I believe that at the heart of what it means to be human is a longing to be known, belong, connect, and to be understood by and with others. This longing is at the heart of what it means to be a person. We're infused with longing because we were brought into the world by the process of two people coming together with this same longing for one another. However, at least in the Western world, according to recent research studies that I cited on my past blogs on loneliness, we're finding ourselves more lonely and disconnected than ever before. Robert Putnam, Harvard professor of public policy, states in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community that as a culture we’re in a social crisis of what he calls a deficit of social capital—the currency of interconnection as an American society. As people, our longing for relationship and community with people that we can relate to is stronger than ever. Where there is great loneliness, there is bound to be great longing and motivation to connect. For reasons that I'll go into, CrossFit has become a modern day 3rd place and one of the best places for young or emerging adults to create community. Additionally, if approached thoughtfully and personally, it is also a place to begin cultivating a sense of inner-connection and mental health.
Huge thanks to neon pink haired and local long time Seattle Crossfit leader Chelsea Jung of Tilt-Shift Lab CrossFit for her input and comments in the editing of this piece.
Community and Experiencing Together
When a group of people struggle towards something together, something amazing is bound to happen. The act of shared experience is what builds relationship with others. This sense of comradery is like a drug. CrossFit even says that the community-building aspect is one of the largest key components of why it is so successful. Most recently a gym I was once apart of and still had a number of close friends connected to closed and you could see the felt experience of the closure ripple across instagram and in conversations. It wasn't just a gym that was lost, it was community and what that does for us individually.
The authors of the amazing book A General Theory of Love talk about how when we do something together we are connected on a psycho-emotional level. You can literally see it on fMRI scans. The authors point out the difference between watching a movie in the theater versus watching at home; movies are experientially richer when shared with people. Seeing the jumps, hearing the sounds, the wrestling in your chair, unconsciously attuning to one another's breathing, you're feeding off the experience of one another.
An athlete who has competed at a large event can attest to the experience of being in an arena or playing field where they experience an intense amount of energy in the space. Not an uncommon experience talked about by CrossFit Games athletes who competed in the tennis arena. The experience of something together is extremely stimulating and energizing.
Researchers at the Harvard Divinity School spent two years looking for and examining "communities where people are finding a meaningful experience of belonging that are not religious." The categories that they used to measure these communities were personal and social transformation, accountability, creativity, purpose finding, and community. I highly encourage you to watch the video.
There are very few places where you can be impacted on every level of your being—physical, social, emotional, spiritual—to a degree where everybody notices. CrossFit teaches you to show up, leave our ego and excuses at the door, and do the work. When the timer goes off, your race, religion, gender or lack thereof, or your snowflake opinions/complaints cease to matter: everyone is equal. Once the clock starts we are all humans trying to do the same thing. And through that, a community builds that cares for one another.
If we don't have a place or people where we can be and bare ourselves then we can't begin to grow.
CrossFit capitalizes on the growth mindset and invites you to grow first with health and fitness, and then it works its way into your personal life. In a way, this leads very well into trauma healing and cultivating mental health. If we don't have a place or people where we can be and bare ourselves then we can't begin to grow. This points towards the importance of space, place, and people. If we're not challenging ourselves and learning with curiosity from a grounded place into what's uncomfortable, charged, or challenging, we'll never be growing.
Trauma, The Body, and Exercise:
We hold traumas in our bodies. At this point, that is a widely accepted and provable scientific theory, whether seeing our buddy blow up overseas, the abuse we went through with a former partner, or what someone said to us at work. These moments have an effect on us and throw us off our base to varying degrees - thats a simplified definition of trauma. As much as this is an overused statement in the psychology world, the majority of mental health problems are some form of trauma. This post isn't necessarily a blog about trauma and the body, but you can read about it here and on a podcast here.
