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I just got back from jogging. I’m amazed to admit this fact. I think it might have been many years since my last. Yet I recently discovered that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to work out has been my bodily well-being. During earlier years, I ran because I aimed to be thinner. I’ve also run to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I exercised because I aimed to improve in running. It signified the meaning to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason now sparked reflection about the ways I’ve interacted with my physical self over my lifetime and its transformation as I move from being a young person to midlife. I believe not I’ve valued my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it only for its roles and the purposes it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5K run. Up to now, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.

Much has been discussed over the centuries about the split of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing in this piece. What I’ve found most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and vice versa. The infant’s corporeal feelings – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate consciousness to cultivate the ability to perceive hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by a feed; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment regularly delivered by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the food sustains them bodily. Similarly mental events – like the wish to rise and grab an object, and the resolve to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interconnected in mutual development as integrated as a spiral.

But I have noticed, during therapy with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my body to store and display things that my consciousness deems undesirable or unbearable. During therapy we’ve become aware that exist specific feelings that I am afraid I can’t handle; in place of sensing them psychologically, I unintentionally shift them into bodily form, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with my diet, but acted as a type of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought into my consciousness through therapy, and my fear and insecurity and rage and terror became palpable and put into words rather than converted to physical sensation, it resolved. I seldom experience with digestive issues today.

The most severe episode I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my mind. I consulted to the GP, who scheduled all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing corporally problematic. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the root may be psychological. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone endures a corporeal problem, they can be offended if told that it may have a mental root. It can seem as invalidation, hearing that their illness is imagined. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their symptoms dismissed or incorrectly identified. But in some cases it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – no question – and the cause is psychological, the inner mind employing the body to express emotional hurt or fury or any feeling the conscious self is unable to bear. Occasionally, we might assume our emotions is only valid when it is expressed in physical form. We persistently neglect our minds personally, in social contexts and as a culture; for what reason can we allow the appalling reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

Personal insights have taught me that an improved existence cannot be built while caught without realization in patterns of interaction, inside us and socially, that stem from disregard, manipulation and dealings. These dynamics are often easier to recognize “externally” in wider society. It’s likely less comfortable to consider how they got out there, and to identify these patterns inside us and among loved ones, in the workings of our mental lives.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. When I put my trainers again post a long hiatus, heading out not to get a better body, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it