026: seeing the good in others
finding community in the gym and how assuming positive intent makes it less mortifying to be known
Last month I met up with Gab, a friend I made at the beginning of the pandemic when everyone was desperate to find other ways of meeting people. There was nothing special about how we met—he added me on Facebook because we had enough mutual friends, and we didn’t hang out until the next year when lockdown measures became more forgiving. Gab and I had not seen or talked to each other in a while, but he would resurrect our chat every now and then if he had any pressing questions for me, most of which have been related to mental health.
We caught up, threw random life updates at each other, and my attention span was rewarded with a good grilled cheese sandwich and iced coffee at the café/bar, his treat because he worked there and felt that he owed me a little treat. He said that he wanted to see me because this conversation was better to be had beyond our phone screens. He spent the rest of our time recounting all the details that were crucial in giving him all the answers he knew I had about his current mental health dilemma.
This impression that people have of me—that I’m some kind of walking encyclopedia on mental health—always makes me feel the entire spectrum of human emotions. When it’s friends in real life acknowledging this, I feel appreciated knowing that they trust my opinion. People on the internet, however, it depends. Sometimes it feels good to be trusted, to have people take interest in what advice or insight I could contribute to the discussion. Other times it seems like people are waiting for me to slip up, to say something that gives them evidence that I’m a fraud.
But more often than not, I am treated like a customer service hotline for psychological help, strangers asking me if I know any therapists specializing in a particular mental health concern they have, are based in this city, and can do face-to-face or online consultations on these specific days. In these instances I feel confused by the assumption that my professional reach has that much breadth, that I must know every kind of person, every kind of specialist in the industry (I don’t, sorry—at least not yet?). I end up disappointing their hopes of personally being connected to the kind of professional they are looking for, as I always send them a link to a list of mental health resources that they can look into.
Even Gab tried to ask me that, if I knew anyone who could help him with this situation. I shrugged, telling him that I did not know any occupational therapists, but I would ask around and let him know. As I devoured the last bite of the grilled cheese sandwich, he said that he had to go to the gym which was not very far from the café. He invited me to sit in, perhaps to compensate for the brief chat we had. I hesitated a little too quickly, reasoning that I had to go. “You can just check it out,” he said, to which I thought: this must be some kind of trap. A trap for what? Beats me, but I believed the uncomfortable feeling even if it hardly made any sense.
When his previous relationship ended last year, Gab hit the kind of rock bottom that only the lack of labels could lead you to—a limbo that only ends once you dare see the truth of it. After months of letting the heartbreak weigh him down, he started going to the gym again, mostly out of spite. And that was where he took me: not to rock bottom, but this small gym managed by the couple who owns the bar that he works at. I was welcomed so warmly by them, TJ and Thea, both giving me a beso and saying that they had not seen me in ages. Even if I wasn’t close to either of them, the warm gesture wasn’t a surprise. Of course they had to be friendly, I thought to myself. It’s good for business.
I was introduced to the rest of the people at the gym before they began working out. What I found very strange was how they all worked out together—and I mean literally. Every part was a communal experience, from the warmup routine to the working sets to the cooldown. They were individuals of different sizes and experience and strength, making me wonder why they had to do it all together and wait for each other.
It was weird to me, because I’d always seen going to the gym as a ritual to be done alone. I started in 2017 when I had gained over 20 pounds after my worst depressive episode in college. I could feel myself taking up a lot more space, and it worried me how this would lead to more attention than I could stomach. I can vividly recall just how much shame I felt stepping foot into the gym for the first time, so much so that after my first session where I barely survived, I did not show up for a good two weeks. I was so ashamed of how weak my stamina was, and how I literally could not handle myself.
It was the guilt of having wasted my parents’ money that brought me back, forcing me to show up. My first few months were one on one sessions with the trainer who would teach me the various exercises written on the white board. Eventually I learned, and it became a habit in the times I would transfer gyms: learn the routine, endure the sessions where trainers had to pretend that they gave a fuck about me (the more eager I was to put up with them, the faster they’d leave me be), and then work out alone. I took up high intensity interval training (HIIT), which meant that I could take it at my own pace. I did not need anyone looking at me.
My theoretical knowledge of fitness grew rich more quickly than my practical knowledge as I have always worked my brain cells more than my own body. I knew everything there was to know about getting healthy. On my own I learned what TDEE1 meant and how this determines your deficit/surplus, what the best lower body workouts were, and the various workout splits you could use to maintain the variety of working out. Throughout the years I made an active effort to stay self-sufficient in fitness and not to need anyone in the gym; it was the only place I disliked being perceived because I was at my most vulnerable, my most clumsy. I wanted to be invisible, to not be used as the example for form that needs correction. I wanted to be left alone.
