Nurtured Words

Wellbeing is more than the absence of suffering, it is the realisation we are okay.

Hello my lovelies,

Today I thought I would do a little overview of what wellbeing means to me. According to Google AI, it is defined as: “the broad, subjective state of feeling good and functioning well, encompassing aspects of physical health, mental health, social interaction, life satisfaction, purpose, and control. It’s more than just the absence of ill-health; it’s an active, positive state where individuals can cope with life’s challenges, enjoy their lives, and feel their actions are meaningful and worthwhile.”

This is a big overview of what wellbeing is and there are so many components, if I truly delved into them all, this post would become a rather long essay. Overall, I agree with it. It is subjective because we all have a different idea of what it means to function well, it does encompass all our views on our holistic health from mental and physical, to emotional, financial and spiritual health, relationships, our sense of self.

I think a large role that plays into wellbeing is resilience (I will be doing a post later in the year about this). Resilience is about our ability to remain grounded and keep mindful of our difficulties and the ability to go through the harder experiences. As Dr Martin Seligman once wrote, clinical psychology can remove the suffering, but often does not embed the more value based strengths in a person. I believe we can remove illbeing for periods, but we need to add to life in a positive, wholesome and constructive manner in order to have wellbeing.

Wellbeing to me is interconnected with illbeing. It is a fine line for each of us in what wellbeing and illbeing look like. For me personally I know I am not well all of the time, and I am gentle with myself in that time. I do not subscribe to toxic positivity. As humans, we struggle, and that is okay. I feel the essence is knowing we will get through our experiences, holding on to hope, taking stock and feeling good in ourselves.

I don’t feel it is always active, if we try too hard to remain in a state of constant wellbeing, it can cause burn out, we may end up trying to avoid the illbeing. Sometimes wellbeing is passive, we recognise we feel good but do not linger. We don’t always have to try and make wellbeing within ourselves, it can just happen without our control over it.

Control. Humans love feeling in control, a sense of knowing everything. Really, some of it is out of our control as much as we may hate it (I certainly did once upon a time), however, if we can respond rather than react to illbeing, that in itself is wellbeing.

I used to fight illbeing so hard. Too hard. I was someone who was engaging in toxic positivity for a long time, too long. I felt I always needed to be happy to feel normal. The truth is, life can be hard, life can be tough and unforgiving. As a human with survival instinct and an extremely overactive amygdala, I am frequently in states of illbeing to varying degrees, but I embrace it as best I can, that is wellbeing. I accept and try to work through it each day. I know who I am, I know what I am capable of, I healthily add to my life the joys I can, but when I cannot, I don’t.

Wellbeing is complicated. Wellbeing can be present or elusive. But I try not to look in a binary manner. I can be unwell but still find joys and that is some wellbeing. If I can remain present and curious about my illbeing, then that is my wellbeing.

If I had to sum up what wellbeing means to me, it is this: wellbeing is always possible, it may not always stay, but I can work towards it through my strength, and healing whatever afflictions come my way.

Journal prompt: what does wellbeing mean to you? How do you currently feel about your wellbeing?

Kindly, Leanne