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I recently came back from a run. It’s shocking to state those words. I believe it was likely a decade since I last did so. Yet It came to my attention that I have slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to work out has been my health status. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to slim down. I’ve also run to manage my anxiety – I was just running away from those feelings, not addressing it. At other times, I exercised because I wanted to enhance at running. This was the definition to me back then to build a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent at present got me thinking about the methods I’ve related with my physique throughout my life and how this is changing as I transition from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve valued my own body, not truly. I’ve appreciated it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5km. Previously, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my existence, instead of something that produces results.

Much has been written for ages about the division involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most fascinating is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation demands mental growth and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the brain to cultivate the ability to recognise hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by a feed; and the psychological solace and contentment repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment supports the young mind in the same way the milk nourishes them physically. So too mental events – for instance the desire to get up and attain a goal, and the determination to try again and again – are the cause and means the body develops power. Starting at birth, mind and body are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as unified as a spiral.

Yet I’ve observed, in sessions with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My psyche might utilize my physical self to store and express elements that my consciousness views unwanted or intolerable. In analysis we’ve become aware how exist certain emotions that I am afraid I cannot bear; rather than sensing them psychologically, I unconsciously shift them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I often had this with indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but represented a kind of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. This was not a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness in sessions, and my dread and vulnerability and anger and terror could be felt and expressed verbally rather than converted to physical sensation, it resolved. I rarely suffer from indigestion today.

The worst time I endured this intense reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I consulted my doctor, who organised various diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found medically abnormal. It turned out to be a different physician who suggested that the cause may be mental. My analyst concurred. I was surprised, but I also knew it was accurate.

If an individual experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it could have an emotional origin. They might feel like disrespect, hearing that their illness is imagined. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their pain dismissed or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it might be that the bodily signs exist – no question – and the source is emotional, the subconscious employing the body to convey emotional hurt or rage or whatever emotion the conscious self cannot tolerate. Sometimes, we may believe our feelings matters solely if manifested as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our minds on a personal level, in social contexts and as a culture; for what reason would we tolerate the terrible killing-off of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have taught me that an improved existence cannot be created if we remain trapped unconsciously in ways of relating, within ourselves and with others, that stem from devaluation, exploitation and dealings. These dynamics tend to be simpler to identify “out there” in broader culture. It may be more challenging to consider how they got out there, and to recognise these patterns personally and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our minds.

However persistence pays off. When I put my running shoes again post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of a sensation, or to improve a 5km time, {it