Walking the Path to Wellness: Who’s Helping You Stay Balanced?
Finding balance is difficult when managing your health, work schedule, family life, and personal obligations. Unfortunately, many people struggle to find the time to focus on their wellness while balancing such obligations. However, a lack of balance can cause new problems and worsen existing issues in your life.
Wellness has as much to do with your mental health as it does with your physical health. What good is physical health if you don’t address mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety? Even basic everyday stresses can impact the quality of your life.
You owe it to yourself to do whatever it takes to achieve balance, even if it won’t necessarily come right away. Whether it be talking to a counselor or visiting a doctor, it’s worth seeking help to attain balance.
Follow along as we explore what it takes to prioritize wellness and highlight people who can help you do so.
Staying Well Often Takes Help
While stigmas still exist, people more willingly accept professional help in many areas of life today. Life can be challenging, and having access to counselors, psychiatrists, and even personal trainers is invaluable. The first step is to recognize that there’s nothing wrong with getting help from others, even if that used to be less commonly accepted.
Anyone who says there’s something wrong with seeking help simply doesn’t have your best interest in mind. Walking the path to wellness requires people to take accountability and decide to change their lives. The last thing you should do is accept that your life won’t change, as you can always do something to improve your well-being.
Sometimes, this takes a team, as many people specialize in specific aspects of life and wellness. Mental and physical health are closely connected, so recognizing the relationship is essential. Today, several professions specialize in different aspects of wellness, such as:
1. Mental Health Counselor
It’s easy to feel hopeless and become stagnant in life if you don’t address your mental health. Today, seeking help is easier than ever because of the abundance of mental health counselors and services. Mental health counselors help people navigate mental and emotional obstacles that affect the quality of their lives.
Anyone dealing with anxiety, everyday stresses, and depression can benefit from seeing a mental health counselor. Mental health counselors can also help people address seemingly unmanageable problems, such as addiction. They can’t directly cure your problems, but counselors can help you develop healthy coping mechanisms and strategies.
A counselor can also help you identify behaviors and triggers in your life that stand in the way of wellness. Identifying such problems can work wonders to help you recognize and manage them when they arise. Today, you can even speak to counselors online or over the phone through one of many telehealth services.
2. Clinical Social Worker
There is some overlap between clinical social workers and mental health counselors, but their responsibilities differ. Clinical social workers can counsel their clients, but their range of responsibilities is quite different. For example, clinical social workers often provide information and resources regarding housing, finances, and addiction treatment.
The resources they provide ultimately vary based on your needs. In many ways, clinical social workers help people with most aspects of wellness, including connecting them to medical professionals. This all-encompassing profession is built around helping people overcome challenges.
Clinical social workers also help people identify environmental, social, and lifestyle factors that affect their wellness. Sometimes, even something as simple as your sleep schedule and the company you keep can stand in the way of your wellness.
3. Health Coach
The relationship between diet, exercise, sleep, and health cannot be understated. Wellness is largely unattainable if you can’t maintain a healthy diet or sleep schedule. Health coaches help their clients gain control over the aspects of their wellness they can control.
Practicing restraint and taking accountability for your diet and exercise habits can largely affect your mental wellness. Granted, exercising and eating healthily won’t cure depression and anxiety. However, physical health is such an important part of overall wellness that it can’t be ignored.
Health coaches make sticking to a healthy routine much easier. That’s especially true for people with busy schedules, hectic lives, and many responsibilities. It’s worth seeking help from a health coach, even just temporarily. You can always use the information they provide long after working with them.
4. Primary Care Physician
There’s something to be said for picking a healthcare provider and sticking with them for years. It may take a while to find a primary care physician who is perfectly fit for you, but it’s worth the effort. Primary care physicians (PCP) oversee your overall health for as long as you go to them.
They handle everything from basic checkups and preventative care to vaccinations and referrals. You can’t typically see a specialist without a referral from your PCP. It’s important to be transparent with your PCP, as they can only help you if you’re open and honest.
They can refer you to a psychiatrist, recommend therapists, and help you stick to a healthy lifestyle. Don’t feel discouraged if it takes you a while to find a PCP that you’re comfortable with. Once you do, you’ll understand how big a role they play in your overall wellness.
Achieving Balance is Key to Wellness
The road to wellness is paved with open-mindedness and effort. Speaking to a physician or mental health counselor is more of a two-way street than you may have considered. You must be honest with them, and, more importantly, open to what they have to say.
Nobody knows you better than you do, but it’s worth taking advice from others and implementing it into your life. Doing so can highlight the importance of having an open mind and working hard to attain wellness. It’s never too late to find balance in life if you dedicate a lot of time and energy to mental and physical wellness.
