The 8 dimensions of wellness include emotional, environmental, intellectual, physical,
occupational, social, and financial. An experience I have encountered within the community
and in my profession multiples times relates to a few of these dimensions, specifically
environmental, intellectual, and spiritual. The ongoing stigma and bias of receiving mental
health care is something I encounter every day at my job. I have many Clients and their
guardians who do not provide safe environments for their children, or they’re pushing their
beliefs on their child regarding their mental health. These individuals I think have both
implicit bias and explicit bias regarding mental health care and they push those biases on their
Sick children. I’ve encountered many individuals who do not believe their child has a certain
diagnosis or they do not fell that their child requires medication interventions. These parents
allow their bias to influence the care they seek for their children, either by the hostile
environments they allow to form or seeking spiritual or holistic interventions only. Many
parents do not want to educate themselves and are not likely to change their perception of
things because of the many echo chambers they surround themselves with.
Throughout my program and working in my professions I have learned more about the effects
of bias and the effects it can have on providing care for an individual. I find myself being more
aware of my thought processes and improve my way of thinking. I often find myself thinking
of how something I say will be perceived so as not to seem ignorant, and if I am not
knowledgeable, I will seek out someone who can educate me. I think that helps with the
emotional intelligence aspect of Wellness so you are more in tune with yourself and those
around you.
When I growing up I dealt with a lot of bias when it came to bowling. I have been bowling
since I was 5 and competitively since I was 9. Growing up there was explicit bias of men being
better at bowling because of their physicality. That being said "men bowl better then girls
because they are stronger, have more control over the ball and can throw heavier bowling
balls." Anyways, when I was younger that really got to me because I would get intimidated
when I had to bowl against a man. The average male (16+ year old) throws between a 15-16lb
bowling ball with an average of 200-225, when I was 15, I was throwing a 15lb bowling ball
and averaging a 210. This impacted me emotionally, environmentally, socially, intellectually,
and physically. When I started to doubt my physical ability, it impacted my intellectual ability,
and then I emotional about it because I felt defeated. But that all changed when my sister and
my dad told me "Baby, don't you see, they say that because they are intimidated by YOU!".
"Sissy, are you REALLY going to let this beautiful mind of yours tell you that you cannot beat
this boy because you are a girl? No. you are more than capable and you can do this." that is
when my fear, intimidation and doubt turned in to competitive, drive and ambition, to beat all
my male competitors. I won the most match points (33) in my travel league, which was made
up of mostly teenage boys.
This bias has helped me be able to reflect on the feelings that are trying to be pushed on to me,
essentially peer pressure and bullying, and figure out how I really feel about any situation from
that point on. It has helped me in many aspects of my life and the drive and ambition has
spilled over into my schooling from high school now through college. Understanding how
these 8 dimensions impact wellness and how bias impacts them, allows me to reflect more on
other events in my life and help identify the areas I need to work on and where I can improve
my wellness.
Not too long ago, after relocating from Western Massachusetts to Kansas City, I joined a local
community group. This group is comprised of mostly younger professionals between the ages
of 20 to 30 years old who all are either looking to network or connect with other like-minded
people. At this time, I had only met one person in the city with whom I had become friends. I
was finding it rather challenging to develop friendships with people because I work remotely
and do school remotely. My friend told me about the group and how it is sponsored by one of
the local churches. Initially, I was very hesitant to attend one of the scheduled outings the
group had planned because of my explicit bias toward religion. I had assumed that since I am
not a very religious person, I would be unable to make friends and would have nothing in
common with anyone who would join a group sponsored by a church. After a lot of
convincing, I joined the group and met some wonderful people. I have even started to bond
with a few of them, and we now go out together on weekends to do things ourselves.
After reading the module resources, I now recognize that I was starting to feel more depressed
due to an imbalance in the eight dimensions of wellness. I was lacking in the social and
emotional dimensions of wellness before joining the group. The social dimension refers to
establishing a sense of connection, belonging, and a solid support system, and the emotional
dimension pertains to coping effectively with life and forming fulfilling relationships (Garcia,
2015). I do not have family living near me, so building strong connections and friendships
with others was crucial for my wellness. This experience showed me that it is important to
acknowledge that any biases I have are not necessarily accurate representations of the truth. If
I had continued to avoid going to this group because I held a bias toward religious
establishments, then I would not have corrected the imbalance in the eight dimensions of
wellness.
