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I recently came back from jogging. It’s shocking to write those words. I think it could have been many years since my last. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that the reason to exercise has been my physical health. During earlier years, I exercised because I desired to slim down. I’ve also run to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I exercised because I sought to get better with jogging. It signified what it meant to me back then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve related with my body throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my body, not truly. I’ve prized it solely for its functions and the objectives it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5K run. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written for ages about the division involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize now. What resonated most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are innately connected right from the start, because physical development necessitates mental growth and the reverse is true. The infant’s corporeal feelings – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – propel consciousness to build the capacity to perceive hunger as an emotion that can be sated by eating; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction consistently provided by repeated nourishment supports the young mind similar to the food nourishes them physically. So too psychological experiences – for instance the wish to get up and attain a goal, and the persistence to try again and again – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Starting at birth, mind and body are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a double helix.

Yet I’ve observed, in sessions with my therapist, that my mind and body may exist in a distinct connection – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My consciousness may employ my physical self to hold and express things that my consciousness views unacceptable or intolerable. In analysis we realized how exist specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; in place of feeling these mentally, I unintentionally push them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but represented a type of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest mentally. This wasn’t a deliberate decision, but after it was introduced to my attention through therapy, and my fear and insecurity and frustration and alarm were experienced and put into words instead of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues now.

The toughest period I had this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my mental stability. I visited a general practitioner, who organised multiple scans and tests, but there was nothing corporally problematic. The situation was a different physician who told me that the root could be emotional. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was surprised, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone experiences a physical symptom, they might feel insulted if told that it may have a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their illness isn’t real. And of course that does happen – some face their symptoms ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the physical symptoms exist – without doubt – and the source is psychological, the inner mind using the body to express certain suffering or anger or whichever sentiment the mind is unable to bear. Sometimes, we may believe our experience is only valid only through expression through the body. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being as individuals, collectively and culturally; for what reason do we accept the shocking reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have shown me that a better life cannot be created while caught unawares in ways of relating, within ourselves and in relationships, that are rooted in disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These dynamics are often easier to spot “in the world” in the general public. It’s likely harder to consider their origins, and to see these shapes personally and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our minds.

However it’s worth persevering. After donning my trainers again post a long hiatus, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of a sensation, or to surpass a personal best, {it