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I just got back from jogging. It’s shocking to admit this fact. I believe it was likely ten years since my last. Yet I recently discovered that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts regularly.

This is the first time in living memory that my motivation to be active has been my physical health. In my youth, I exercised because I desired to be thinner. I also jogged to cure nervousness – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I ran because I sought to improve at running. It signified the meaning to me then to build a better life.

Running for a different reason now prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve connected with my physique throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve valued my own body, not deep down. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5km. Until today, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my life, instead of something that produces results.

A great deal has been discussed for ages about the split between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis now. What resonated most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because bodily growth necessitates mental growth and the reverse is true. The infant’s physical sensations – like the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the brain to build the ability to perceive hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by eating; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment nourishes the infant’s psyche in the same way the food nourishes them corporally. So too emotional occurrences – for instance the wish to get up and reach for something, and the persistence to try again and again – are the reason and method the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are intertwined in shared growth as integrated as a spiral.

But It’s become clear, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience a different kind of relationship – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my body to hold and express things that my psyche views undesirable or intolerable. During therapy it emerged how there are particular emotional states that I fear I can’t handle; instead of sensing them psychologically, I unconsciously shift them into my body, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but was a kind of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process psychologically. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but after it was introduced to awareness through therapy, and my anxiety and vulnerability and frustration and alarm were experienced and put into words instead of transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I experienced this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went my doctor, who arranged multiple scans and tests, but there was nothing medically abnormal. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the cause may be psychological. My therapist concurred. I was shocked, but I recognized it was correct.

When a patient experiences a physical symptom, they can be offended upon hearing that it could have an emotional origin. They might feel like disrespect, the idea that their symptom is fabricated. And of course that does happen – some face their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the bodily signs are genuine – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the subconscious utilizing the physical self to manifest certain suffering or fury or any feeling awareness is unable to bear. Occasionally, we might assume our emotions is only valid only through expression through the body. We persistently neglect our minds personally, as a society and as a culture; why else can we allow the shocking reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that an improved existence cannot be built while caught unawares in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and socially, that stem from devaluation, use and dealings. These interactions are often easier to identify “externally” in wider society. It’s likely harder to reflect on how they got out there, and to recognise these patterns within ourselves and among loved ones, in the workings of our minds.

However it’s worth persevering. When I put my running shoes back on post a long hiatus, venturing out without aiming for a better body, or to get rid of a sensation, or to surpass a running record, {it