A new narrative about “beautiful people”: A Psychologist receives unexpected mental health benefits from the gym
I am writing this in January of 2023 and this is the time of year that everyone makes a commitment to go to the gym. Countless health journalists write about the benefits of exercise as they document their battles with sweat and music.
I thought I would write about a different positive aspect of going to the gym. While many of us acknowledge that there are mental health benefits of exercise itself, I believe that there is another beneficial psychological aspect that I have gleaned from working out at the gym.To best explain, I have to tell you a little bit more about me and my nerdy history.
While I have relatively decent self esteem today, that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, I have been a real ‘nerd’ since I was very young. While other kids were listening to rock music, I preferred classical. I received top grades. I never partied and I followed all of the rules until I hit college. I suffered through some teasing and bullying in junior high and high school. Like a lot of kids who have been bullied, I developed a defensive identity that went something like this: ‘I am better than my bullies because I am smarter and kinder than they are’. I have met a lot of people who utilize this defensive technique: To cope with being victimized, they judge their perpetrators as inferior. I must admit I also utilized this defense.
As a result, I started seeing the ‘popular kids’ and the ‘beautiful kids’ as less intelligent than I. If they judged me, I judged them right back. Other things I told myself about them were that they were shallow and unkind. As I matured, I quit thinking in such a black and white way. But the groups I was part of also espoused some of these stereotypes. Mocking muscle men would have been something that was acceptable among my peers. In other words, I didn’t get challenged very much because my friends and colleagues had similar backgrounds to me.
Fast forward to middle aged me. Logically, I know these stereotypes cannot be valid but I have never really associated with people who would actively challenge them. Then I found the gym. I have been on a constant training schedule since July of last year. I find myself surrounded by athletic men who sport muscles on top of other muscles. Some of my teenage thoughts have re-entered my brain such as : ‘they must be shallow and unkind’. When I see them looking in the mirror, I assumed they were vain (rather than that they were checking their form). As a development exercise, I started forcing myself to say ‘hi’ to some of the larger men. Teenage me would have been afraid of them, but middle aged me pushed through it. I found my automatic thoughts started changing! Oddly, they often say ‘hi’ back and now a lot of them greet me when I enter and smile at me! I hope we eventually become ‘gym friends’. In sum, the gym has been good for me for health reasons and also for stress. But the freedom I have gotten from breaking out of past narratives has been one of the most important benefits I have gleaned. Thank you beautiful people for teaching this nerd a lesson.