🔗 Share this article

I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to write those words. It seems it might have been ten years since the previous time. Yet I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my life that my motivation to exercise has been my physical health. When I was younger, I jogged because I wanted to be thinner. At times I ran to cure feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I jogged because I aimed to get better in running. This was the meaning to me at that time to build an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physique during my years and the way it’s evolving as I move from early adulthood to midlife. I don’t think I’ve valued my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it solely for its capabilities and the aims it provided: seeking approval; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5km. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, as opposed to something that produces results.

A great deal has been explored for ages about the separation between body and mind – a topic it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize here. What I’ve found most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected right from the start, because physical development demands mental growth and the reverse is true. The newborn’s bodily experiences – like the physical sensation of hunger – propel the brain to build the ability to perceive hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by eating; and the emotional comfort and fulfillment repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment supports the infant’s psyche just as the milk nourishes them physically. Similarly mental events – such as the desire to get up and attain a goal, and the persistence to persist through effort – are why and how physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in mutual development as unified as a spiral.

But I have noticed, in sessions with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My psyche can use my physical self to store and express elements that my consciousness deems undesirable or unacceptable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how there are particular emotional states that I worry I can’t handle; instead of sensing them mentally, I unintentionally shift them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – not connected to food intake, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the harsher emotions I was unable to process mentally. This was not a conscious choice, but after it was introduced to awareness through therapy, and my dread and insecurity and frustration and alarm could be felt and put into words rather than changed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues now.

The most severe episode I had this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I believed I was losing my mind. I visited my doctor, who scheduled various examinations and assessments, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It turned out to be another doctor who suggested that the root might be mental. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was surprised, but I also knew it was accurate.

If an individual is suffering a physical symptom, it can be upsetting if told that it could have an emotional origin. It can seem as invalidation, being told that their illness isn’t real. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – some face their pain dismissed or incorrectly identified. But in some cases it’s possible that the bodily signs are real – without doubt – and the source is mental, the subconscious using the body to manifest certain suffering or anger or whichever sentiment the conscious self fails to handle. At times, it’s easy to think our emotions only has value only through expression as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our mental states on a personal level, collectively and within our culture; why else can we allow the shocking killing-off of mental health treatments on the NHS?

My experiences have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built when we are stuck unawares in ways of relating, within ourselves and with others, that are rooted in disregard, use and transaction. Such patterns are often easier to spot “externally” in the general public. It’s perhaps harder to consider where they come from, and to see these forms within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our minds.

But persistence pays off. When I put my trainers back on after such a long decade, heading out not to get bodily change, or to eliminate an emotion, or to improve a running record, {it