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I have just returned from a jog. It’s surprising to admit those words. I believe it could have been many years since my last. Yet I recently discovered that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to do sweaty exercise frequently.

For the first time ever in living memory that the driving force to work out has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I exercised because I wanted to slim down. At times I ran to manage my anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I ran because I sought to get better at running. This was the meaning to me back then to create an improved existence.

Running for a different reason now got me thinking about the ways I’ve related with my physical self throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I transition from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its roles and the aims it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body is me, it is my existence, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been discussed over the centuries about the split of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What resonated most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are innately connected from the beginning, because physical development necessitates mental growth and conversely. A baby’s bodily experiences – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate consciousness to cultivate the ability to perceive hunger as a sensation that can be sated by eating; and the emotional comfort and contentment repeatedly brought by feed after feed feeds the infant’s psyche in the same way the milk sustains them corporally. So too mental events – for instance the urge to rise and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Since infancy, mind and body are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as connected as DNA strands.

Yet I have noticed, in treatment with my therapist, that my mind and body may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness may employ my physical self to retain and express aspects that my consciousness considers unwanted or intolerable. During therapy we’ve become aware how exist certain emotions that I fear are too much for me; in place of feeling these in my mind, I subconsciously push them to my physical self, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to my diet, but was a form of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to awareness by my analyst, and my fear and vulnerability and rage and panic could be felt and expressed verbally rather than converted to corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I rarely suffer from stomach problems now.

The toughest period I experienced this intense reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I believed I was losing my mental stability. I visited to the GP, who scheduled all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found physically wrong. It turned out to be a different physician who told me that the root could be psychological. My analyst concurred. I was stunned, but I also knew it was correct.

If an individual experiences a physical symptom, they might feel insulted if told that it may have a psychological cause. They can experience like disrespect, hearing that their illness isn’t real. And of course that does happen – people can have their symptoms dismissed or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it could be that the bodily signs exist – certainly – and the cause is emotional, the subconscious employing the physique to manifest emotional hurt or rage or whichever sentiment awareness is unable to bear. At times, we may believe our emotions only has value when it is expressed in physical form. We persistently neglect our mental states personally, collectively and within our culture; why else would we tolerate the terrible reduction of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Personal insights have shown me that a better life cannot be created while caught unawares in patterns of interaction, internally and in relationships, that are rooted in disregard, manipulation and exchange. These dynamics are often easier to identify “out there” in wider society. It’s likely harder to consider how they got out there, and to identify these forms personally and among loved ones, in the workings of our minds.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. After donning my running shoes again following many years, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to eliminate a sensation, or to surpass a running record, {it