When we engage our body through exercise, we’re activating some of the same pathways that we would when we’re experiencing some level of anxiety, which can then lead to trauma, an impression or impact that does not naturally release but sticks with us. When we re-activate these same pathways, through exercise, psychological stimuli - such as in EMDR, and then reflect and process these experiences we’re integrating them into who we are. Using them to transform us and expand our sense of self. Eventually, we dont need to be hyper-activated to integrate and change as individuals and communities. But, this can take some work. I’ve come to notice that it takes a long time to get the person to where they can be fully present in the here-and-now when they come in with so much. People are where they are in their journey and they deserve folks who’ll meet them there with acceptance and warmth. We need just pay attention to what we’re experiencing and where our anxiousness is showing up. This is the importance of challenging and listening to ourselves.
Self Reflection
A lot of us are swept up in our cycle of work, family, commuting, sleep, and we rarely institute some stimulus that forces a second look or a different point of view at ourselves. CrossFit offers a unique opportunity by reflecting something back to us about ourselves. CrossFit, like the rest of life, is a living dialogue. I experience and see this and it has an effect on me and I take up an inner conversation with it. Where I then come up with a thought on it, or position, that then leads me to know my response.
In a way, like any relationship or activity, CrossFit helps us see ourselves more clearly and fully. It gives us the chance to reflect on our life—honestly. When you step into a class with other folks something will come up that will provide you with an opportunity to reflect on your experience in life.
- "Oh shit, I can't lift that much weight," one participant says; or maybe a different person could say "well, but Katie just did that the other day and I squat as much as her so maybe I can."
- "My heart is racing and I can't keep up this pace."
- "Man, they make me uncomfortable."
- "Those beers are getting in the way of me functioning and having fun here."
- "I can't keep up this pace, but look at how hard Shannon is trying. I owe it to her to try harder."
For dialogue to take place we must first be in relationship with the world, that’s what's outside of us, what we can see. In this case, it's a new environment, the presence of others, and shared activity. We then must have a relationship to what's noticeable and objective within us: our heart rate, physical capacity and limitations. This then leads us down the rabbit hole of what’s inside, our subjective experience, the experience of our self. Our subjective experience of whats objective and observable (Shannon trying hard, the person making us uncomfortable), that informs how we cope, think, process, and the story that got us here and sticks with us.
What objectively is it thats challenging me here?
What about this is so troubling?
Does something seem familiar about this?
What is this rubbing up against, or challenging, within me?
Whats made it that I respond this way or have this particular experience?
It's both a relationship with the world and one with ourselves. A kind of "this is what I'm seeing of the other or myself ... how am I experiencing this and why might I be in this way?" I briefly discussed this in the context of the Floyd and Quarantine situation we're going through as a country. We’re feeling, experiencing, choosing, and response-able beings. Existentially, life and to living is a continuous dialogue. Life is much more, or it has the ability to push us to be far more thoughtful and experiential than we realize.
I consider the pieces of people's relationships and awareness of themselves or their physical sensations, the initial and major barrier to establishing psychological contact and therapeutic change. Some people just don't have contact with their subjective experience or awareness of what they’re feeling in their body. Garry Prouty calls it an existential autism. Like exercise and physical change, it takes time. Thoughts and ego are in the mind but who you are resides more in your felt experience and emotions, which are in the body. We must take up a dialogue between these parts of ourselves.
A great assessment of someone's relationship or closeness to themselves is to ask, “Describe as much as you can: what it's like to sit in the sun, or to kiss your partner, or a troubling experience you had with someone today, or what happened to you this week and what did you notice?” It’s discouraging, and understandable, to know that people’s proactivity and participation in their life can be minimal at this point in a more urban Western environment.
Thoughts and ego are in the mind but who you are resides more in your felt experience and emotions, which are in the body. We must take up a dialogue between these parts of ourselves.
The only way to live authentically in the world is to have a clear awareness of ourselves - our experience. An honoring and mutual dialogue between the ego / mind and feelings / self. Challenges, such as how much I can or can't lift, engaging with others, or pace of movement, and the courage to face them, bring us into relationship with life in small ways that we're then able to locate our self.
