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I recently came back from jogging. I’m amazed to write those words. I think it was likely many years since the previous time. Yet I recently discovered that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts regularly.

For the first time ever in my existence that my motivation to work out has been my physical health. During earlier years, I exercised because I desired to lose weight. At times I ran to manage nervousness – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I ran because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified what it meant to me back then to develop an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent currently prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve interacted with my physical self during my years and its transformation as I progress from early adulthood to midlife. I believe not I’ve respected my body, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it solely for its roles and the aims it served me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; running a faster 5km. Until today, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it embodies my life, as opposed to something that produces results.

Much has been written over the centuries about the split of mind and body – which it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What has struck me most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because physical development necessitates mental growth and the reverse is true. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the mind to develop the ability to recognise hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by a feed; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction consistently provided by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind just as the milk fuels them physically. So too emotional occurrences – such as the wish to rise and grab an object, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are why and how physical strength increases. Starting at birth, mind and body are intertwined in shared growth as integrated as DNA strands.

However It’s become clear, in treatment with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique can be in a distinct connection – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche may employ my body to retain and express things that my mind considers unacceptable or unbearable. In analysis we’ve become aware how exist specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; rather than experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously push them to my physical self, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but represented a kind of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle psychologically. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but after it was introduced to awareness through therapy, and my anxiety and vulnerability and rage and panic could be felt and put into words rather than converted to bodily feelings, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion currently.

The most severe episode I endured this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. It seemed I was forfeiting my sanity. I visited to the GP, who scheduled all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing medically abnormal. The situation was a different physician who told me that the cause might be psychological. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was shocked, but I also felt it to be true.

When a patient experiences a corporeal problem, they can be offended if told that it may have a psychological cause. They might feel like disrespect, being told that their symptom is fabricated. And of course such cases occur – people can have their symptoms dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the corporeal issues are real – no question – and the source is psychological, the unconscious employing the physique to convey some pain or anger or any feeling the conscious self fails to handle. At times, we might assume our feelings is only valid when it is expressed through the body. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being on a personal level, in social contexts and within our culture; why else do we accept the terrible elimination of mental health treatments on the NHS?

Life lessons have revealed that an improved existence cannot be built while caught unawares in ways of relating, inside us and with others, that originate in devaluation, use and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to identify “in the world” in broader culture. It may be harder to reflect on their origins, and to see these forms personally and in intimate connections, in the workings of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes again following many years, going outside not to get bodily change, or to get rid of a sensation, or to surpass a 5km time, {it