I’ve talked before about my feelings around greetings like ‘how are you?’ A LOADED question that, in my opinion, deserves a fully loaded response. But as I’ve mentioned before, the answers are often a lot more complex and moreover unclear than we might care to think. In my own therapy, I used to tell Sean that I feel ‘full’ when I felt unwell. And the conversation always made it back around to - what are you full OF or WITH? I’d feel so present in the fullness but explaining it would feel impossible. It took me a while to realize how often I allow myself to connect to feelings without ever actually inspecting them and being able to determine what they were; without individually unpacking them and analyzing how they impact my life through the various aspects of my wellness. That’s when I started revisiting the wellness wheel as a journaling prompt. To reconnect and learn about myself all over again. I was first introduced to the wellness wheel during my time at Georgetown University. In my research there’s not an defined/mandated version of the wellness wheel out there or a clear cut origin, a lot of different institutions (particularly the jesuits (shout out Cura Personalis)) have created their owns typically with about 6-8 dimensions to the wheel. Using the wheel made the question of how I’m doing feel approachable. It no longer felt baseless.
Even with my own clients, when I want to dig further into how they’re doing with the same depth and rich language I was trying to build with Sean, I’ve started to employ the wellness wheel. But in order to do that I needed to streamline the tons of different versions I’ve seen out there into my own set of dimensions that address the range of topics we typically cover in our therapeutic environment. So for this next series (I haven’t even finished all the previous series but alas…) I’ll offload each of The Radical Empath’s NINE (9) dimensions of wellness and how they relate to your lived experiences and various intersecting identities. In general, I typically ask my clients (or myself) to consider our past, present, and future with this particular aspect of wellness; what has your relationship to this particular aspect been over the course of your life, where are you at with it right now, and when we consider the ‘future’ of your wellness, where do you see yourself in the next 3-6 months and what would lifelong satisfaction look like. It’s okay to be comfortable where you are and to not have a 3-6 month goal - in fact, that is a wonderful reflection. If YOU (reader) consider using this, remember that it is supposed to be organic process and this model is simply to add structure. I also encourage my clients to rank these aspects on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being extremely satisfied – but if scoring them feels unhealthy for them, I assure them it’s not necessary for our work together. I love the scoring process so I can look back and see how things have changed over time. That is grounding for me, but not for everyone, and that’s okay. If you do choose to score each dimension, I suggest you write a full reflection and give the score after. Sometimes I used to score and then reflect and then after reflection realize that my score should be higher or lower than I had originally let myself believe. Finally, I journal. But journaling is not for everyone. I have clients who leave themselves audio notes. I have clients who are very cerebral. If you’re an artist you can even draw something that shows your interpretation of your relationship to that wellness dimension. Do what works for you but the next time someone asks how you’re doing and you’re looking for a full answer - looking for an opportunity to rediscover yourself so that you might re-introduce yourself to your peers. Try working your way through the wellness wheel as I’ve outlined it ahead, starting with: Environmental Wellness. Coming at you on Friday!
I’m going to release each one of these on mondays and fridays until we get through all 9 dimensions plus (+) consolidating them all into one post. They’ll be shorter reads which I think might be nice as I know I tend to ramble (see above).