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I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to write that statement. I believe it was likely a decade since my last. But It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in my life that the driving force to work out has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I wanted to lose weight. At times I ran to alleviate my anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, without confronting it. Sometimes, I jogged because I aimed to improve with jogging. This was what it meant to me then to develop a better life.

Running for a different reason at present sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve connected with my body over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I progress from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve valued my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it solely for its roles and the aims it provided: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it embodies my life, instead of a tool for outcomes.

Much has been discussed over the centuries about the division of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What resonated most compelling is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical maturation requires psychological development and conversely. The infant’s corporeal feelings – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – drive the brain to cultivate the capacity to recognise hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by eating; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment regularly delivered by feed after feed nourishes the child’s mind just as the food sustains them bodily. Likewise psychological experiences – like the desire to get up and grab an object, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are why and how physical strength increases. Since infancy, mind and body are interconnected in shared growth as connected as DNA strands.

However It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that my mind and body might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness may employ my physical self to retain and manifest elements that my psyche deems unwanted or intolerable. In analysis we realized that exist certain emotions that I worry are too much for me; in place of feeling these mentally, I unconsciously push them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a form of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process mentally. This was not a conscious choice, but after it was introduced to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and insecurity and rage and terror could be felt and put into words instead of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from indigestion today.

The most severe episode I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went a general practitioner, who arranged all sorts of scans and tests, but everything was medically abnormal. It was another doctor who suggested that the root could be psychological. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I also felt it to be true.

When a patient endures a physical symptom, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that it may have a mental root. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their symptom is imagined. And of course such cases occur – some face their pain dismissed or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it could be that the corporeal issues exist – no question – and the source is emotional, the inner mind utilizing the physique to convey emotional hurt or fury or whatever emotion the mind cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our feelings only has value only through expression through the body. We often undervalue our minds on a personal level, collectively and culturally; why else would we tolerate the appalling killing-off of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have shown me that a better life is unattainable while caught unawares in patterns of interaction, inside us and with others, that originate in devaluation, manipulation and dealings. Such patterns are often easier to spot “externally” in broader culture. It may be less comfortable to reflect on where they come from, and to recognise these shapes inside us and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our mental lives.

But persistence pays off. After donning my jogging shoes back on following many years, heading out not for bodily change, or to get rid of a sensation, or to beat a running record, {it