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I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to admit those words. I believe it might have been many years since my last. Yet I found out recently that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts regularly.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to be active has been my bodily well-being. During earlier years, I ran because I desired to lose weight. At times I ran to manage nervousness – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, without confronting it. On other occasions, I exercised because I aimed to improve with jogging. It signified the definition to me then to build a better life.

Running for a different reason currently got me thinking about the methods I’ve related with my physical self throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its capabilities and the purposes it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5km. Previously, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been written through history about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing now. What resonated most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and vice versa. The infant’s physical sensations – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the brain to cultivate the skill to identify hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind similar to the nutrition fuels them physically. Likewise emotional occurrences – such as the desire to rise and grab an object, and the determination to persist through effort – are the reason and method the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a double helix.

However It’s become clear, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My psyche can use my physical self to hold and display things that my mind views unwanted or intolerable. In analysis it emerged that there are particular emotional states that I worry are too much for me; instead of feeling these in my mind, I unconsciously push them into bodily form, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but represented a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process in my mind. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised into my consciousness through therapy, and my fear and insecurity and frustration and panic could be felt and expressed verbally in place of converted to corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted my doctor, who scheduled multiple diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It was an alternate medic who suggested that the origin may be emotional. My analyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also felt it was accurate.

Whenever someone endures a bodily issue, they can be offended at the suggestion that it may have an emotional origin. They might feel this as being disrespected, being told that their illness is imagined. Naturally such cases occur – people can have their symptoms discounted or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are real – without doubt – and the source is mental, the inner mind employing the physique to manifest emotional hurt or rage or any feeling the mind cannot tolerate. At times, we may believe our experience only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our mental states as individuals, as a society and culturally; for what reason can we allow the shocking reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

My experiences have taught me that an improved existence is unattainable while caught unawares in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and transaction. These interactions are often easier to spot “in the world” in wider society. It may be less comfortable to consider where they come from, and to recognise these forms inside us and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our mental lives.

But it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes again after such a long decade, heading out not to get bodily change, or to eliminate a feeling, or to beat a personal best, {it