Challenges don't have to be massive. In the CrossFit world it could be as simple as going a few pounds heavier on a lift, or using one less blue band for your pullups, or asking your coach for help on something specific. The same principle applies to mental health. In therapy I find that growth is a slow process or many many small changes. When these changes or shifts are acknowledged and affirmed a greater shift can take place. Again, not just exercise.
When you pick up a 53lb Kettlebell for snatches in the workout and you can’t do it, this is on one hand a potentially rough experience because you may want to, while on the other hand you now have more of an awareness of where you're at. I am not at 53lbs, but maybe I'm at the next weight down of 44lbs. We can’t begin growing if we don't know where we are and what our edge is. You cannot grow if you don’t lean into uncomfortable experiences. This was the topic of my master’s thesis: we cannot grow without pain and the presence of relationships.
One would hope that this mentality would seep into and affect other aspects of our life. Many gyms do a profound job of getting members to this level of reflecting on the physical dimension and simply may not know how to take it to those deeper levels. I think it comes down to the goals and values of the gym, the coaches, and what the members are looking for. Is there a dialogue happening? What am I needing? In a way, they're still businesses that have the goal of providing physical fitness. Just as I am limited by my license as a mental health therapist, it makes sense that they would have limitations. However, the principle is very simple, and the possibility of providing this level of education with the right resources or people is possible.
@caleb.a.dodson
The Significance of "I can ...."
The second and a prime component to life is the experience of saying "I can." Most people in the CrossFit world know the experience of at one time not being able to do something, then a few months later being able to far surpass that limitation. As one of my favorite books, and also just a principle of life states, “Do The Work.” Nothing in life comes free, and CrossFit is a great example of this principle. If you want something, it’s going to ask something of you, in hundreds of small ways and you need to put the work in.
For myself, I remember during the 2019 CrossFit Open workout “20.3,” which was 21-15-9 reps of deadlift 225 lbs and handstand push-ups, then 21-15-9 reps of deadlift at 315 lbs, 50 ft handstand walk, all with a time cap of 9 minutes. This was a repeat workout from the 2018 CrossFit Open workout “18.4.” In 2018 I could only get 3 of the 21 deadlifts at 315lbs, and they were painful reps to watch on the video. Deadlifts were not my strong suit then, but the HSPU were easy. When the workout was re-announced in 2019, I finished off all the 315lbs deadlifts in probably 90 seconds and had just enough time to get 10ft on the handstand walk. The feeling was euphoric, to say the least, to the point that I couldn't sleep that night. This was an experience and I had put in a lot of work prior that brought such a contrast between the two years.
It is not the weightlifting or performances that we like, it's the experience that they give us. There is a feeling of power in being able, that statement of "I can." When we're saying this we're also inevitably giving and receiving a bit of self-love or affirmation of our-selves. It's a fallacy that there is no love in relationship to power. Love, through empathy, has the power that has the ability to reach through great differences in a person. When we can do something that we were once un-able to do, it gives us a feeling of both power because I'm able and the self-value of "I can." There is tons of scientific research that supports the existential truth that it is not will that gets us through things but self-efficacy. This statement of “I can.”
It is not the weightlifting or performances that we like, it's the experience that they give us.
That attitude and sense of accomplishment over the workout that you've pushed yourself through begins to transfer itself into your struggles and fights of daily life at work, relationships, and your personal issues. A lot of folks come into the gym thinking, "Oh I can't do that," "I can't lift 100lbs." They may be right, and that's being able to be realistic with themselves. But, what about the instance when they are then able and can?
Like all good things in life, it takes blood, sweat, and tears. Give it an honest effort and I guarantee you, you'll surprise yourself. I've seen folks come in and do the workout “Fran” in 15 minutes and talk about how they thought they "might die." Then they come in 3 months later having put in mork on some skills and strength and do it in just over 8 minutes. That's a feeling of power. You are your abilities, but you are more than that. There is something far more to you than what you can do. You are a human being. It doesn't matter if your last name is Dottir and you’re competing to be the fittest in the world or you're the girl who's been working on her pull-ups for 6 months to then get her first. I guarantee you their brains are having the same response. Externally, one is just a bit more glamorous than the other. Internally though is a level of self-valuing that's most necessary to begin to face life and grow a sense of life.
