🔗 Share this article

I recently came back from jogging. It’s shocking to state this fact. I think it was likely ten years since the previous time. Yet I found out recently that I have slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in living memory that the driving force to exercise has been my physical health. When I was younger, I exercised because I aimed to be thinner. At times I ran to manage my anxiety – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I ran because I aimed to improve in running. It signified the meaning to me back then to build an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physique over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not truly. I’ve prized it just for its roles and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier 5K run. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been explored through history about the separation between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing now. What resonated most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected right from the start, because bodily growth necessitates mental growth and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the mind to build the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by nourishment; and the psychological solace and contentment repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind similar to the nutrition sustains them physically. Likewise mental events – like the urge to rise and attain a goal, and the resolve to persist through effort – are the reason and method physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interconnected in mutual development as unified as a double helix.

However I have noticed, during therapy with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my physical self to store and express aspects that my mind views unacceptable or intolerable. During therapy we realized how there are particular emotional states that I am afraid I can’t handle; instead of experiencing them psychologically, I unintentionally force them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I often had digestive discomfort – not connected to my diet, but was a form of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced into my consciousness through therapy, and my dread and vulnerability and anger and terror became palpable and expressed verbally in place of changed into bodily feelings, it vanished. I seldom experience with digestive issues today.

The toughest period I endured this intense reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I believed I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited to the GP, who arranged various scans and tests, but there was nothing corporally problematic. It was a different physician who informed me that the cause could be psychological. My therapist concurred. I was surprised, but I also knew it to be true.

When a patient experiences a bodily issue, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be a mental root. They might feel this as being disrespected, hearing that their condition is imagined. And of course that does happen – some face their pain discounted or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the cause is emotional, the unconscious using the body to express certain suffering or anger or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we might assume our experience matters solely when it is expressed through the body. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being personally, collectively and within our culture; how else do we accept the terrible reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have taught me that a better life cannot be created when we are stuck without realization in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and with others, that stem from devaluation, use and dealings. These dynamics are frequently more straightforward to recognize “externally” in the general public. It may be harder to think about how they got out there, and to identify these shapes inside us and among loved ones, in the workings of our psyches.

But it’s worth persevering. When I put my running shoes again following many years, going outside without aiming for bodily change, or to eliminate an emotion, or to improve a 5km time, {it