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I just got back from a run. It’s surprising to write this fact. I believe it might have been a decade since the previous time. However I found out recently that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in living memory that the driving force to be active has been my physical health. When I was younger, I ran because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to manage feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I sought to improve with jogging. It signified what it meant to me then to build a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now sparked reflection about the methods I’ve interacted with my physique over my lifetime and its transformation as I progress from youth to middle age. I don’t think I’ve valued my body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it solely for its functions and the aims it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; running a faster 5K run. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it is my existence, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been written over the centuries about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize here. What I’ve found most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are naturally unified from birth, because bodily growth requires psychological development and vice versa. The infant’s physical sensations – like the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the mind to build the capacity to recognise hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction regularly delivered by meal after meal supports the child’s mind similar to the milk fuels them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – such as the desire to rise and reach for something, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interconnected in mutual development as integrated as a double helix.

But It’s become clear, in sessions with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique might experience an alternate dynamic – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my physique to hold and manifest elements that my consciousness deems unacceptable or unacceptable. In analysis it emerged that there are specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; instead of sensing them mentally, I subconsciously push them to my physical self, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I often had digestive discomfort – unrelated to food intake, but was a type of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and frustration and panic could be felt and articulated instead of changed into physical sensation, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion today.

The worst time I endured this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. I felt I was losing my mental stability. I consulted my doctor, who arranged various scans and tests, but no issues were found medically abnormal. It was a different physician who suggested that the origin may be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was stunned, but I also felt it was accurate.

When a patient is suffering a bodily issue, they might feel insulted if told that it could have a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, the idea that their condition isn’t real. And of course that does happen – some face their pain discounted or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it could be that the physical symptoms are genuine – no question – and the source is mental, the subconscious employing the body to manifest some pain or fury or whatever emotion awareness is unable to bear. At times, it’s easy to think our experience only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our mental states personally, as a society and within our culture; how else do we accept the terrible elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Life lessons have taught me that a better life cannot be built when we are stuck unawares in modes of connection, internally and with others, that stem from devaluation, exploitation and dealings. These dynamics tend to be simpler to recognize “out there” in wider society. It’s likely more challenging to consider their origins, and to identify these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our minds.

However persistence pays off. Upon wearing my trainers again following many years, venturing out without aiming for bodily change, or to escape a feeling, or to beat a running record, {it