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I just got back from a run. I’m amazed to admit those words. I think it could have been many years since my last. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts regularly.

For the first time ever in my life that the reason to be active has been my physical health. In my youth, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I exercised because I wanted to enhance with jogging. That represented what it meant to me at that time to build a better life.

Exercising with new motivation at present got me thinking about the methods I’ve connected with my physique over my lifetime and how this is changing as I move from being a young person to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not truly. I’ve appreciated it just for its capabilities and the objectives it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5K run. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than something that produces results.

Much has been written for ages about the separation between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most compelling is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because physical maturation demands psychological development and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the mind to develop the skill to recognise hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and fulfillment consistently provided by meal after meal nourishes the child’s mind just as the food fuels them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the urge to stand up and reach for something, and the resolve to persist through effort – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as integrated as a double helix.

Yet I have noticed, in treatment with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my physique to retain and manifest elements that my psyche considers unacceptable or unacceptable. During therapy we realized that exist specific feelings that I worry I can’t handle; in place of experiencing them mentally, I unintentionally force them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I often had this as indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but was a kind of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I couldn’t digest in my mind. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but after it was introduced into my consciousness in sessions, and my dread and insecurity and frustration and terror could be felt and put into words in place of transformed into physical sensation, it disappeared. I rarely suffer with digestive issues currently.

The worst time I endured this intense reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I visited a general practitioner, who arranged various scans and tests, but everything was medically abnormal. The situation was an alternate medic who suggested that the origin might be emotional. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was stunned, but I also knew it was accurate.

If an individual is suffering a physical symptom, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that it may have an emotional origin. They can experience like disrespect, hearing that their illness is fabricated. And of course such cases occur – people can have their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the corporeal issues are genuine – no question – and the cause is mental, the unconscious employing the physical self to manifest some pain or fury or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. Sometimes, we may believe our emotions matters solely when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, in social contexts and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the terrible reduction of psychological therapies through health services?

My experiences have shown me that a better life cannot be created while caught without realization in modes of connection, inside us and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, exploitation and transaction. Such patterns are often easier to identify “externally” in the general public. It’s likely more challenging to reflect on where they come from, and to see these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our minds.

Yet it’s worth persevering. After donning my running shoes again after such a long decade, venturing out not to get a better body, or to eliminate a feeling, or to improve a personal best, {it