🔗 Share this article

I recently came back from jogging. It’s shocking to admit those words. It seems it was likely many years since I last did so. But I recently discovered that I have elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. During earlier years, I exercised because I wanted to lose weight. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I ran because I wanted to enhance at running. It signified the meaning to me at that time to build a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I progress from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Until today, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my life, instead of something that produces results.

Much has been explored through history about the split of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis here. What I’ve found most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical maturation requires psychological development and the reverse is true. A baby’s bodily experiences – such as the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the brain to build the capacity to recognise hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment supports the young mind in the same way the milk nourishes them corporally. So too emotional occurrences – like the wish to stand up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are why and how muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are intertwined in mutual development as integrated as a double helix.

But It’s become clear, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and more exploitative. My psyche might utilize my body to store and display aspects that my psyche deems undesirable or unacceptable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how there are certain emotions that I am afraid are too much for me; instead of experiencing them mentally, I unconsciously force them into bodily form, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I used to get this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with my diet, but acted as a type of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I was unable to process mentally. This was not an intentional act, but when it was brought to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and vulnerability and rage and alarm could be felt and expressed verbally in place of converted to corporeal symptoms, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion now.

The worst time I had this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my mental stability. I visited to the GP, who organised various diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It was another doctor who informed me that the origin might be emotional. My therapist did not disagree. I was stunned, but I also felt it to be true.

When a patient experiences a physical symptom, they can be offended if told that it could have a mental root. It can seem like disrespect, being told that their illness is imagined. Certainly that does happen – some face their suffering ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it might be that the bodily signs are real – no question – and the source is mental, the unconscious employing the body to convey some pain or fury or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we may believe our emotions only has value when it is expressed in physical form. We often undervalue our psychological well-being on a personal level, as a society and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the terrible killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that an improved existence cannot be built if we remain trapped unawares in ways of relating, within ourselves and socially, that stem from disregard, exploitation and dealings. These dynamics tend to be simpler to recognize “in the world” in wider society. It’s likely less comfortable to consider where they come from, and to recognise these forms inside us and in intimate connections, in the dynamics of our minds.

But it’s valuable to continue. When I put my jogging shoes back on post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get bodily change, or to get rid of a feeling, or to improve a 5km time, {it