When TJ started leading the workout of the day, I saw how the system worked. Everyone worked out at their own pace, but they all looked after one another, hyping up the last person on their working set as if they owed them that. There were opportunities to partner up and take turns working out and being the hype man. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t join them, so I told Gab and TJ that I’d give their gym a go the following week. The sense of community looked very appealing to me, reeling me in.
I remember thinking to myself how intimate it was to have someone look at you and be with while you finish your workout—not so much in a homoerotic way, but in a way that magnified my own loneliness. I wanted to be seen this time.
I spent the last year inconsistently going to the gym in my workplace, a decision made out of convenience: it was located in my building and there were discounts available for employees. I was happy with my alone time there, although I couldn’t help but notice the group of high school teachers who would work out the same time as I did, doing their sets together and spotting each other. The longing started small: I realized that I could improve more significantly if I had a spotter, especially whenever I’d bench. Then I began to pay more attention to who knew who at the gym, what routines they’d do together, and I remember thinking to myself how intimate it was to have someone look at you and be with while you finish your workout—not so much in a homoerotic way, but in a way that magnified my own loneliness. I wanted to be seen this time.
It was such a terrifying desire, though, so I never pursued it myself. I’ve always been aware of the merits to being known, such as feeling understood by someone else and having your existence be seen in a way that similar to how you look at yourself or even better, in exactly how you’ve pictured who you are or how you wish to be remembered. But to equip someone with enough knowledge about yourself is to bestow them with immense power that could always be used against you, especially if—when?—people realize that they see no value in maintaining whatever connection they have with you.
We all crave companionship (many of us still thinking it is romance that we truly want, but I digress), and what keeps us from seeking this out is the inability (or refusal) to confront these risks that always come with it, myself included. Myself especially. It took being invited to a new gym to explore this emotional need and to maybe face my fears of intimacy. TJ was happy that I wanted to give his coaching a try, and I only ever said yes because there were no strings attached. I give it a try, see if the routine works for me, then decide if I could commit to the gym.
I had to pretend to be cool about it when I couldn’t do a proper pushup when he asked me to. “We’re doing all this to test your strength, so that I can see what level you’re at,” he explained to me, probably sensing that I’d felt embarrassed by my lack of upper body strength. Gab warned me about TJ, how there was a time that, after being pushed to his limits, he skipped the gym for a good two months. He could get that brutal, Gab told me, but I was unfazed—TJ was really nice to me. By the time I came to this conclusion, I realized that I’d spoken too soon.
One of my working sets during my first session was three sets of push ups at 10 reps each set. I thought TJ was crazy for assigning that to me, but he was firm in his decision. He urged me to get started, paying attention to my very poor form that had my elbows flared out and my upper body barely reaching the floor. After my first set, he corrected my form without the condescension I had gotten so used to from other people. He gave me cues to remember that I tried my best to keep in mind: keep your core engaged, squeeze your glutes, and do not spend too much time in your descent so that you can be explosive when you ascend. During my last set I knew I could no longer do decent knee pushups, but TJ was very encouraging. “There’s more! You still got it,” he exclaimed.
“No dude, I can’t anymore. I don’t trust myself that much,” I retorted. I was out of breath, hoping that he could tone down his enthusiasm for me.
“Trusting you is not your job, Dani. It’s mine. C’mon, last two reps na lang!”
I don’t think I finished as strong as I wanted to, but TJ was happy that I tried and that was enough for me. What he said really stuck with me, and I spent the rest of the night wondering what he meant by that. After giving it much thought, I realized that it was just an unusual way of saying that he believes in me. I also knew that I wanted to take my fitness more seriously this year, and having people like TJ hold me accountable and push me to failure would be helpful, so I transferred to their gym the following week. He was ecstatic.
It’s only been a month at this new gym, but these past few weeks have been more eventful than any of my sessions in my old gym when I was on my own. It took some time for me to warm up to my other gym buddies, but seeing how everyone was supportive of each other gave me cues for fitting in. It helps that every part of the workout is treated like a group activity where everyone does their job and everything is done together, collective suffering strengthening our bond. Another great thing about working out with others is that you see your potential in other people’s progress. I work out with a lot of guys whose upper body strength are of a different level, and instead of worrying about how much I suck at upper body workouts, all I can think about these days is how their strength mirrors the kind of future I could have if I just keep at it. When you get to know people at the gym, you learn that not everyone was born with Herculean strength. Many of them have spent years honing their skills to the point where it feels like second nature, which only means that if they were able to do it, then you can, too.
