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I have just returned from jogging. I’m amazed to state those words. I think it could have been a decade since the previous time. But I found out recently that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to be active has been my physical health. During earlier years, I jogged because I wanted to slim down. I also jogged to cure feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the anxiety, without confronting it. On other occasions, I jogged because I aimed to enhance at running. That represented the meaning to me then to build a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body over my lifetime and its transformation as I progress from being a young person to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my own body, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it only for its functions and the objectives it provided: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; running a faster 5K run. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than a tool for outcomes.

Much has been written through history about the division involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What resonated most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are innately connected right from the start, because bodily growth demands psychological development and conversely. A baby’s corporeal feelings – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – propel consciousness to build the capacity to identify hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind just as the nutrition sustains them bodily. So too mental events – for instance the urge to stand up and grab an object, and the persistence to try again and again – are why and how the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as connected as DNA strands.

But I have noticed, in sessions with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique can be in a distinct connection – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my physical self to retain and display elements that my psyche views unwanted or intolerable. In my sessions we’ve become aware that there are specific feelings that I fear are too much for me; rather than feeling these in my mind, I unintentionally push them into my body, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I often had digestive discomfort – not connected to my diet, but represented a kind of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest mentally. This was not a conscious choice, but after it was introduced to awareness through therapy, and my anxiety and sensitivity and anger and panic became palpable and put into words instead of converted to corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I rarely suffer from indigestion currently.

The toughest period I experienced this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was losing my sanity. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged various examinations and assessments, but there was nothing corporally problematic. The situation was another doctor who informed me that the origin might be emotional. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was surprised, but I also felt it to be true.

When a patient endures a bodily issue, they can be offended if told that there might be a psychological cause. They might feel this as being disrespected, being told that their illness is imagined. And of course it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it might be that the physical symptoms are genuine – without doubt – and the origin is psychological, the unconscious using the body to express emotional hurt or rage or whatever emotion the mind fails to handle. At times, we may believe our experience only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our mental states personally, in social contexts and within our culture; for what reason do we accept the appalling elimination of mental health treatments on the NHS?

My experiences have shown me that an improved existence is unattainable while caught unawares in modes of connection, inside us and with others, that originate in disregard, exploitation and transaction. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to recognize “out there” in the general public. It may be more challenging to think about how they got out there, and to see these forms within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our mental lives.

Yet it’s worth persevering. After donning my jogging shoes once more after such a long decade, heading out without aiming for physical improvement, or to eliminate a feeling, or to beat a personal best, {it