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I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to state those words. I think it might have been many years since I last did so. But I found out recently that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly.

This is the first time in my existence that my motivation to exercise has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I wanted to lose weight. At times I ran to alleviate my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I sought to get better at running. It signified what it meant to me back then to create a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent at present sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve related with my physical self throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I transition from early adulthood to middle age. I don’t think I’ve respected my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it only for its functions and the objectives it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5km. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it embodies my life, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written for ages about the separation of mind and body – a topic you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What I’ve found most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are innately connected right from the start, because physical development necessitates psychological development and conversely. A baby’s physical sensations – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – drive consciousness to develop the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that can be sated by eating; and the psychological solace and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the food nourishes them corporally. Similarly emotional occurrences – such as the urge to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in shared growth as connected as DNA strands.

Yet I have noticed, in treatment with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects can be in an alternate dynamic – a more separated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness might utilize my physique to hold and express elements that my psyche deems unacceptable or unbearable. In analysis it emerged how there are specific feelings that I fear are too much for me; rather than feeling these psychologically, I unconsciously shift them to my physical self, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I often had this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but was a type of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I failed to handle mentally. This was not a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and rage and panic could be felt and articulated rather than converted to bodily feelings, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from indigestion now.

The most severe episode I experienced this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. I felt I was forfeiting my mind. I went to the GP, who organised all sorts of examinations and assessments, but there was nothing medically abnormal. It was another doctor who told me that the cause may be mental. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was stunned, but I also knew it was accurate.

If an individual experiences a bodily issue, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that it could have an emotional origin. It can seem like disrespect, hearing that their symptom is imagined. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their symptoms ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it might be that the physical symptoms are real – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the subconscious utilizing the physique to convey certain suffering or anger or whichever sentiment awareness fails to handle. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions only has value when it is expressed through the body. We continually disrespect our minds on a personal level, as a society and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the terrible reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

My experiences have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These interactions are often easier to identify “out there” in the general public. It’s perhaps less comfortable to think about where they come from, and to see these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our minds.

However it’s valuable to continue. After donning my running shoes once more after such a long decade, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to eliminate a sensation, or to improve a personal best, {it