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I recently came back from a run. It’s surprising to write this fact. I think it might have been a decade since my last. However It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to work out has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I exercised because I wanted to be thinner. At times I ran to manage nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from those feelings, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I aimed to get better with jogging. This was what it meant to me at that time to build a better life.

Running for a different reason now prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve interacted with my physical self over my lifetime and its transformation as I transition from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve honored my body, not deep down. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the objectives it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5km. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my life, instead of a tool for outcomes.

A great deal has been discussed for ages about the split involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing in this piece. What I’ve found most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical maturation requires psychological development and conversely. The infant’s physical sensations – such as the physical sensation of hunger – propel the brain to cultivate the ability to identify hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction repeatedly brought by meal after meal nourishes the child’s mind in the same way the food fuels them physically. Likewise psychological experiences – like the desire to stand up and reach for something, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means the body develops power. Starting at birth, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as connected as DNA strands.

But It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique can be in an alternate dynamic – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My mind might utilize my physical self to retain and manifest elements that my consciousness considers undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy it emerged how exist specific feelings that I fear I can’t handle; rather than experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously force them into bodily form, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but was a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to my attention by my analyst, and my fear and insecurity and rage and terror were experienced and expressed verbally instead of converted to bodily feelings, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I had this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my sanity. I went a general practitioner, who organised all sorts of scans and tests, but there was nothing physically wrong. It turned out to be another doctor who told me that the cause may be emotional. My analyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also felt it was accurate.

If an individual is suffering a bodily issue, they can be offended upon hearing that there might be a psychological cause. They might feel as invalidation, being told that their illness isn’t real. Naturally that does happen – some face their pain discounted or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it could be that the physical symptoms exist – certainly – and the source is psychological, the unconscious utilizing the body to convey emotional hurt or anger or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our feelings is only valid only through expression as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being on a personal level, collectively and as a culture; why else can we allow the appalling killing-off of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Life lessons have shown me that a better life cannot be built while caught without realization in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, use and exchange. These dynamics are often easier to identify “in the world” in wider society. It may be harder to think about their origins, and to identify these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

But it’s worth persevering. Upon wearing my jogging shoes again post a long hiatus, heading out not to get bodily change, or to eliminate a sensation, or to surpass a 5km time, {it