The Reality of Life and Relationship(s)
Whether at a gym, family reunion, tech company, or hospital, when people get together you get “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” People bring their "stuff" and who they are to relationships; it's just the way it is. There's no right or wrong to it; it simply is. I've seen it at nearly every gym or community I've been a part of, even if just on a small level. As with all communities, and with people in general, there are folks who, you could say, don't present as very friendly, maybe they have an attitude or a chip on their shoulder, they’re all about the performance, the body, or their general image, everything comes back to them, some form of passive-aggression, or you don't get a very genuine sense from them. I don’t know what thats about and we may never know. We experience these as barriers to relationship. We all have them, sometimes it’s just a bit more outward.
We all, even me the therapist, have our own inner world that creates our perspectives that are based on past experiences, that we may or may not have taken the time to feel and integrate. This perception or reality has an effect on the values we choose and how we are in the world and in relationship to other. This. Is. Life. All relationships are a confrontation of inner worlds. The goal of psychotherapy is to look at and understand the inner person and whats shaped their life through the most immediate and concrete experience as I’ve described above. To move someone to have an ongoing dialogue with themselves and their experience of life, and also to invite others into this dialogue.
Drama happens when our stuff gets in the way of us connecting and it exists when we don’t take responsibility for ourselves and refuse to enter dialogue with at the least ourselves with whats going on. We are more aware of what the other is when we’re more aware of ourselves and our story. But, life is a constant dance of self discovery. The journey and adventure never ends. Nearly every gym, place, or group of people has this dynamic. If you really try to get a sense of anothers inner realities it's ultimately quite meaningful and potentially very sad and heartbreaking. There's hurt there for them, all people on some level, including me. Somewhere life gets off track and blocked and we’re stuck in a cycle that keeps us out of relationship with ourselves and others. This is also the act of empathy to lean into another and feel the pain that they feel.
We come into more relationships with our selves when we’re understood, brought closer, seen, and valued.
Having said that, no-one ever came into more relationship with themselves from being analyzed, pulled apart, or explained. We come into more relationships with our selves more when we’re understood, brought closer, seen, and valued. There are some people that are so threatened by this though, cause again, all relationship is confrontation and love gets us in touch with some part of ourselves. This is where they are in the journey and they need folks to meet them where they’re at, affirming and being with the little things. We were all them at some point and have access to their experience through our own.
Ego and Blocking Growth in Life and Relationship(s)
I need to first say, not everything comes down to the ego. But, we all need a sense of self-value in life. It's inherent in us actually, but we need relationships that reach this level of ourselves. I bring ego into the post because in CrossFit there is a high temptation to solely focus on the performance, as opposed to accessing the person through the performance. The extent to which we’ve been seen by others will reflect the extent to which we’re able to see ourselves, which will then reflect how much we’ll be able to see others. This is why it’s so important for therapist to always be doing work on themselves. As a therapist, I hope that this comes first from our parents earlier in life and later those who truly see us. Our ego, when it's overactive, brings us a sense of personal-value through leaning more on something thats outside ourselves vs. from our self.
From Top Gun (1986)
Ego tends to be very external or more "glamour" oriented like our car, job position, status, beauty of our partner, home, how much weight we can lift, or maybe the size of our glutes. Ego is not very relational or dialogical and disconnects us from relationships with others, life, and ultimately ourselves. There are some folks who think they have nothing, so thats why I say it isn’t always ego. We’re relating, but it’s only so deep and we’re only interacting with what we’re being allowed to see. You could call this an “insecurity.”
The extent to which we’ve been seen by others, will reflect the extent to which we’re able to see ourselves, which will then reflect how much we’re able to see others.