This is a great topic you know! I just took a small vacation to Cancun and let me tell you, it
was a horrible experience. NO one washes their hands or less use sanitizer which its nasty. My
husband and I caught a nasty cough and flu stomach. When it comes to our wellness and health
what that means to that all health services should be equally provided to all the citizens and it
is influenced by proper clean water supply, prevention of spread of communicable diseases by
maintaining hygiene, early diagnosis of lifestyle related disease and most importantly a good
mental health to ensure a happy life. I feel health and wellness is associated with work life
balance. Due to the evolving world,mental health is gaining more importance in maintaining
good health. Everyone should have right for proper sanitation and clean drinking water (
which Mexico you cant drink the water) . Everyone should be able to get the required
healthcare for the disease status to limit the associated disability. Also there should be no
discrimination for healthcare in people of different socioeconomic status. Attainment of health
and wellness should not be discriminated on the basis of sex or how you look and wealth of the
person. The differently abled people should have good social health and shouldn't be looked
down due to their disability as it affects their social as well as mental health.
An example I always prefer to interact with people as it is a good way to know about mental
health status of someone and it always feels better after talking to someone. I maintain my
proper personal hygiene by bathing twice a day and frequently sanitizing and washing my
hands. What happened to me this past weekend is a great an example of what happens if you
are not clean.
So I believe that one of the biggest issues with me and being bias is the social dimension of
wellness. Ever since I was in the military and deployed, I have lost most of my social liking.
Add on the situation with covid. My community (now that covid is not stopping everything) is
always trying to get people together with little farmers markets or community events. Being
anti-social and not wanting to be around people has caused me to not participate. On top of
this, I am currently dealing with chronic pain and feel like an inconvenience. My personal bias
says that I do not want to go out and meet new people and enjoy life. Which being this way
effects my wellness because it is very unhealthy.
Understanding bias, I realize I need to open a little more and get out and meet people. Having
a nice little circle of friends to socialize with is very healthy. I am going to work on fixing this,
however, it does take time and I am very biased about my social life. I do not like anything
effecting my alone time.
Once I take time to step back and think about the 8 dimensions and about my own personal
bias of things, I realize that all 8 pertain to myself and effect my well-being in my community.
It is crazy to think that when you take time to think things through, you start to realize and
want to make certain changes.
This post is not necessarily about myself but more about a friend that I had grown up with. I
grew up in a very conservative part of Texas, and to say the least it was a great experience for
myself being in a smaller town. However, one of my closest friends growing up always felt
left out for being "different" this is due to the environmental expectations and social biases.
My friend was gay and it was a hard reality, especially since he did not have anybody to relate
to in our town. In the dimension of wellness for social it talks about developing a sense of
connection and belonging. Unfortunately, he couldn't find that in our community.
Environmentally it was also not sustainable for his well-being either as he felt that most of the
citizens just would not accept him for who he was due to their beliefs and biases. He ended up
leaving all together when he was 17, he did this to find his own path and find wellness for his
own wellbeing. When I moved to Los Angeles, we rekindled our friendship and one can
immediately tell that he is absolutely the happiest that he could be. He can finally be himself
and feel accepted in a community.
I took away from what he did that sometimes finding your own path to wellness can be
through massive changes in an individual’s life. Also, willing to take a chance to find the
wellness and happiness in your life is always worth a shot as it can turn out to be the best
decision one could make. Having a better understanding of bias influence is important,
thinking about this experience from a third-party point of view it is important that a bias that
you might hold should not be forced upon others. Having an open dialogue is always the better
option as individuals can learn from each other to better themselves. This will ultimately cause
for a greater sense of wellness as people use bias less and an education mindset first.
Reference:
Garcia, C. (2015). What are the Eight Dimensions of Wellness in Your Life? Colorado Nurse,
115(1), 6. Retrieved July 4, 2022, from https://search-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=103763107&site=eds-
live&scope=site
