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Why Wellness is not just Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual

The ancient philosopher Plato theorizes that the soul has three main components; the reasoning, the spirited, and the appetitive (Hua-Kuei, 2010). This entails that a human being is comprised of their physical body, mind, and spirit. Though not directly connected, this eventually developed into the understanding of the need to maintain physical, psychosocial, and spiritual wellness. Many, if not most, people generally agree that these types of wellnesses are an essential part of a life well lived, but is it enough?


This wellness model has helped people navigate their life, but the 3 part division couldn’t sustain the modern demand, in which more new sub-aspects have emerged. Namely (Swarbrick, 2006; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2016; Stoewen, 2017):

  • Environmental

Understanding the cyclic relationship between humans and the natural as well as the built environment, being aware of environmental health, and using the environment as a bioindicator (Bhaskar & Gupta, 2020).

  • Intellectual

Growing intellectually, maintaining curiosity about all there is to learn, value lifelong learning, and responding positively to intellectual challenges. Also refers to the ability to learn and use information effectively for personal family, and professional development (Jisoon et al., 2021).

  • Financial

Acknowledging that financial values, needs, and circumstances of each individual are unique, managing your resources to live within your means, making informed financial decisions and investments, and comprising of financial status, financial satisfaction, financial knowledge, and financial attitudes (Gerrans et al., 2013).

  • Occupational or vocational

Doing work that provides us with personal and professional satisfaction, contributing our unique set of skills to work that is personally meaningful and rewarding, diversifying performance evaluations as well as celebrating and recognizing individual value and contributions (Walker et al., 2021).

  • Social

Having a good interpersonal relationship with others, developing friendships and intimate relations, caring and letting others care about you, contributing to your community, and having social support (Mergal et al., 2019)

With these dimensions in mind, alongside the physical, emotional, and spiritual taken into account, we also need to acknowledge that there is some sort of stress relating to each factor. I don’t want to make the point and highlight each individual stressor, the thing that causes stress, but I do want to make you aware of how our perception of stress can influence our bodily response towards them. I think this is more important because the way we perceive stressors might be a crucial part of us actually handling them.


Kaplan et al. (2012) highlighted in their research that poor social and economical condition becomes a huge factor in stress perception, thus suggesting the idea that due to their context, the participants are prone to be less healthy compared to a more socially and economically fulfilled group. The constant stress of having to think and worry about wages, raising living costs, not having a social and economical safety net, and others, might contribute to not being able to cope with said stress. This is what we refer to as distress, where stress is perceived negatively and concurrently affects the body in a negative way (i.e. always being in a fight-or-flight state, which increases cholesterol, adrenaline, and other neurochemical and physiological mechanisms to sustain life).


But, as we all probably have experienced, not all stress is bad for us. Eustress is a term that refers to a positive cognitive response to a stressor, which is associated with positive feelings and a healthy physical state (Lazarus, 1993). One might argue that stress is neither good nor bad (Bienertova-Vasku et al. 2020), but it is generally accepted that there are positive and negative impacts of stress on our wellbeing.


To conclude, with us now being more aware of the existence of branches of wellness and how stress is present in each of those categories, I would like for us to reassess our situation in a more holistic manner, where when we think about our wellbeing, we’re not strictly just thinking about the physical, emotional, or spiritual. Feeling burnt out? Might be because you don’t have friends to share good/bad stories with, or, you might be working an unfulfilling job. Can’t stop thinking about your account? Probably because you have not yet realized the existence of financial planning or you’re just too busy to learn new stuff. We’re having the same boss, why are you coping with it better than I am? We can’t value stressors the same.


Understanding this means being able to empathize with other people and their context, as well as comprehending the fact that we are on our own journey of health and wellness. No one can really fill up our shoes. So have courage and take a deeper look into yourself, ask for help, and make goals to improve our general well-being with the 8 dimensions of wellness in mind. Good luck.


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