth to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not truly. I’ve prized it solely for its functions and the purposes it served me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5K run. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it is my life, as opposed to something that produces results.

Much has been discussed through history about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What I’ve found most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical development requires emotional evolution and conversely. The infant’s physical sensations – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the mind to develop the ability to recognise hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by a feed; and the psychological solace and satisfaction consistently provided by meal after meal feeds the infant’s psyche similar to the nutrition fuels them corporally. Likewise emotional occurrences – for instance the wish to get up and reach for something, and the determination to persist through effort – are why and how muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as unified as DNA strands.

However It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and more exploitative. My mind may employ my physique to store and display things that my psyche views undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware how there are particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; instead of feeling these in my mind, I subconsciously force them into bodily form, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with food intake, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I failed to handle in my mind. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and insecurity and rage and panic were experienced and put into words rather than transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems currently.

The most severe episode I had this intense reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I felt I was slipping away from my mental stability. I went to the GP, who scheduled various diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found physically wrong. The situation was a different physician who suggested that the cause could be emotional. My therapist concurred. I was stunned, but I also knew it was correct.

Whenever someone is suffering a corporeal problem, they can be offended at the suggestion that it could have a psychological cause. They might feel as invalidation, the idea that their symptom is fabricated. Naturally that does happen – some face their symptoms ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are genuine – certainly – and the origin is mental, the unconscious using the physical self to convey emotional hurt or rage or any feeling the conscious self cannot tolerate. At times, we may believe our feelings matters solely only through expression as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our minds as individuals, in social contexts and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the terrible killing-off of psychological therapies through health services?

My experiences have shown me that a better life cannot be created while caught unawares in ways of relating, within ourselves and socially, that stem from disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to spot “in the world” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to consider their origins, and to see these forms inside us and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our psyches.

However it’s valuable to continue. After donning my running shoes once more after such a long decade, going outside not for a better body, or to eliminate a feeling, or to surpass a 5km time, {it