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I just got back from a run. It’s shocking to state those words. I think it might have been a decade since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to do sweaty exercise regularly.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. When I was younger, I ran because I aimed to lose weight. At times I ran to manage my anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I ran because I wanted to enhance with jogging. It signified the definition to me back then to create a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason at present got me thinking about the methods I’ve interacted with my body during my years and its transformation as I transition from youth to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it only for its roles and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5K run. Until today, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my life, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written through history about the division of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What resonated most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical development necessitates psychological development and the reverse is true. The infant’s corporeal feelings – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the brain to develop the skill to identify hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed nourishes the young mind similar to the nutrition nourishes them bodily. Likewise mental events – like the wish to stand up and grab an object, and the determination to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in shared growth as integrated as a double helix.

However I’ve observed, in treatment with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and more exploitative. My psyche can use my physique to retain and manifest elements that my psyche views undesirable or intolerable. In analysis we’ve become aware how there are specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; in place of feeling these mentally, I unintentionally push them to my physical self, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but acted as a form of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest in my mind. This wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised to my attention by my analyst, and my fear and insecurity and anger and panic became palpable and expressed verbally in place of converted to corporeal symptoms, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I had this intense reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I visited to the GP, who scheduled multiple scans and tests, but no issues were found corporally problematic. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the root could be emotional. My therapist did not disagree. I was stunned, but I recognized it was correct.

If an individual endures a bodily issue, they can be offended if told that there might be a mental root. They might feel this as being disrespected, the idea that their condition is imagined. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – some face their symptoms discounted or incorrectly identified. But in some cases it’s possible that the physical symptoms exist – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the inner mind employing the body to convey certain suffering or fury or whichever sentiment the mind is unable to bear. At times, it’s easy to think our experience matters solely only through expression through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and culturally; why else do we accept the shocking killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Personal insights have revealed that an improved existence is unattainable when we are stuck unawares in modes of connection, inside us and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These dynamics are frequently more straightforward to identify “externally” in wider society. It’s likely harder to consider where they come from, and to recognise these shapes within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our psyches.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my jogging shoes again post a long hiatus, heading out not for bodily change, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a running record, {it