The Difference Between Health and Wellness
How growing up in an alcoholic household taught me the difference between being healthy and being well.
There is a very conscious reason why I chose to name my business Raise the Bar Wellness, instead of Raise the Bar Health. Right…it sounds better, but that’s not the real reason. Wellness is a much broader concept than health, and while a lot of people think they’re aiming to be healthy, what they really want is wellness. They just don’t know it.
So, what is the difference between health and wellness?
Health — noun; the condition of the body or mind and the degree to which it is free from illness, or the state of being well. -Cambridge Dictionary
Based on this definition of health, health and wellness seem like the same thing. But, in my definition of wellness, they’re not. While health is the lack of disease or sickness, wellness can happen whether or not you have a disease or sickness. Your physical health is vulnerable to your state of mind, your social and physical surroundings, and your financial and familial stability. This means that all of those things can make you less, or more, susceptible to physical illness, or if you’re already physically unwell, they can make it worse. When you’re truly well, you have a solid sense of who you are, what you need, and you practice healthy ways of getting your needs fulfilled, whether or not you are physically unwell. This can fluctuate of course, but in general, true wellness revolves around a stable set point.
Wellness — noun; The condition of good physical and mental health, especially when actively maintained by proper diet, exercise, and avoidance of risky behavior. -Wordnik.com
Growing up, my family was relatively healthy on the surface. We got the flu during flu season but seldom got sick or needed medical attention. We had a very social life with a huge extended family and friend network. We ate our relatively healthy meals at the dining room table together daily. While my mom and stepdad worked, we three kids went to school and kept ourselves out of trouble or, at least, we didn’t get caught. Under the surface, however, we were always teetering on disorder.
The quick explanation of this is that my mom and stepdad were avidly alcoholic. Our friends and family were either OK with the over-drinking or they also over drank. So, while we could present well in public, we fell apart often in the confines of our home. I remember that things didn’t feel right throughout my childhood, but I didn’t really understand why…until I had a few decades to process it.
Sure, I could explain away this lack of familial wellness in one word, alcoholism, but I’d be missing the point. The roots of wellness, or a lack of wellness, go deep. Naming a disorder or a disease does not really communicate the decisions being made and the actions played out that made my family unwell. Drinking a lot of alcohol is one thing. Being inconsistent, having no sense of self, and having moods that are all over the place independent of life events — that’s another thing entirely.
While it can also be a coping mechanism for mental or emotional disorders, what alcoholism really represents is an underlying incongruity between who a person is and who they are trying to be. This incongruity can be very confusing for children growing up in an alcoholic family. My parents (mom and stepdad) called us Catholic, but really never did anything about it, as Sunday morning came after Saturday night and well…going to church on Sunday is hard after you’ve have been up drinking until 2 a.m. the night before. Praying at the dinner table through drunken slurs doesn’t exactly come across well, so I think it was basically avoided. Their inner and outer world were at odds with each other and, therefore, so were the worlds of me and my two siblings.
While I could spend the next few paragraphs listing all the ways that my family was unwell, what I’d really like to tell you is how it made me dig deep to find my own wellness.
From a very early age, I loved to read. I even remember, when I was about 14, purchasing a non-fiction book about Psychology. I didn’t really know why I was so interested in it, but I was compelled to read it. I found it fascinating, and it was just the beginning. I started studying chakras, tarot cards, color therapy, animal totems, and paranormal activity while the other girls I knew were studying makeup, hairdos, and boys. The subconscious instability I sensed in my family life drove me to be a seeker.
I studied the above topics all through middle school, high school, and college. I started digging deeper when I was 21 by going to my first therapist. Throughout my 20’s, when I considered myself a journalist, I attended circle workgroups, women’s groups, got massages and took workshops on healing. I was hellbent on solving the deep sense of disconnection I felt. I’m not sure what made me different from the family I grew up with, who are still drowning themselves in various addictions and dysfunctional behaviors (the ones who are still alive). I think the simple fact that there were four of them making terrible choices all around me made me want to be better. Looking back now, out of the five of us — mom, stepdad, sister, brother, and me, I’m the only one who is all of the following:
- Alive.
- Sober.
- Has a healthy, conscious, relationship with my self-growth.
- Has a house, career, and kids.
I am certainly not perfect and am still working on myself. My pursuit of wellness is a daily part of my life. My goals are to have a life I’m proud of, to pass as little dysfunction as possible on to my kids, and to have a healthy life-long romantic partnership. So far, I’ve accomplished two out of three.
Let’s look again at the definition of wellness, above: “The condition of good physical and mental health, especially when actively maintained by proper diet, exercise, and avoidance of risky behavior.”
The word I’d like to point out here is ‘maintained’. Wellness, in my definition, and as the goal of what my company provides for my clients, means having an active relationship with your mental and physical health. It also means getting out of your own way by avoiding “risky behavior” such as addictions and unmanageable choices. I cannot stress how important this last bit is. As a massage therapist of 17 years, there have been countless people who’ve come to me looking for a solution to their problems. This is an important aspect of self-care…but it comes with a caveat: When you put your wellness into someone else’s hands, and that’s the only thing you do to take care of yourself, your growth and healing will be limited to what the other person can do for you. Getting help has to be done parallel to your own inner work. The real healing comes when you start digging up the life experiences and memories that fuel your identity. Who you think you are and how much responsibility you take for your well-being will either limit you or set you free. Who you’re willing to become, that is the real meat beneath your wellness.
I could have identified with my family, and become an addict. It would have been intuitive and easy. Instead, as a child, I subconsciously chose to identify myself as something different: A survivor on her path to thriving. As an adult, on a daily basis, I consciously choose to be an active participant in my life. My relentless self-honesty, and my avoidance of “risky behavior” are the only things that have made me different from my family of origin. They are the only reasons why I can call myself “well”.
Melissa is the owner of Raise the Bar Wellness. She offers video-based wellness coaching and intuitive counseling, as well as fertility coaching and postural assessment to her clients.