I feel less conscious about working out with other people who are so much stronger than I am, less inclined to think that they are judging how bad my form looks, or how much weaker I am compared to them. It helps that they take the time out of their sets to hype me up, to scream that I have more reps in me even if I'd already checked out in my head. There was a time where I had to do active hangs until failure, cussing out the air because I was in so much pain and I had very little faith in my upper body strength. But because everyone was rooting for me, reminding me that I could still keep at it, my personal record for an active hang is now at 58 seconds, 2 seconds shy of a minute! I would have never been able to do that alone.
This has led to a significant decline in my cynicism, besides the fact that these days a lot of my energy is devoted to completing the grueling workouts that TJ assigns to us. At the same time, I think that it’s because these experiences at the gym are forcing me to replace the disillusionment with positive intent. I think I read this in one of John Gottman’s books, that in assuming people have good intentions, even if you do not believe that they do, can be helpful in fostering better relationships with them. It’s a tricky piece of advice that you must take with caution, because sometimes how people behave (and the vibe you pick up from that) gives you all that you need to know about them.
But allow me to throw all these nuances out the window this one time with a monologue from Prodigal Son:
Everybody talks to me like I’m the one, I should change. Why should I change? I’ve never even got to find out who I am! You want me to change—that’s crazy! You tell me I’m bad before I even get to be anything. What the hell is that? I read Plato, I read him on a park bench in the Bronx. But let me tell you something: Plato wasn’t afraid, Diogenes wasn’t afraid, Socrates wasn’t afraid of anything. They were men!
Why are you the headmaster and I’m the student? Don’t you understand? I have to earn your respect but you don’t have to earn mine. What is that? It’s you that wants the A before we even start, but when I say I want the same thing, I’m nuts, right?!
I’m not gonna cry. I’m gonna find my place in this world, count on it. This school has been a miracle for me but not because of you! Because somebody, Mr. Hoffman, finally saw me! And more than that, somebody, a grown person, decided I was good before I was good. And you want to throw me out of that? And you know what I say? I’ve never met your God and I don’t want to.
I’m starting to think that wondering what hidden motives people have in their interactions with us shouldn’t be the immediate response to these bids for connection, especially if we seek relationships that enrich us. We need to let people in a little and have them show us who they are without us immediately jumping into flimsy conclusions such as them not liking the person that we are. Whether we are worthy of someone’s affections, whether we can be trusted by another person is not something that we get to decide on our own. What we can do, all that we can ever do really, is to show up in ways that feel most sincere to who we are. The people who are meant to be in your life will see something in you and choose to have you around for as long as possible even when you don’t believe them.
There’s a TikTok2 that I watched a while back (unfortunately I could not find it), about how our fear of being disliked by others is often rooted in our harsh judgment of ourselves. When we do not like ourselves, we tend to use other people—strangers and acquaintances especially—to advance whatever ill narrative we have about ourselves, not realizing that this can be far from the truth. This tendency also keeps us from seeing how much people actually enjoy our company, and how much interest they have in getting to know who we are. The best way to unlearn this, according to how I remember this TikTok, is to stop using others as a scapegoat for our self-loathing. If we want to see people for who they truly are, we cannot keep deciding for them what they think of us and acting like our own judgment is truth.
I’ve spent enough years refusing to give people the benefit of the doubt, keeping them at arm’s length, and even psychoanalyzing their motives despite my growing desire to have someone look my way. I’m lonely enough to admit that I do want people in my life that I can count on, and it seems that I have enough faith in myself to give people a chance this time even if it heightens the possibility of getting hurt. I’m still terrified of finding new ways my heart can break again and all other consequences that come with having people know you, but right now I care more to see what good exists in the world.
Total Daily Energy Expenditure. This is the total number of calories you burn in a day from not just working out, but other things like your whole body functioning like a proper one, and non-exercise activities. To be on a deficit (lose weight), you subtract 300-500 calories from your TDEE. To achieve a surplus (gain weight), you add 300-500 calories.
Join me in citing TikToks with my whole chest instead of pretending that I learned something new from a book, article, or random person! There is no shame in learning from the brain rot app (at least some of the time)!
I’m quoting that last sentence before you mentioned the tiktok.
Great substack listen today.