9 Areas of Wellness and How They Impact Mental Health
You may not have heard of the 9 areas of wellness before, but they are probably impacting your life every single day. So knowing what they are, and checking in about how you’re doing in each area, may shed some light on why anxiety, sadness, loneliness, low-confidence, low motivation, or communication and relationship difficulties are showing up in your life.
There may be bigger reasons you are experiencing these difficulties –like trauma or medical conditions- but becoming aware of how these areas affect your mood and relationships is a good starting point for proactive and preventative mental health measures and will support you in case you do want to start therapy for trauma, relationships, or empowerment.
What is a holistic approach to mental health?
Holistic mental wellbeing focuses on the whole person and how different areas of wellness impact their emotional and mental health. As a holistic mental health therapist I focus less on diagnosis and focus more on how different areas of wellness are affecting you and contributing to any symptoms you may be experiencing. This approach focuses on you as a complete person, rather than trying to fit you into a diagnosis or a cluster of symptoms.
Diagnoses are merely a categorization of common symptoms. A diagnosis can have the benefit of helping you understand your experience and offer language for professionals communicating with each other, but a diagnosis can also be limiting because it can create a label that can be stigmatizing or can create a feeling of hopelessness or a connection to identity that can make healing more difficult. So in my practice as a trauma and relationship therapist I may use terms like anxiety, depression, or PTSD if they help you understand your symptoms, but I like to move quickly past this so that you don’t overly identify with the diagnosis and we can move toward holistic mental health and healing.
What are the Areas of Wellness and how do they impact mental health?
If you were to google “areas of wellness” you might find that there are many different ideas of actually how many areas of wellness there are. So is it 5 areas of wellness, 7 areas of wellness, 8 areas of wellness, or what? I tend to use SAMHSA's 8 Areas of Wellness- Wellness Wheel when I talk with clients about this, but I’ve added another area, because I have seen how impactful –and often neglected– it can be.
These 9 areas of wellness are not isolated. They interact and influence each other and each of them –if neglected or under stress– can have a profound impact on mental health and wellbeing. When any area of wellness is not being attended to you may notice any of the following signs or symptoms:
your relationships suffer
you feel misunderstood or alone
your thoughts are more negative
your emotions are more intense
you feel unhealthy or uncomfortable in your body
you have more anxiety, sadness, or low motivation and low self confidence
you feel like something’s just not right, you feel stuck
or you feel overwhelmed or like you might have a breakdown or panic attack.
But you don’t have to keep feeling this way. In fact, if you continue feeling this way for a long time it can turn into more chronic or severe symptoms or conditions, so attending to your holistic wellness is a great way to be proactive and preventative for many mental health conditions.
“The 9 Areas of Wellness are: Social, Emotional, Physical, Spiritual, Financial, Occupational, Intellectual, Environmental, and Sexual.”
Social Wellbeing
Social wellbeing refers to how you feel about your social connectedness. Are you getting enough, not a little, or too much? Does it nourish you or drain you? When a person is socially healthy they feel connected to others, accepted in social spaces, and have healthy boundaries, communication, and relationships.
Emotional Wellbeing
Emotional wellbeing refers to how you express your emotions. This includes having emotional literacy, an ability to regulate your emotions, and being able to understand how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors affect your emotions.
When a person is emotionally healthy they feel safe to express their emotions, know how to express them in socially acceptable ways, and are able to regulate their emotions in healthy ways. This can include physical expression such as laughing or crying, social expression such as letting others know how you feel, and personal expression such as journaling your feelings to understand the thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions that activated these emotions. It further includes learning how to empower yourself to slow your emotional reactions which can have a huge effect on your physical health and social relationships, and many other areas of wellness.
Physical Wellbeing
Physical wellbeing is often one we are more aware of, but many areas of physical wellbeing are overlooked and have a huge impact on mental health. Physical wellbeing includes not only being active and moving your body, but it also includes attending to your medical and dental care, being safe with your body, knowing what you put into your body and how it affects you, loving your body and understanding how it serves you, and so much more.
When a person has physical wellbeing they take care of themselves and have a healthy, loving and accepting relationship with their body.
Spiritual Wellbeing
Spiritual wellbeing is an area that some of my clients will have a strong reaction to. It is often misunderstood as religious wellbeing. This is not that. Religious beliefs may be a part of your own spiritual wellbeing, or you may be an atheist, agnostic, or non-religious person and your spiritual wellbeing still matters. I like to define spiritual wellbeing as how you are connected to your sense of purpose or belief about your life and the meaning of it.
