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I just got back from a run. It’s shocking to write that statement. I believe it was likely ten years since my last. Yet I recently discovered that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my life that the driving force to be active has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to slim down. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I ran because I wanted to improve at running. It signified the definition to me then to create a better life.

Running for a different reason currently prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve related with my body during my years and its transformation as I move from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my own body, not truly. I’ve appreciated it just for its functions and the purposes it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5km. Until today, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been explored through history about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic you will be relieved to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are innately connected right from the start, because physical maturation necessitates emotional evolution and conversely. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate consciousness to cultivate the capacity to identify hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment regularly delivered by feed after feed feeds the young mind in the same way the nutrition sustains them physically. Likewise emotional occurrences – for instance the urge to get up and reach for something, and the resolve to persist through effort – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, mind and body are intertwined in mutual development as connected as DNA strands.

However It’s become clear, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in an alternate dynamic – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness can use my body to hold and display aspects that my mind views undesirable or intolerable. In my sessions it emerged how there are particular emotional states that I am afraid I can’t handle; in place of sensing them psychologically, I subconsciously force them into my body, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I used to get digestive discomfort – not connected to my diet, but represented a type of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I failed to handle mentally. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but after it was introduced to my attention in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and anger and panic could be felt and expressed verbally rather than changed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I had this intense reflux, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. It seemed I was losing my mind. I went to the GP, who arranged various diagnostic procedures, but everything was corporally problematic. It was another doctor who suggested that the origin may be psychological. My analyst agreed. I was surprised, but I recognized it was correct.

When a patient experiences a bodily issue, they can be offended upon hearing that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience this as being disrespected, hearing that their symptom is fabricated. Naturally that does happen – individuals may experience their pain ignored or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the physical symptoms are real – certainly – and the cause is mental, the subconscious employing the body to express emotional hurt or rage or whatever emotion the mind cannot tolerate. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions is only valid when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our mental states as individuals, as a society and as a culture; for what reason can we allow the shocking reduction of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Personal insights have shown me that an improved existence cannot be created if we remain trapped unawares in patterns of interaction, inside us and in relationships, that stem from devaluation, exploitation and exchange. Such patterns are often easier to spot “externally” in the general public. It may be harder to consider their origins, and to identify these forms inside us and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our psyches.

But persistence pays off. Upon wearing my jogging shoes back on following many years, going outside without aiming for a better body, or to get rid of an emotion, or to surpass a running record, {it