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I recently came back from a jog. It’s shocking to write this fact. I believe it could have been many years since my last. But I found out recently that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts regularly.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to work out has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I ran because I aimed to be thinner. I’ve also run to alleviate my anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, without confronting it. At other times, I exercised because I aimed to enhance with jogging. It signified what it meant to me back then to build a better life.

Running for a different reason currently prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve connected with my physique over my lifetime and how this is changing as I transition from youth to middle age. I don’t think I’ve respected my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it solely for its roles and the purposes it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5km. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, instead of something that produces results.

A lot has been written through history about the separation of mind and body – which you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are innately connected from the beginning, because physical development demands mental growth and conversely. The infant’s physical sensations – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate consciousness to cultivate the skill to recognise hunger as a sensation that can be sated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and contentment repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind just as the milk sustains them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the wish to stand up and attain a goal, and the persistence to try again and again – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are interlinked in shared growth as integrated as DNA strands.

But I’ve observed, in sessions with my analyst, that my mind and body may exist in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and somewhat abusive. My mind might utilize my body to store and express aspects that my consciousness deems unwanted or intolerable. In my sessions we realized how exist particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; instead of experiencing them in my mind, I subconsciously shift them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with my diet, but represented a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness through therapy, and my fear and sensitivity and rage and panic were experienced and put into words instead of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems currently.

The toughest period I experienced this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. It seemed I was slipping away from my mind. I visited my doctor, who arranged various scans and tests, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It was a different physician who told me that the origin may be emotional. My analyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also knew it was correct.

When a patient is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting if told that it may have a mental root. It can seem this as being disrespected, the idea that their illness is fabricated. Naturally such cases occur – some face their suffering dismissed or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it might be that the bodily signs are real – certainly – and the cause is psychological, the unconscious utilizing the body to convey certain suffering or rage or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. At times, we might assume our emotions only has value only through expression in physical form. We continually disrespect our mental states personally, collectively and culturally; how else would we tolerate the shocking elimination of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have taught me that a better life cannot be built while caught unawares in patterns of interaction, internally and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, use and exchange. Such patterns are often easier to spot “in the world” in wider society. It may be less comfortable to think about their origins, and to see these shapes personally and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our psyches.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my running shoes back on following many years, heading out without aiming for bodily change, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a 5km time, {it