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I just got back from a jog. I’m amazed to write those words. I believe it was likely a decade since the previous time. However I found out recently that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my life that the driving force to be active has been my health status. During earlier years, I jogged because I aimed to lose weight. I also jogged to cure my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, not addressing it. At other times, I exercised because I sought to get better in running. That represented the meaning to me then to create an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent now prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve related with my physical self throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from early adulthood to midlife. I don’t think I’ve honored my physical form, not truly. I’ve prized it just for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier 5km. Until today, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my existence, as opposed to something that produces results.

Much has been written for ages about the split between body and mind – which you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize now. What I’ve found most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation demands mental growth and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the mind to cultivate the capacity to recognise hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by a feed; and the emotional comfort and fulfillment regularly delivered by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind in the same way the milk fuels them physically. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the desire to rise and attain a goal, and the persistence to try again and again – are why and how physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interconnected in shared growth as integrated as a spiral.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche may employ my physical self to hold and manifest things that my psyche deems unwanted or unbearable. In my sessions it emerged that there are specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; in place of experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously shift them into my body, where they remain as corporeal issues.

I often had digestive discomfort – not connected to my diet, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle in my mind. This was not a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and sensitivity and anger and alarm became palpable and articulated instead of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion today.

The toughest period I endured this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. I felt I was forfeiting my mind. I consulted a general practitioner, who scheduled various diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found physically wrong. It was an alternate medic who suggested that the root may be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also felt it was correct.

When a patient experiences a bodily issue, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it may have a mental root. They might feel as invalidation, hearing that their condition isn’t real. Naturally such cases occur – individuals may experience their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it could be that the bodily signs exist – without doubt – and the origin is mental, the inner mind utilizing the physique to express some pain or rage or whatever emotion the mind fails to handle. At times, we may believe our experience matters solely when it is expressed in physical form. We persistently neglect our minds as individuals, collectively and within our culture; how else would we tolerate the terrible killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Personal insights have shown me that an improved existence cannot be created while caught unconsciously in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and in relationships, that are rooted in disrespect, use and exchange. These dynamics are frequently more straightforward to recognize “out there” in the general public. It may be harder to consider their origins, and to see these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my trainers once more after such a long decade, venturing out not to get bodily change, or to eliminate a feeling, or to surpass a personal best, {it