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I recently came back from jogging. I’m amazed to write those words. I think it was likely ten years since I last did so. Yet I found out recently that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

It’s the initial instance in living memory that the driving force to work out has been my physical health. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to manage nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, without confronting it. At other times, I ran because I sought to enhance at running. This was the meaning to me back then to create a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent currently sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I move from early adulthood to middle age. I don’t think I’ve honored my physical form, not deep down. I’ve prized it just for its functions and the aims it served me: aiming to appeal; avoiding feelings; completing a speedier 5km. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been explored for ages about the division of mind and body – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected right from the start, because bodily growth requires emotional evolution and the reverse is true. The infant’s physical sensations – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – drive consciousness to build the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction consistently provided by meal after meal supports the young mind similar to the food nourishes them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – for instance the urge to stand up and attain a goal, and the determination to try again and again – are the reason and method the body develops power. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a double helix.

However I’ve observed, in sessions with my analyst, that my mind and body may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my body to store and manifest things that my consciousness deems unwanted or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware how there are specific feelings that I worry I cannot bear; instead of sensing them mentally, I unintentionally push them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but was a form of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I failed to handle in my mind. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but after it was introduced to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and vulnerability and anger and alarm became palpable and put into words in place of converted to bodily feelings, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I had this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my sanity. I went to the GP, who arranged various scans and tests, but no issues were found physically wrong. The situation was an alternate medic who told me that the root might be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was stunned, but I also felt it to be true.

Whenever someone experiences a physical symptom, they can be offended upon hearing that it may have an emotional origin. They can experience like disrespect, being told that their condition is fabricated. Certainly that does happen – people can have their suffering discounted or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the corporeal issues are genuine – certainly – and the cause is emotional, the inner mind employing the physical self to express emotional hurt or anger or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. Sometimes, we might assume our experience only has value if manifested in physical form. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, as a society and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the appalling killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

My experiences have shown me that a better life is unattainable when we are stuck without realization in patterns of interaction, internally and with others, that are rooted in disregard, use and transaction. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to identify “out there” in wider society. It may be less comfortable to reflect on where they come from, and to identify these patterns personally and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

However persistence pays off. Upon wearing my running shoes once more after such a long decade, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a 5km time, {it