🔗 Share this article

I just got back from a run. It’s shocking to admit this fact. I think it was likely many years since I last did so. However I found out recently that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in living memory that the driving force to be active has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to be thinner. At times I ran to cure my anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, not addressing it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to enhance with jogging. That represented what it meant to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation at present sparked reflection about the ways I’ve related with my body throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I move from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve respected my physical form, not deep down. I’ve valued it solely for its roles and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; completing a speedier five kilometers. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my existence, instead of something that produces results.

Much has been discussed for ages about the separation between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What I’ve found most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are developmentally integrated from birth, because physical maturation demands psychological development and conversely. The newborn’s bodily experiences – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the mind to build the ability to recognise hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by a feed; and the psychological solace and contentment regularly delivered by repeated nourishment nourishes the infant’s psyche just as the food nourishes them corporally. So too mental events – like the wish to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are why and how the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as connected as a double helix.

However I have noticed, in sessions with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a distinct connection – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche may employ my body to store and manifest things that my consciousness considers unwanted or intolerable. In my sessions it emerged that exist particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; in place of feeling these mentally, I subconsciously force them to my physical self, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – unrelated to my diet, but was a type of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I failed to handle in my mind. This was not a conscious choice, but when it was brought to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and alarm became palpable and expressed verbally rather than transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I experienced this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted my doctor, who organised various scans and tests, but everything was medically abnormal. The situation was another doctor who told me that the cause could be emotional. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was stunned, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting if told that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, the idea that their illness isn’t real. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their suffering discounted or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it might be that the corporeal issues are real – no question – and the origin is psychological, the inner mind using the physical self to manifest certain suffering or fury or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. Occasionally, we might assume our emotions only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being personally, collectively and culturally; for what reason do we accept the shocking reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created if we remain trapped without realization in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and with others, that stem from disregard, manipulation and transaction. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to spot “in the world” in broader culture. It may be less comfortable to reflect on their origins, and to recognise these forms within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our minds.

Yet persistence pays off. Upon wearing my trainers again following many years, heading out without aiming for bodily change, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a personal best, {it