Some people choose to be spiritually healthy by engaging in prayer or meditation, some through art, dance, or other creative outlets, and still others choose to through service to others, getting out into nature and the world, or building a legacy through a business, cause, or community. It is one of the areas of wellness that when attended to, can create a synergy that creates optimal mental health.
Financial Wellbeing
Financial wellbeing refers to your relationship with money, beliefs you have about money, and if you feel like the amount of money you have is enough for your needs, wants, and desires. Despite its role as a basic necessity, whether you have a lot or a little is not usually the reason financial wellness impacts your mental health. Rather, it is how you view what you have and if it is “enough” for you.
Financial health issues can be acute (like needing to pay rent) and are often intergenerationally informed. Being financially well means you have enough money to take care of your needs, and your relationship with money does not cause you undue stress or impact other areas of your life.
Occupational Wellbeing
Occupational wellbeing refers to how you feel about your job, career, or professional role. People without paid employment: unemployed, students, homemakers, retirees, children, etc. all have occupational wellbeing too. It can be defined as what occupies most of your time and helps you to feel productive and engaged.
Often people have more than one occupation, and occupations change quite a bit in life, so occupational wellbeing is something that can change often and attending to these changes and any feelings about them can improve your occupational wellbeing.
Intellectual Wellbeing
Intellectual wellbeing focuses on mental stimulation. If you feel overstimulated or understimulated this can impact your intellectual wellbeing. You may find that attending to your intellectual wellbeing can include school or work, or it could also include how much you read, watch TV, play video games, or talk with others about ideas, politics, religion, etc.
What you engage in intellectually can also impact your mental health. If feel intellectually challenged, or if what you are consuming is causing you to feel scared or isolated, or, safe and connected it can impact your intellectual wellbeing.
Environmental Wellbeing
Environmental wellbeing can be a subtle but profound area of wellness that is often overlooked. Environmental wellbeing includes the environments you find yourself in, and also how you create the environments you live in. So if you work in an industrial environment or office setting, or the country or the city, those environments can impact your environmental wellbeing.
Going into nature or “nature-bathing” can have very positive impacts on your environmental wellbeing. And how you set up your home, office, or sleeping area can also impact your environmental wellbeing. Good environmental wellbeing comes from creating environments that engage your senses and promote stress reduction.
Sexual Wellbeing
This is the area of wellbeing that I added to SAMHSA’s list. It could be included in physical, social, or emotional wellbeing, but I like to focus on it as its own area of wellness because this area of wellness can have big impacts on all of these other areas, and there is still a social taboo and lots of judgment in many places about sexual health and wellbeing.
Avoiding this topic causes a lot of damage, trauma, and relationship distress. Focusing on sexual wellbeing creates healthier relationships, is self-empowering, and can have huge impacts on social wellbeing as well as every other area of wellness.
When I work with women regarding sex and intimacy issues the most common issues that arise are: low desire or libido, social pressures and decision making about motherhood, circumstances around infertility, pregnancy, birth, heavy or irregular periods, birth control, pain or dissatisfaction with sex, communication difficulties with sexual partners, intense emotional fluctuations, and sexual literacy.
Sexual wellbeing includes having a healthy relationship with your own sexual identity, having an understanding of your sexual beliefs and how they impact your own sexual health and relationships, what feels good to you, how to talk about sex with others, how to please yourself, and how sex impacts the rest of your life. Sexual wellbeing also includes knowing and practicing safe sex, consent, and exploring in ways that feel ok to you.
You know about the 9 areas of wellness, now what do you do about it?
It takes effort to change, and change can be scary —even when you want it. Meeting weekly with a psychotherapist or counselor who can help you create a plan of action and support you through the emotional hurdles that inevitably arise can take you from knowing how to be holistically mentally healthy to being holistically mentally healthy.
It’s not difficult to have a mentally healthy mind and body, but it does take knowledge, effort, and support to change long held habits, beliefs and support systems that are harmful to your mental wellbeing.
Some ways you can start today:
Take my free holistic wellness quiz!
Find out 50 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Your Mental Health
Take the next step and schedule a free 15-minute consultation to see if therapy with me can help you improve your mental health! If I can’t help, I'll do my best to find someone who can.
Hi, I’m Katie Lorz, and I’m a trauma and relationship counselor for Women in Tacoma, WA and online in Washington state. I love empowering women to heal from trauma, grow through self-discovery, connect with others for fulfilling relationships, and create a meaningful, empowered life!
