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I just got back from a run. I’m amazed to admit those words. I believe it might have been ten years since I last did so. Yet It came to my attention that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my life that the reason to exercise has been my health status. In my youth, I ran because I aimed to lose weight. I also jogged to cure nervousness – I was just running away from the worry, not addressing it. On other occasions, I exercised because I sought to improve at running. That represented what it meant to me back then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason at present prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physical self throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its capabilities and the aims it provided: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been discussed through history about the separation of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis now. What I’ve found most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because bodily growth necessitates mental growth and the reverse is true. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the brain to cultivate the ability to recognise hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and fulfillment consistently provided by repeated nourishment feeds the young mind just as the nutrition sustains them physically. Similarly mental events – like the desire to stand up and attain a goal, and the determination to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, mind and body are interlinked in shared growth as integrated as DNA strands.

But It’s become clear, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My mind might utilize my physical self to store and display aspects that my consciousness considers undesirable or intolerable. In analysis we’ve become aware that exist particular emotional states that I am afraid I can’t handle; in place of experiencing them mentally, I unconsciously shift them into bodily form, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I often had this with indigestion – not connected to food intake, but represented a kind of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but once it was raised into my consciousness in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and rage and terror could be felt and articulated in place of transformed into physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues today.

The worst time I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was slipping away from my sanity. I went a general practitioner, who scheduled all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found medically abnormal. It was a different physician who told me that the root could be mental. My therapist agreed. I was shocked, but I recognized it was correct.

When a patient is suffering a bodily issue, they can be offended upon hearing that it may have a psychological cause. They might feel like disrespect, the idea that their condition is imagined. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their suffering ignored or incorrectly identified. However, sometimes it might be that the physical symptoms exist – without doubt – and the source is mental, the unconscious employing the physical self to convey certain suffering or anger or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our feelings is only valid if manifested in physical form. We often undervalue our mental states personally, in social contexts and as a culture; why else do we accept the terrible reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have taught me that a better life is unattainable while caught without realization in ways of relating, internally and with others, that originate in devaluation, manipulation and exchange. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to recognize “out there” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to consider how they got out there, and to recognise these patterns inside us and in intimate connections, in the economy of our psyches.

But persistence pays off. When I put my running shoes back on post a long hiatus, venturing out without aiming for bodily change, or to get rid of a feeling, or to beat a 5km time, {it