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I have just returned from a run. I’m amazed to admit those words. I believe it might have been many years since my last. But I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my life that the reason to be active has been my health status. In my youth, I exercised because I wanted to be thinner. I also jogged to manage feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, without confronting it. On other occasions, I ran because I aimed to get better in running. It signified what it meant to me back then to build a better life.

Jogging with altered intent currently sparked reflection about the ways I’ve related with my physical self during my years and how this is changing as I move from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5K run. Until today, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been explored through history about the division between body and mind – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical development demands mental growth and vice versa. A baby’s corporeal feelings – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel consciousness to develop the ability to perceive hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by a feed; and the psychological solace and contentment regularly delivered by feed after feed supports the young mind in the same way the nutrition sustains them bodily. Similarly psychological experiences – for instance the urge to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Since infancy, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as unified as a double helix.

But I’ve observed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My mind can use my physique to store and express elements that my consciousness views unwanted or unbearable. During therapy we realized how there are specific feelings that I worry I cannot bear; rather than sensing them psychologically, I subconsciously force them into my body, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but was a kind of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I failed to handle mentally. This was not a conscious choice, but once it was raised to my attention through therapy, and my dread and sensitivity and rage and panic became palpable and expressed verbally instead of converted to corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I seldom experience from indigestion today.

The toughest period I endured this intense reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I believed I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted to the GP, who arranged all sorts of examinations and assessments, but everything was physically wrong. It turned out to be a different physician who suggested that the origin could be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I recognized it to be true.

When a patient experiences a physical symptom, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be an emotional origin. They might feel as invalidation, hearing that their condition is fabricated. Certainly such cases occur – some face their pain discounted or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it’s possible that the bodily signs exist – no question – and the origin is psychological, the unconscious using the physical self to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment awareness cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our experience matters solely if manifested through the body. We often undervalue our mental states on a personal level, collectively and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the terrible killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Life lessons have taught me that a better life cannot be created if we remain trapped without realization in modes of connection, internally and socially, that originate in disrespect, exploitation and exchange. These interactions are often easier to spot “in the world” in the general public. It may be more challenging to consider how they got out there, and to recognise these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our psyches.

However it’s worth persevering. After donning my trainers back on following many years, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to escape an emotion, or to surpass a personal best, {it