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I have just returned from a jog. It’s surprising to write those words. I believe it might have been ten years since I last did so. However I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that my motivation to work out has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. I also jogged to alleviate nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I ran because I wanted to improve with jogging. It signified the definition to me at that time to create a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason now sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body over my lifetime and how this is changing as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. I believe not I’ve valued my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the purposes it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5K run. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it embodies my life, instead of something that produces results.

A great deal has been explored through history about the split of mind and body – which you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis now. What resonated most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical maturation necessitates psychological development and conversely. The infant’s corporeal feelings – such as the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the brain to develop the skill to perceive hunger as a feeling that can be sated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction regularly delivered by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind similar to the food sustains them bodily. Similarly mental events – such as the desire to rise and attain a goal, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means the body develops power. Starting at birth, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as unified as a double helix.

However I’ve observed, in treatment with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects might experience a different kind of relationship – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche might utilize my physical self to retain and express things that my psyche considers unacceptable or unacceptable. In analysis we’ve become aware how exist particular emotional states that I worry are too much for me; rather than feeling these in my mind, I unconsciously shift them to my physical self, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I often had this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but represented a type of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention in sessions, and my fear and vulnerability and frustration and alarm became palpable and put into words in place of converted to corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went a general practitioner, who organised all sorts of examinations and assessments, but everything was medically abnormal. It turned out to be an alternate medic who told me that the root might be mental. My therapist concurred. I was stunned, but I recognized it was accurate.

If an individual is suffering a corporeal problem, they can be offended at the suggestion that it could have an emotional origin. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their symptom is fabricated. Naturally that does happen – some face their suffering ignored or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it could be that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the cause is emotional, the unconscious utilizing the physical self to convey emotional hurt or anger or whichever sentiment awareness fails to handle. Occasionally, we might assume our feelings is only valid only through expression as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our psychological well-being on a personal level, collectively and culturally; why else can we allow the terrible elimination of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Personal insights have revealed that a better life cannot be built while caught without realization in patterns of interaction, internally and with others, that stem from disregard, exploitation and exchange. These dynamics tend to be simpler to identify “externally” in wider society. It may be more challenging to reflect on how they got out there, and to identify these shapes inside us and among loved ones, in the workings of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes again after such a long decade, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it