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I have just returned from a run. It’s surprising to write those words. I believe it could have been ten years since my last. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that my motivation to be active has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I exercised because I wanted to slim down. I’ve also run to cure feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, not addressing it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to enhance at running. It signified the definition to me then to build a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason currently prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and how this is changing as I move from youth to middle age. I don’t think I’ve honored my own body, not deep down. I’ve prized it just for its capabilities and the aims it provided: seeking approval; avoiding feelings; running a faster five kilometers. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.

A great deal has been discussed through history about the separation between body and mind – which you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize here. What I’ve found most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are naturally unified from birth, because physical development demands mental growth and vice versa. The infant’s corporeal feelings – like the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the brain to cultivate the capacity to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment consistently provided by feed after feed supports the infant’s psyche similar to the milk sustains them corporally. Likewise emotional occurrences – such as the urge to stand up and reach for something, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in shared growth as integrated as a double helix.

Yet It’s become clear, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and somewhat abusive. My psyche can use my physical self to store and manifest things that my mind considers undesirable or unbearable. In analysis it emerged how there are specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; in place of feeling these in my mind, I unintentionally force them into my body, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to what I’d eaten, but acted as a type of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised into my consciousness by my analyst, and my anxiety and vulnerability and anger and panic could be felt and expressed verbally rather than changed into physical sensation, it disappeared. I seldom experience with digestive issues currently.

The most severe episode I endured this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. I believed I was forfeiting my mind. I visited my doctor, who organised multiple diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It was another doctor who told me that the cause could be emotional. My therapist concurred. I was stunned, but I also felt it was accurate.

Whenever someone experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting if told that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their condition isn’t real. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their suffering discounted or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it could be that the physical symptoms are genuine – certainly – and the cause is mental, the inner mind employing the body to express certain suffering or anger or whatever emotion the mind cannot tolerate. Sometimes, we might assume our feelings is only valid when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our minds personally, in social contexts and culturally; how else would we tolerate the appalling elimination of mental health treatments on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that a superior lifestyle cannot be built while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, internally and socially, that originate in devaluation, manipulation and transaction. These interactions tend to be simpler to recognize “externally” in wider society. It’s likely harder to consider where they come from, and to recognise these shapes personally and among loved ones, in the workings of our minds.

However it’s worth persevering. Upon wearing my trainers once more post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get a better body, or to get rid of a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it