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I recently came back from a run. It’s surprising to state that statement. It seems it could have been ten years since the previous time. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to be active has been my health status. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to lose weight. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – I was merely escaping from those feelings, not addressing it. At other times, I ran because I wanted to improve at running. It signified what it meant to me then to create a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body during my years and how this is changing as I transition from being a young person to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its capabilities and the objectives it provided: seeking approval; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5K run. Up to now, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it embodies my life, as opposed to something that produces results.

A lot has been discussed over the centuries about the division between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize now. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected right from the start, because physical maturation requires psychological development and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the mind to develop the ability to perceive hunger as a sensation that can be sated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the milk sustains them bodily. So too emotional occurrences – for instance the desire to get up and reach for something, and the persistence to persist through effort – are why and how the body develops power. Starting at birth, mind and body are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as connected as a spiral.

However It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my body to hold and display aspects that my consciousness considers undesirable or intolerable. In analysis we realized how there are particular emotional states that I worry are too much for me; rather than sensing them mentally, I unconsciously push them to my physical self, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I often had digestive discomfort – not connected to food intake, but was a kind of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle in my mind. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but when it was brought into my consciousness through therapy, and my anxiety and insecurity and anger and terror could be felt and put into words rather than converted to bodily feelings, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I had this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. It seemed I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited a general practitioner, who organised various scans and tests, but no issues were found medically abnormal. It was a different physician who informed me that the cause might be emotional. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also felt it was correct.

Whenever someone endures a physical symptom, they can be offended upon hearing that it may have a mental root. They might feel this as being disrespected, the idea that their symptom is fabricated. Naturally that does happen – people can have their suffering ignored or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it could be that the corporeal issues are real – certainly – and the source is mental, the inner mind using the body to convey some pain or rage or whatever emotion the mind fails to handle. At times, we might assume our feelings only has value only through expression in physical form. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, in social contexts and culturally; why else do we accept the terrible elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

My experiences have taught me that a better life cannot be created if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns are often easier to spot “externally” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to reflect on how they got out there, and to recognise these patterns personally and in intimate connections, in the economy of our mental lives.

Yet it’s worth persevering. When I put my jogging shoes once more following many years, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to escape a feeling, or to improve a running record, {it