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I just got back from a run. It’s shocking to admit those words. It seems it could have been many years since my last. But It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

For the first time ever in living memory that the driving force to exercise has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I wanted to lose weight. I also jogged to cure my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from those feelings, without confronting it. On other occasions, I ran because I aimed to improve at running. That represented the meaning to me then to build a better life.

Running for a different reason now got me thinking about the methods I’ve related with my body throughout my life and its transformation as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it solely for its capabilities and the purposes it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier five kilometers. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written for ages about the division of mind and body – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What resonated most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are innately connected from the beginning, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and the reverse is true. A baby’s corporeal feelings – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – drive the brain to build the ability to identify hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by nourishment; and the psychological solace and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment nourishes the child’s mind in the same way the milk nourishes them physically. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the desire to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to try again and again – are why and how physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as unified as DNA strands.

But I have noticed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My mind might utilize my body to hold and manifest aspects that my consciousness deems undesirable or unbearable. During therapy we realized that there are certain emotions that I fear I cannot bear; rather than sensing them in my mind, I unconsciously shift them to my physical self, where they remain as corporeal issues.

I used to get digestive discomfort – unrelated to my diet, but represented a type of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I couldn’t digest in my mind. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and vulnerability and frustration and alarm could be felt and articulated rather than converted to bodily feelings, it resolved. I seldom experience from indigestion currently.

The most severe episode I endured this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my sanity. I went a general practitioner, who scheduled various diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. It was an alternate medic who told me that the root could be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I also felt it was accurate.

When a patient experiences a bodily issue, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it may have a psychological cause. They might feel this as being disrespected, hearing that their condition is fabricated. Naturally that does happen – people can have their suffering ignored or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it might be that the corporeal issues are real – without doubt – and the origin is mental, the unconscious employing the body to manifest certain suffering or fury or any feeling awareness is unable to bear. Sometimes, we might assume our feelings matters solely if manifested as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being personally, as a society and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the terrible elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Life lessons have taught me that an improved existence is unattainable while caught unconsciously in modes of connection, within ourselves and socially, that stem from disregard, use and exchange. These interactions tend to be simpler to spot “externally” in wider society. It may be less comfortable to consider where they come from, and to recognise these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

But persistence pays off. When I put my running shoes once more following many years, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to eliminate a sensation, or to improve a personal best, {it