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I have just returned from a jog. I’m amazed to state those words. It seems it could have been ten years since I last did so. However It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. At times I ran to cure feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, without confronting it. Sometimes, I ran because I sought to get better in running. That represented what it meant to me at that time to create a better life.

Jogging with altered intent at present got me thinking about the approaches I’ve related with my physical self during my years and how this is changing as I transition from being a young person to middle age. I believe not I’ve respected my body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it solely for its functions and the purposes it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; running a faster five kilometers. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my existence, instead of a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been discussed over the centuries about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because physical development requires emotional evolution and the reverse is true. A baby’s physical sensations – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – drive the mind to develop the skill to recognise hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction repeatedly brought by meal after meal feeds the child’s mind in the same way the food sustains them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – for instance the urge to stand up and reach for something, and the resolve to try again and again – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Starting at birth, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in shared growth as connected as a spiral.

But It’s become clear, in treatment with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche might utilize my body to hold and express elements that my mind views unwanted or unbearable. In analysis it emerged how there are certain emotions that I fear are too much for me; rather than sensing them psychologically, I unintentionally push them into my body, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I often had this with indigestion – not connected to my diet, but acted as a type of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle psychologically. This was not an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention by my analyst, and my anxiety and sensitivity and rage and terror were experienced and articulated in place of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it resolved. I seldom experience with digestive issues now.

The worst time I endured this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was slipping away from my mental stability. I went a general practitioner, who arranged multiple diagnostic procedures, but everything was corporally problematic. It was a different physician who told me that the cause could be mental. My therapist did not disagree. I was stunned, but I also felt it was correct.

Whenever someone experiences a bodily issue, they might feel insulted upon hearing that it could have a mental root. It can seem as invalidation, being told that their illness is imagined. Naturally such cases occur – some face their pain dismissed or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are real – without doubt – and the origin is mental, the unconscious utilizing the physical self to express some pain or rage or whatever emotion the conscious self is unable to bear. At times, we might assume our emotions matters solely only through expression through the body. We often undervalue our minds personally, as a society and as a culture; why else can we allow the terrible elimination of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have shown me that a better life cannot be built if we remain trapped unconsciously in patterns of interaction, internally and in relationships, that stem from disregard, use and exchange. Such patterns are often easier to spot “in the world” in the general public. It’s likely less comfortable to reflect on their origins, and to see these patterns personally and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes again after such a long decade, going outside without aiming for a better body, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a running record, {it