\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span> have just got back from a run. I am shocked to write those words. I think it might have been a decade since my last. But I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and I\u2019ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly.<\/p>\n This is the first time in my life that my motivation to exercise has been my physical health. In my youth, I ran because I wanted to be thinner. I\u2019ve also run to cure my anxiety (and written about it \u2013 I was just running away from the anxiety, not addressing it). At other times, I ran because I wanted to get better at running. This was what it meant to me then to build a better life.<\/p>\n Running for a different reason now got me thinking about the ways I\u2019ve related to my body over my lifetime and how this is changing as I transition from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve respected my body, not deep down. I\u2019ve valued it only for its functions and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster (or, rather, a slightly less slow) 5km. Until today, I\u2019ve not understood that my body is me, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.<\/p>\n The unconscious uses the body to express some pain or rage or whatever emotion the mind cannot tolerate<\/p>\n A lot has been written over the centuries about the split (or not) between body and mind \u2013 which, you will be relieved to know, I\u2019m not going to precis here. What I\u2019ve found most compelling is Freud\u2019s understanding that mind and body are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical development demands psychological development and vice versa. The infant\u2019s bodily experiences \u2013 such as the physical sensation of hunger \u2013 propel the mind to develop the capacity to recognise hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed nourishes the child\u2019s mind just as the milk nourishes them physically. So too psychological experiences \u2013 such as the desire to stand up and reach for something, and the determination to try again and again \u2013 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.<\/p>\n But I have noticed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body can be in a different kind of relationship \u2013 one less integrated and more exploitative. My mind can use my body to store and express things that my mind deems unwanted or unacceptable. In my sessions we\u2019ve become aware of how there are particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; instead of feeling these in my mind, I unconsciously push them into my body, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.<\/p>\n I used to get this with indigestion \u2013 which had nothing to do with what I\u2019d eaten, but was a kind of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I couldn\u2019t digest in my mind. This was not a conscious choice, but when it was brought into my consciousness by my analyst, and my fear and vulnerability and anger and panic could be felt and put into words instead of transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. I rarely suffer from indigestion now.<\/p>\n The worst time I had this terrible acid reflux, I didn\u2019t sleep for several nights in a row. I felt I was losing my mind. I went to the GP, who organised all sorts of scans and tests, but there was nothing physically wrong. It was another doctor who told me that the cause might be psychological. My analyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also knew it to be true.<\/p>\n When a patient is suffering a physical symptom, they can be offended at the suggestion that it may have a psychological cause. They can experience this as being disrespected, hearing that their illness isn\u2019t real or they\u2019re making it up. And of course that does happen \u2013 people can have their pain dismissed or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms are real \u2013 no question \u2013 and the cause is psychological, the unconscious using the body to express some pain or rage or whatever emotion the mind cannot tolerate. At times, we might assume our experience only has value, can only be real, when it is expressed in physical form. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, as a society and as a culture; why else would we tolerate the appalling killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?<\/p>\n My experiences have taught me that a better life cannot be built when we are stuck unawares in ways of relating, within ourselves and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, exploitation and transaction. These dynamics are often easier to identify \u201cout there\u201d in wider society. It\u2019s perhaps less comfortable to think about how they got out there, and to recognise these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our minds.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s worth persevering. When I put my running shoes back on after such a long decade, heading out not to get a better body, or to get rid of a feeling, or to beat a 5km time, it felt quite different. Straightforward, less pressurised, more hopeful. I felt grounded in my awareness of my age and in wanting to look after this one precious life of mine. And when I got back and felt the ache in my muscles and the sweat on my face, I thought, I\u2019d better write a column about this before I miss my chance \u2013 because it may well be another decade before I do that again.<\/p>\n Moya Sarner is an NHS psychotherapist and the author of When I Grow Up \u2013 Conversations With Adults in Search of Adulthood<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have just got back from a run. I am shocked to write those words. I think it might have been a decade since my last. But I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and I\u2019ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly. This is the first time in my life that my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1868,335,37,613,337,1031,3059,1392],"class_list":{"0":"post-29464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-body","9":"tag-feel","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-heres","12":"tag-life","13":"tag-mental","14":"tag-mind","15":"tag-separate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}