🔗 Share this article

I recently came back from jogging. I’m amazed to admit those words. It seems it was likely ten years since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise regularly.

For the first time ever in my existence that my motivation to exercise has been my health status. During earlier years, I exercised because I desired to lose weight. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, without confronting it. Sometimes, I exercised because I sought to get better at running. That represented the meaning to me then to develop a better life.

Exercising with new motivation at present got me thinking about the methods I’ve connected with my physique throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my own body, not truly. I’ve valued it just for its roles and the objectives it provided: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; running a faster five kilometers. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my existence, as opposed to something that produces results.

A lot has been explored over the centuries about the division of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What resonated most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are innately connected from the beginning, because physical development necessitates psychological development and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the brain to build the capacity to perceive hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment feeds the infant’s psyche in the same way the nutrition sustains them bodily. So too mental events – for instance 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 intertwined in mutual development as connected as a double helix.

However I have noticed, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience a different kind of relationship – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness may employ my physique to store and express aspects that my consciousness deems unwanted or unbearable. In analysis it emerged how exist particular emotional states that I am afraid I cannot bear; instead of sensing them psychologically, I unconsciously force them into bodily form, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – unrelated to my diet, but acted as a kind of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. This wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and vulnerability and frustration and panic could be felt and articulated rather than converted to physical sensation, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems currently.

The toughest period I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I went a general practitioner, who organised various diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. It turned out to be an alternate medic who suggested that the root might be emotional. My therapist agreed. I was stunned, but I also felt it to be true.

When a patient endures a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted if told that it may have a psychological cause. It can seem as invalidation, the idea that their symptom isn’t real. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – some face their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it might be that the corporeal issues are real – without doubt – and the source is psychological, the unconscious using the physical self to manifest some pain or fury or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. At times, we may believe our feelings only has value only through expression through the body. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, in social contexts and within our culture; why else do we accept the terrible reduction of mental health treatments on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that a better life cannot be created when we are stuck without realization in patterns of interaction, internally and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, exploitation and exchange. These dynamics are frequently more straightforward to identify “out there” in broader culture. It’s likely harder to think about their origins, and to see these shapes within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our minds.

But persistence pays off. Upon wearing my running shoes back on after such a long decade, going outside without aiming for a better body, or to escape a feeling, or to beat a personal best, {it