Why Wellness?

I’m sitting on my couch. It’s a cloudy day on a Wednesday in February in Ohio, and think to myself, “what should I write?” when so much of the world is putting out enough “content” to keep our heads swimming for the rest of our lives, where I am constantly overwhelmed by how much information is out there and how also seemingly little is being communicated at the same time… when “content” has become a word that is thrown around by people chasing algorithms, I wonder how this little corner of the internet can be something different than what my neurotransmitters chase day in and day out. As a therapist in a world of self-help and pop psychology, there is a feeling I often get of… ”what else is there to say?”

In times where the media, news outlets, and influencers are screaming for your attention, I recognize that what my heart and soul want is attention, but something a bit deeper than that… I want deep connection with other people.

So I began to think… “how could I talk about the things I talk about in therapy, but in a long form way and in a way that doesn’t just add to the sound-bite culture I am a part of? In what way can we create a community of people who can feed off each other in a way that truly aligns with what we all really want right now if we were honest with ourselves?

Recent research shows that the human attention span has rapidly decreased from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to 8.25 seconds. Strangely enough, the newest research says that the attention of a goldfish is actually longer than most humans. This is causing serious issues with people engaging in long form content and conversation with one another and actually impacts our emotional bandwidth as well.

I don’t think, by any means, a newsletter is going to fix all the worlds problems, but I wanted to find a way to share longer form content, where the nuances of life can be sorted out in a more robust way, where my first thought (and maybe yours too) isn’t an immediate dismissal of information or a heightened emotional response because I read a blip of it and didn’t get to experience the “fleshed out version.”

So welcome to The Wellife Newsletter and Blog, where we are going to attempt to build a community of people who want these same things!

Let’s walk through a lil run down of what you can expect monthly

The name, “The Wellife” came to me back in 2015 when I was trying to figure out how to communicate with people what it was I was trying to do with my business. As a therapist, all I heard in grad school is “you must take care of yourself, the burnout rate for a therapist is 2-3 years.” I wanted to live a “well life” and I wanted my clients, other therapists I worked with, consultees and supervisees to experience the same thing. I didn’t want to create a a wellife for myself and not care about the people to my right and left who were floundering. This has become the bedrock of everything that we do here. Whether it be how we we work with clients or how we treat our interns or others we collaborate with, we want every person we engage with to feel better after having been in our presence. Generally, we want to partner with and put good out into the world, period.

When I was trying to run social media, with the help of my dear friend Aubrey, I felt disconnected. I was trying to use all the social media tactics that they tell you about, but it just didn’t feel like “me” and didn’t aid me in my own wellness journey and I imagine that there are a lot of people who feel similarly. I got the idea, to create a newsletter, where not only do I get to talk about wellness, which is my research interest and everything I do (I am writing a book about this by the way!) but to engage in community oriented and grassroots partnerships with people in my community and beyond.

 So, the newsletter will include a little bit of content for the month based on what wellness facet we are talking about and the general themes of that wellness facet, but will also include a guided imagery you can use to walk through if you feel like it will aid you, I might also share songs or talks or other media that has been inspiring me around that topic. Additionally, I will provide a “counselor corner” for counselors who follow along and may want a tip or intervention that could work with clients. I’d also like to include a community member or advocate spotlight who is in the community doing beautiful things around the wellness topic that we highlight that month.

Pretty much, I want the newsletter and blog to be an extension of our collective wellbeing

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Pretty much, I want the newsletter and blog to be an extension of our collective wellbeing 〰️

This month, we are just going to get our feet wet by discussing the evidence based wellness wheel that we use in counseling. There are so many out there and you can pick and choose which ones you most like, but I think one of the reasons counselors, in particular, struggle is that we haven’t really decided on one that we all will collectively use and that makes research and evidence based practice more challenging. So, please know I know the ins and outs of all the wellness wheels, but I am picking this one for the research and evidence base behind it!

The Wellness Wheel shown above is the one that will be guiding our newsletters. Each month you will see a second order facet (creative, coping, physical, essential, or social) along with ONE third order facet (for instance, physical would be a second order facet and a third order facet would be exercise or nutrition). We also have contextual factors (my favorite part of wellness) that impact our abilities to engage in a Wellife! So often, we are taught to divorce ourselves from our contexts and individuals are given all the shame/blame/guilt for not engaging in wellness practices, but our realities offer a much more complex and nuanced approach that I hope to address as we move forward.

The contexts of who we are will impact the choices and decisions we can make around our wellness and many decisions are rightfully impacted by our communities, countries, and world. We can’t collectively give all power and responsibility to either the individual or their context. We have to recognize the unique contribution that both of them play!

As I conclude, I wanted to thank you for being here and I want to involve you in whatever way you want to be involved. If you’d like to engage in the materials, feel free, if you want to keep this blog for a rainy day, feel free. Pretty much, take what serves you and leave what doesn’t and if you ever want to highlight something or respond or engage in any way, I am here for that too.

With love and wellbeing,

Katie