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I have just returned from a run. It’s surprising to write that statement. I think it could have been a decade since I last did so. Yet It came to my attention that I have elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts regularly.

It’s the initial instance in living memory that the reason to exercise has been my health status. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to slim down. At times I ran to cure nervousness – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I jogged because I wanted to get better with jogging. That represented the meaning to me back then to build a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent now prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physical self during my years and how this is changing as I transition from early adulthood to midlife. I don’t think I’ve respected my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier 5km. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, as opposed to something that produces results.

Much has been discussed over the centuries about the division between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis now. What has struck me most compelling is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are innately connected from the beginning, because physical development necessitates mental growth and the reverse is true. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate consciousness to develop the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction regularly delivered by feed after feed feeds the young mind just as the nutrition sustains them corporally. Similarly psychological experiences – such as the wish to rise and reach for something, and the determination to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as connected as DNA strands.

Yet I have noticed, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique can be in a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and more exploitative. My mind may employ my physical self to store and display elements that my consciousness views undesirable or unacceptable. In analysis we’ve become aware that exist certain emotions that I worry are too much for me; in place of sensing them in my mind, I unintentionally shift them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a form of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle psychologically. This wasn’t a deliberate decision, but when it was brought to awareness by my analyst, and my anxiety and sensitivity and rage and panic became palpable and expressed verbally rather than transformed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion currently.

The most severe episode I experienced this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. I felt I was forfeiting my mental stability. I visited to the GP, who arranged multiple scans and tests, but there was nothing medically abnormal. It was a different physician who informed me that the root could be emotional. My analyst concurred. I was shocked, but I also felt it to be true.

If an individual endures a bodily issue, they can be offended upon hearing that it could have an emotional origin. They might feel like disrespect, hearing that their illness isn’t real. And of course that does happen – some face their pain ignored or incorrectly identified. But in some cases it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – certainly – and the source is psychological, the subconscious using the physical self to manifest some pain or rage or any feeling awareness cannot tolerate. At times, we may believe our experience is only valid when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and as a culture; for what reason can we allow the terrible elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

Life lessons have taught me that a superior lifestyle is unattainable when we are stuck unawares in patterns of interaction, internally and with others, that originate in disregard, exploitation and dealings. These interactions are often easier to spot “out there” in the general public. It may be harder to reflect on how they got out there, and to identify these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our mental lives.

However persistence pays off. After donning my jogging shoes back on following many years, heading out not to get physical improvement, or to eliminate an emotion, or to surpass a personal best, {it