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I just got back from a run. It’s surprising to write that statement. I think it was likely ten years since my last. But I found out recently that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to do sweaty exercise regularly.

This is the first time in living memory that the reason to be active has been my physical health. In my youth, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I ran because I sought to improve in running. It signified the meaning to me back then to develop a better life.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the ways I’ve connected with my physique during my years and the way it’s evolving as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its functions and the objectives it served me: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Until today, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my life, instead of something that produces results.

A great deal has been explored for ages about the split between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What resonated most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated from birth, because physical maturation requires emotional evolution and conversely. The newborn’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the brain to develop the skill to perceive hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction repeatedly brought by meal after meal feeds the infant’s psyche in the same way the nutrition sustains them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – such as the wish to get up and attain a goal, and the determination to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as integrated as a spiral.

However I have noticed, during therapy with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My mind can use my physique to retain and display aspects that my psyche views unacceptable or unbearable. In analysis we’ve become aware how there are certain emotions that I worry are too much for me; rather than sensing them mentally, I unintentionally shift them into bodily form, where they remain as bodily signs.

I used to get digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with my diet, but acted as a form of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process mentally. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to awareness through therapy, and my fear and sensitivity and rage and alarm were experienced and articulated in place of converted to corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I seldom experience from stomach problems now.

The worst time I experienced this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was losing my sanity. I consulted my doctor, who scheduled all sorts of scans and tests, but there was nothing medically abnormal. It turned out to be a different physician who told me that the root may be psychological. My therapist agreed. I was stunned, but I recognized it was accurate.

When a patient endures a physical symptom, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that it could have a psychological cause. They might feel like disrespect, hearing that their symptom is imagined. Certainly such cases occur – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the bodily signs are real – no question – and the cause is psychological, the unconscious using the body to convey certain suffering or fury or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we may believe our feelings is only valid if manifested in physical form. We continually disrespect our minds personally, in social contexts and culturally; how else would we tolerate the shocking reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

My experiences have taught me that an improved existence cannot be created while caught unawares in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that stem from disregard, use and dealings. Such patterns are often easier to spot “out there” in broader culture. It may be more challenging to think about where they come from, and to identify these patterns within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our mental lives.

But it’s worth persevering. Upon wearing my trainers again following many years, venturing out without aiming for bodily change, or to escape a sensation, or to improve a running record, {it