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I recently came back from a run. It’s surprising to admit this fact. It seems it might have been many years since my last. But I found out recently that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to be active has been my physical health. When I was younger, I jogged because I desired to lose weight. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, not addressing it. On other occasions, I ran because I aimed to enhance at running. That represented what it meant to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent at present sparked reflection about the methods I’ve related with my physique during my years and how this is changing as I transition from being a young person to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Until today, I failed to grasp that my body is me, it is my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been written over the centuries about the division involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing in this piece. What resonated most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because bodily growth demands emotional evolution and the reverse is true. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – drive consciousness to build the skill to recognise hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind similar to the milk nourishes them physically. Similarly mental events – like the desire to stand up and grab an object, and the determination to persist through effort – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in mutual development as connected as a spiral.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in a distinct connection – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My psyche may employ my physical self to retain and manifest elements that my psyche views undesirable or intolerable. During therapy we realized how there are certain emotions that I fear are too much for me; in place of feeling these in my mind, I unconsciously shift them to my physical self, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but represented a form of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I was unable to process in my mind. This wasn’t a deliberate decision, but once it was raised into my consciousness through therapy, and my fear and vulnerability and frustration and alarm could be felt and expressed verbally instead of changed into bodily feelings, it vanished. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The worst time I endured this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was forfeiting my sanity. I went my doctor, who arranged all sorts of examinations and assessments, but no issues were found medically abnormal. The situation was another doctor who told me that the root may be mental. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was shocked, but I recognized it was correct.

Whenever someone is suffering a physical symptom, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it could have a mental root. They might feel this as being disrespected, hearing that their illness isn’t real. And of course that does happen – people can have their pain dismissed or incorrectly identified. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms are real – no question – and the origin is psychological, the unconscious employing the physique to express some pain or anger or any feeling the conscious self cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our experience only has value when it is expressed in physical form. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being as individuals, collectively and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the shocking reduction of mental health treatments through health services?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle is unattainable while caught unawares in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and in relationships, that originate in devaluation, manipulation and exchange. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to recognize “externally” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to consider where they come from, and to see these patterns inside us and among loved ones, in the economy of our psyches.

Yet persistence pays off. Upon wearing my trainers again following many years, venturing out not to get a better body, or to escape an emotion, or to improve a 5km time, {it