🔗 Share this article

I recently came back from a run. It’s shocking to admit those words. I think it might have been ten years since my last. But I found out recently that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that the reason to work out has been my physical health. When I was younger, I ran because I desired to lose weight. I also jogged to manage my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, without confronting it. Sometimes, I exercised because I aimed to get better with jogging. This was the definition to me then to develop an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation currently sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. I believe not I’ve honored my own body, not deep down. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; running a faster 5km. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it embodies my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

Much has been discussed for ages about the split between body and mind – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What resonated most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected from the beginning, because physical maturation demands psychological development and conversely. The infant’s physical sensations – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the brain to cultivate the skill to perceive hunger as a sensation that can be sated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and contentment regularly delivered by meal after meal nourishes the infant’s psyche in the same way the nutrition fuels them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the wish to stand up and reach for something, and the determination to try again and again – are why and how muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in shared growth as integrated as DNA strands.

But I have noticed, during therapy with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my physical self to store and express things that my mind views undesirable or intolerable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how exist specific feelings that I fear I cannot bear; instead of sensing them mentally, I subconsciously force them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but acted as a form of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I failed to handle psychologically. This was not a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to my attention in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and anger and terror could be felt and expressed verbally rather than transformed into bodily feelings, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I experienced this intense reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I felt I was slipping away from my mind. I went a general practitioner, who arranged various diagnostic procedures, but everything was medically abnormal. The situation was a different physician who told me that the root may be psychological. My therapist agreed. I was stunned, but I also felt it to be true.

Whenever someone experiences a bodily issue, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience like disrespect, the idea that their illness isn’t real. And of course such cases occur – some face their symptoms discounted or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are genuine – without doubt – and the origin is mental, the subconscious using the physique to convey emotional hurt or anger or any feeling awareness fails to handle. At times, it’s easy to think our feelings matters solely only through expression in physical form. We continually disrespect our minds personally, as a society and culturally; how else do we accept the shocking killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

Life lessons have taught me that an improved existence cannot be created if we remain trapped unconsciously in patterns of interaction, inside us and with others, that stem from disrespect, manipulation and exchange. Such patterns tend to be simpler to recognize “out there” in broader culture. It’s likely harder to consider where they come from, and to recognise these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our psyches.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes again post a long hiatus, heading out not to get a better body, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a 5km time, {it