🔗 Share this article

I recently came back from a run. It’s surprising to admit this fact. It seems it could have been many years since I last did so. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts regularly.

This is the first time in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. In my youth, I jogged because I wanted to lose weight. I also jogged to cure nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from those feelings, not addressing it. On other occasions, I jogged because I wanted to get better at running. This was what it meant to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve related with my physique during my years and how this is changing as I transition from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve valued my physical form, not truly. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the objectives it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker 5km. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body is me, it embodies my life, rather than something that produces results.

A lot has been explored through history about the division between body and mind – a topic you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis here. What resonated most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected right from the start, because physical development requires mental growth and vice versa. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the brain to build the ability to identify hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment regularly delivered by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind in the same way the nutrition nourishes them physically. So too psychological experiences – like the urge to get up and grab an object, and the determination to try again and again – are the cause and means the body develops power. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in shared growth as unified as DNA strands.

Yet I’ve observed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My mind might utilize my body to hold and manifest aspects that my mind considers unwanted or intolerable. In my sessions it emerged how exist particular emotional states that I worry I cannot bear; rather than experiencing them mentally, I subconsciously force them to my physical self, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to food intake, but represented a type of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process in my mind. This was not a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to my attention through therapy, and my anxiety and sensitivity and rage and panic became palpable and articulated rather than converted to physical sensation, it resolved. I rarely suffer with digestive issues today.

The worst time I experienced this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my mental stability. I visited to the GP, who arranged multiple scans and tests, but everything was physically wrong. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the root may be psychological. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also felt it was accurate.

When a patient endures a physical symptom, it can be upsetting if told that there might be an emotional origin. They might feel as invalidation, hearing that their illness is fabricated. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it could be that the physical symptoms are real – no question – and the source is emotional, the inner mind using the physique to manifest certain suffering or anger or whatever emotion the conscious self cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our feelings matters solely only through expression as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our mental states as individuals, as a society and culturally; why else do we accept the shocking reduction of mental health treatments on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that a better life cannot be built when we are stuck without realization in ways of relating, internally and socially, that are rooted in disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These dynamics tend to be simpler to spot “in the world” in broader culture. It’s likely harder to reflect on how they got out there, and to recognise these shapes within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet it’s worth persevering. After donning my jogging shoes again after such a long decade, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of a sensation, or to surpass a running record, {it