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I have just returned from a jog. It’s surprising to write this fact. I believe it might have been ten years since the previous time. However I found out recently that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise regularly.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to exercise has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I aimed to lose weight. I also jogged to manage nervousness – I was merely escaping from the worry, without confronting it. At other times, I exercised because I wanted to enhance at running. This was what it meant to me then to create a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason now got me thinking about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physical self over my lifetime and its transformation as I move from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it only for its roles and the aims it provided: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker 5km. Previously, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it embodies my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been written through history about the separation of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis 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 maturation requires psychological development and vice versa. A baby’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – propel consciousness to develop the capacity to recognise hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and fulfillment regularly delivered by meal after meal supports the infant’s psyche similar to the nutrition sustains them bodily. Likewise mental events – such as the wish to rise and grab an object, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, mind and body are interlinked in shared growth as unified as a double helix.

But I have noticed, in treatment with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique can be in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness might utilize my physique to hold and display things that my mind deems unacceptable or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware that there are certain emotions that I fear are too much for me; in place of sensing them mentally, I unintentionally force them to my physical self, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I often had this as indigestion – unrelated to my diet, but represented a type of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle psychologically. It wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness in sessions, and my fear and sensitivity and frustration and panic were experienced and put into words instead of transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion today.

The toughest period I had this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my sanity. I visited my doctor, who scheduled all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but everything was medically abnormal. The situation was another doctor who informed me that the origin may be psychological. My therapist agreed. I was shocked, but I also knew it to be true.

When a patient endures a bodily issue, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be a mental root. They might feel like disrespect, being told that their illness is fabricated. And of course it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their suffering discounted or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it’s possible that the corporeal issues exist – without doubt – and the origin is mental, the subconscious using the physical self to manifest certain suffering or fury or whatever emotion the conscious self is unable to bear. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions only has value when it is expressed through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being personally, as a society and within our culture; why else would we tolerate the appalling elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

My experiences have shown me that a better life is unattainable while caught without realization in patterns of interaction, inside us and socially, that stem from devaluation, manipulation and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to spot “in the world” in wider society. It’s perhaps harder to reflect on their origins, and to identify these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our minds.

However persistence pays off. When I put my running shoes once more post a long hiatus, heading out not to get a better body, or to get rid of a feeling, or to beat a 5km time, {it