🔗 Share this article

I have just returned from jogging. I’m amazed to write those words. I think it was likely a decade since my last. But It came to my attention that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in my existence that the driving force to be active has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I exercised because I wanted to slim down. At times I ran to alleviate nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, not addressing it. On other occasions, I jogged because I wanted to improve in running. It signified what it meant to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the methods I’ve related with my body throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve honored my own body, not deep down. I’ve prized it just for its roles and the purposes it provided: seeking approval; avoiding feelings; completing a speedier five kilometers. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it is my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been explored through history about the split between body and mind – a topic you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize now. What resonated most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are innately connected from the beginning, because bodily growth demands psychological development and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the brain to cultivate the skill to recognise hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and contentment regularly delivered by meal after meal feeds the young mind just as the food sustains them bodily. So too emotional occurrences – like the wish to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to try again and again – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Starting at birth, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a double helix.

Yet It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that my mind and body may exist in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche might utilize my body to store and display aspects that my consciousness deems unwanted or unbearable. During therapy we realized how exist specific feelings that I worry I can’t handle; in place of experiencing them mentally, I unconsciously force them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I often had digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but acted as a type of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest in my mind. This wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought into my consciousness through therapy, and my dread and sensitivity and anger and alarm were experienced and articulated rather than converted to corporeal symptoms, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues today.

The most severe episode I experienced this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. I believed I was forfeiting my sanity. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged all sorts of examinations and assessments, but there was nothing physically wrong. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the root may be mental. My analyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also knew it was correct.

Whenever someone experiences a physical symptom, they can be offended at the suggestion that it could have a mental root. It can seem like disrespect, hearing that their condition is fabricated. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – some face their suffering discounted or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – without doubt – and the origin is emotional, the subconscious employing the body to convey some pain or rage or whatever emotion awareness cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our experience is only valid if manifested through the body. We continually disrespect our minds on a personal level, as a society and culturally; why else do we accept the shocking reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

Life lessons have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built when we are stuck unawares in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that originate in disrespect, exploitation and dealings. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to recognize “in the world” in the general public. It’s perhaps more challenging to think about where they come from, and to recognise these patterns within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our minds.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes back on after such a long decade, venturing out without aiming for a better body, or to eliminate a feeling, or to surpass a running record, {it