Navigating Your Path to Wellness
This post was originally published on October 28, 2023
Your journey toward mental wellness is a deeply personal endeavor. In this blog, we put you, your feelings, and your needs at the forefront. We'll explore strategies designed to empower you in addressing various aspects of stress that impact your life: the physical, emotional, psychological, and behavioral facets. Together, in this article, we will discover action-oriented and perception-oriented strategies for managing your stressors, the importance of self-acceptance and compassion practices, and the role of meaningful human connections.
Taking Action: Assess the Situation
Stress Diary: Consider keeping a personal stress diary. Regularly jot down details about the stressors you encounter. This practice helps you analyze and proactively manage stress before it becomes overwhelming. Your stress diary might include the date and time of the stressful event, a stress scale from 1 to 10, physical and psychological symptoms, and how you coped with the situation.
Time Management: Take a closer look at how you spend your time. Document your daily activities from 12 am to 12 pm on both a typical weekday and weekend. This exercise can reveal patterns and imbalances, helping you make more informed choices about how to allocate your time.
Job Evaluation: Work is a common source of stress. Reflect on your job by asking yourself key questions: Have you clarified your job description and identified your core objectives? Do you have adequate training for your role? How does your role contribute to the organization's mission? Is your hard work recognized and rewarded? What skills do top achievers employ, and can you develop them? Do you have the necessary resources to perform your job effectively? Are you and your supervisor aligned on performance expectations? Identifying stressors at work can pave the way for more effective stress management.
Environment and Personal Boundaries: Assess your surroundings and interpersonal dynamics. Identify stressors within your environment, such as uncomfortable office furniture, inadequate lighting, extreme temperatures, or excessive noise. Determine if you can minimize or eliminate these stressors. Practice setting personal boundaries by learning to say "no" and advocating for your needs. Notice how you feel after spending time with friends and family. Do you feel recharged and confident? Encouraged? Or depleted and self-conscious? Take note of these feelings and discuss in a safe space.
Physical Well-being: You can find a more in-depth assessment of healthy eating, sleep, and exercise habits in dedicated blog posts on our website.
Changing Your Lens: Perception-Oriented Strategies
Your thoughts often influence your perception of the world, and these thoughts can act as filters, coloring your experiences. Sometimes these filters can be misleading, potentially causing you stress and anxiety. You can challenge potential cognitive distortions by bringing your thoughts into your awareness and asking yourself questions or pausing to evaluate their validity, value, and impact.
Overgeneralization: Drawing universal conclusions from isolated incidents.
What evidence supports this conclusion? Do I have enough data to establish a rule?
Filtering: Focusing on the negative while overlooking the positive.
Look at the full picture. What are the positive aspects?
Polarized Thinking: Believing things must be perfect or they are failures.
Reject absolutes. What did I do well and what do I want to improve?
Self-Blame: Taking responsibility when it may not be warranted.
Everyone makes mistakes. Other than yourself, who could be responsible and why?
Mind Reading: Assuming others' thoughts and feelings without evidence.
What are some alternative interpretations of the situation?
Control Fallacies: Feeling helpless when not in control.
Refrain from blaming yourself for others' behaviors. What aspects don’t you have control over and what aspects do you have control over?
Embracing Self-Acceptance & Compassion
You can foster self-acceptance by incorporating these statements into your life:
"I wish [event] hadn't happened, but it was merely an attempt to meet [his/her/my] needs."
"I accept [him/her/myself] without judgment or a sense of wrongness for that attempt."
"No matter how unfortunate [his/her/my] decision, I accept the person who made it as someone who, like all of us, is trying to survive."
Practicing compassion entails asking these questions:
"What need was [he/she/I] trying to meet with that behavior?"
"What beliefs or awareness influenced the behavior?"
"What pain, hurt, or other feelings influenced the behavior?"
Building Meaningful Human Connections
Social connections that offer emotional, instrumental, informational, companionship, and validation support are essential. You can reflect on your current social supports by considering:
What type of support do you primarily receive from your relationships?
What types of support (in terms of the five categories) are you receiving?
How strong are your support networks?
What types of support are you most comfortable providing?
Are there any types of support that you're hesitant to give, even when you recognize their importance?
Who are the individuals you regularly support?
How do you perceive the balance between the support you receive and the support you provide? Are you content with this balance, or does it require adjustment?
Your mental wellness journey is about you and the counsellors at The Wellness Collective are available to support you every step of the way as you embrace your path to greater well-being and fulfillment.
Christine Semenuk works with youth, families and adults struggling with anxiety, depression and self-esteem issues using CBT, solution-focused and person-centered methods. In her free time, Christine can be found baking, exercising, listening to an audiobook, learning something new, or spending time with family and friends.