Women’s Wellness

Women’s wellness is THE buzzword.

Women’s wellness is the rage right now, and you can only think of it in terms of a lot of strenuous work and deprivation.

That means meditating, practicing yoga, exercising (nasty word!), dieting (extremely nasty word!), getting more sleep, finding more time for yourself, and all those other things you read about. Right?

UGH! I Don’t want to do all that!

You don’t have the time. You’re not interested in what the magazines say. You’re constantly bombarded by it. It’s everywhere including supermarket checkout lanes, groups of parents and friends, magazines, and TV commercials, assuming you have time to watch TV.

Everyone else seems to be feeling great, looking great, and managing their life better than you.

I’m stuck!

You find it impossible to be happy and accept who you are. You see photo after photo of attractive, relaxed, “healthy” women in the media and hear about all sorts of programs that helped them get that way.

I know it’s all a trick.

Look carefully. Those photos are airbrushed. They’re all models, who had plastic surgery, starve themselves, exercise obsessively, and get paid for it.

These perfect women have personal trainers, hair and make-up staff, and personal shoppers and chefs. They probably have someone looking after their families, cleaning their homes, and caring for their aging parents.

Their jobs look nowhere near as stressful as your day-to-day life. Are they happy or are they just acting for the photo shoot?

There’s no magic or easy path to wellness, or we’d all look and feel fabulous (and I’d be out of a job!).

Misery loves company

You’re smart. You know that you’re not the only unhappy one. Many of the women around you are miserable, feel stressed and inadequate, and struggle with bad or worthless feelings about themselves.

But everyone pretends that they’re just fine. So, you pretend, just like every everyone else.

I don’t know how long I can keep this up.

You’d like to feel healthy and fulfilled instead of tired and sluggish. You’re “on call” for everyone around you, tired of putting on that “put together look,” exhausted and burned out.

Your mind is spinning out of control. You’ve used all your energy to take care of everyone else and look like everything’s fine.

Sound familiar? It’s so hard to move out of the self-doubt, depression, and anxiety of your negative thoughts and find the confidence in yourself.

Everybody else seems to know what’s best for me!

You politely listen to what your friends and family are telling you to do while having no intention of doing anything they say. What’s right for them isn’t right for you!

Instead, you get stressed out and resort to all the things you know you “shouldn’t do.” You consider yourself a failure with no willpower.

You look forward to the nights, when you can get cozy in sweats or pjs and lose yourself in cable TV, ice cream, wine, and chocolate. I don’t blame you!

Let’s talk about what Women’s Wellness is.

We can think of Women’s Wellness in lots of ways. It can pertain to emotional, physical, spiritual, social, intellectual, environmental, financial, occupational, sexual, and probably many more aspects of one’s life.

Stop! Too many! You’re already stressed and don’t want to get even more overwhelmed. You just want to be healthy and happy – and enjoy life.

Let’s talk about two components, Emotional Wellness and Physical Wellness.

Focus on emotional wellness

You realize that your life isn’t your own. With all your responsibilities at home, work, and family, you’re running around meeting everyone else’s needs. Life is chaotic! You want to be healthy for your family, your job or school, and your friendships.

Your personal “low fuel” light is relentlessly blinking. You yearn to do the things that make you happy and fulfilled, but there’s no time. You must do what “you have to do” for everyone else.

You lie awake at night while thinking or worrying about your health, your kids, your family, your job, and all the tasks you need to do when you wake up from this horrible restless sleep.

This makes you wonder how you could possibly have time to find the balance between the chaos in your life and the goal of healthy habits.

Balancing/Rebalancing

We all need to rebalance from time to time and to acknowledge and adjust to what’s going on in our lives. We need to feel in control!

This means finding time to meet all the demands while finding time for family and friends, relaxation, sleep, reading, and doing things that refresh and energize you.

I don’t need any help, thank you!

There’s so much more to moving beyond self-doubt, depression, and anxiety that comes from your negative thoughts. You need to find confidence in yourself.

How is anyone supposed to do all those things, anyway? You’ve tried so many times to do this on your own, and you fail over and over to reach your goals.

This causes you to question. Are your goals realistic? Have you even set goals? Do things work for a while but then life goes back to the way it was? Do you wind up feeling like a failure for the umpteenth time?

Now is the time for help!

Through counseling and therapy, I can help you find stress relief and remove negative feelings about yourself.

Together, we can set and accomplish new, creative goals. Our first goal is to prevent things from going back to the way they were. Later, we can work on some of the other issues that women face today.

You don’t have to tell me what physical health is!

Sure, you make annual trips to doctors and dentist, and you take the prescribed medicines and helpful supplements. You stay current with annual GYN appointment and mammogram, and you have those scheduled yukky, but necessary colonoscopies. Isn’t that healthy?

So many things can interfere with Women’s Wellness. After all the emotional work you’ve done, you wonder, “Why am I still feeling dissatisfied?”

Wellness and Well-Being are connected. Working on Emotional Health often brings up Physical Health. You want to feel strong both mentally and physically. Feeling good about yourself helps propel you through those difficult days.

Wait, your specialty is Mental Health. Isn’t Physical Wellness beyond your area of expertise?

Yes and no. Part of my job is to monitor the things I previously discussed such as compliance with prescribed medications, preventive tests, and visits to the doctor.

I know my limits, and I am far from an expert on Physical Wellness. This is an area that requires special expertise.