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I recently came back from a run. It’s surprising to state this fact. I think it could have been many years since the previous time. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise frequently.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to work out has been my health status. When I was younger, I jogged because I wanted to be thinner. I’ve also run to alleviate my anxiety – I was just running away from those feelings, not addressing it. On other occasions, I jogged because I sought to get better at running. That represented what it meant to me at that time to build a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physique during my years and its transformation as I transition from early adulthood to middle age. I don’t think I’ve respected my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it only for its capabilities and the objectives it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; running a faster five kilometers. Previously, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been written for ages about the split of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis now. What has struck me most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because physical development demands psychological development and conversely. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – such as the physical sensation of hunger – drive the mind to develop the skill to identify hunger as a sensation that can be sated by nourishment; 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. Similarly psychological experiences – for instance the urge to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our body and mind are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as unified as a spiral.

However It’s become clear, in treatment with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my physique to retain and manifest elements that my mind considers unacceptable or unacceptable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how exist particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; instead of experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously force them to my physical self, where they remain as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process psychologically. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to my attention through therapy, and my fear and insecurity and anger and panic became palpable and put into words in place of transformed into bodily feelings, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues currently.

The worst time I endured this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my sanity. I visited my doctor, who arranged multiple examinations and assessments, but there was nothing medically abnormal. The situation was another doctor who told me that the cause might be psychological. My analyst concurred. I was stunned, but I also felt it was correct.

Whenever someone experiences a bodily issue, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that it may have a mental root. It can seem this as being disrespected, being told that their symptom isn’t real. Certainly that does happen – some face their symptoms dismissed or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the cause is emotional, the inner mind using the body to manifest certain suffering or anger or whatever emotion the mind fails to handle. Sometimes, we might assume our emotions matters solely when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our minds personally, as a society and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the shocking reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created when we are stuck unconsciously in ways of relating, within ourselves and in relationships, that are rooted in disrespect, use and transaction. These interactions are often easier to identify “externally” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to reflect on where they come from, and to identify these shapes inside us and among loved ones, in the economy of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. After donning my running shoes again following many years, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to escape a feeling, or to surpass a personal best, {it