For this reason, with a very insecure (and domineering) ego it's very hard to have a dialogue with ourselves. It can be vulnerable and jarring to see how things really are for us intrapersonally. The ego is given to us, and it’s our job to take up conversation with it, from that deeper place of our-self. All of life is an opportunity for dialogue. From what I’ve seen, having worked with a notable amount of people is that most of the time dialogue doesn't happen until an extreme circumstance like the loss of a relationship, job, home, or pet. For some athletes I’ve worked with it usually isn’t until they’re injured — sometimes to the point to where they can no longer workout. Our physical abilities are a temporary gift. We can loose them. If we’ve leaned to much on them, we have so much to loose, and when we loose them, that can create a depression - a loss of life meaning and purpose.
For people like this, as I've experienced and attempted having relationships with, they have a very weak inner-dialogue. This vulnerability is hard for them to consider the effect of their thoughts, feelings, or positions on others, or they just don't care. To do so would be immensely vulnerable and hard for them to face. I have my own felt experience of this that I have had to work with to help me see the other. It takes hard work. Yet, this is where they are and they need people who they have a trusting relationship with to engage their experience in small ways - just like we engage our body physically.
I could write tomes on how people protect their ego, inhibit their growth in life, and side-step deeper relationships. Status is an illusive trap. CrossFit is just as much a fair cross-section of psychology as any other community. This dynamic is a-part-of life. For some folks, this ego level value is all they have and to strip them of that would be so very harmful. Like stripping a turtle of its shell. This is where they are though and this is where they’ll be met.
Yet, to have the humility to face these parts of ourselves, the tenderness below, is one of the most challenging, beautiful, and life-giving things we could ever experience within ourselves or witness in another. It’s so exciting to see this on a weekly basis with client. Even the subtle shifts need to be pointed out and celebrated. It’s the experience of coming more into life - life itself, as opposed to the things of life like your lifts, workout times, status, your car, work, etc. As I said above, and it’s worth saying again, no-one came into more relationship with themselves through judgment but through understanding and love.
No-one came into more relationship with themselves through judgment but through understanding and love.
The recent statements by Greg Glassman, the founder, and now former CEO and owner of CrossFit, regarding Floyd and COVID-19 are great examples of ego getting in the way of engaging with someone. Glassman does not speak for the entirety of the CrossFit community, yet the leadership of an organization has a huge impact on the culture of a community. Though only a fraction of the community has de-affiliated, its a notable fraction. The community has spoken, the dialogue has begun, and now CrossFit has a new CEO.
Conclusion
The heaviest and hardest workouts you will do are not the physical ones or the ones that can be measured but the emotional ones that you can't see. The way some people live works for them, and they may not feel a need to grow or consider their effect on others. Anyone who's been in long term therapy or done some family work knows that asking someone to bring consciousness and consideration to how they affect others is actually asking a lot of them. Yet, as Carl Rogers said “To be oneself is a very precious gift.” I believe that within all of us is the desire to grow and connect more deeply. We all need a community or 3rd places that we can find these people that give us ground and space to connect with them and ourselves to do this work.
The heaviest and hardest workouts are not the physical ones or the ones that can be measured but the emotional ones that you can't see.
As the saying goes, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. It doesn't have to be CrossFit. Go move your body and find folks who you can be in genuine relationship with. CrossFit just offers professional fitness in the context of ongoing relationships. I've often asked clients in my private practice that if things in life really went downhill, what it is they can lean on. Without a doubt, the answer is always their relationships with friends and family.
But, if we loose our relationships and family, what is left? The answer is that you have your self. This is the most immediate and primary relationship. We cant loose this like we can our job, car, partner, status, financial wealth, etc. We’re not just going about fitness. There’s far more going on than just that. This is about life.
Resources:
Robert Putnams - Bowling Alone
Peter Levines - Healing Trauma
Elaine Aron - The Undervalued Self
Anything by Clark Moustakas
Silvia Laengle & Chris Wurm - Living Your Own Life
Lewis, Amini, and Lannon - A General Theory of Love
Read poetry.
And lastly, go be in relationship with people you can trust and be vulnerable with!
My name is Caleb Dodson I’m a private psychotherapist and CrossFit coach in Seattle, WA and I’m most passionate about bringing kindness to and excavating a sense of humanity in the most challenging experiences to bring about a more full life.