The Flaws In The “Wellness Movement”

April 11th 2017

Wellness has been a trend for the past year or so. The idea of living a holistic life, in touch with mother Earth, pure and happy has been something that more people have been gravitating towards recently and although it sounds really positive, I have a few reasons why it isn’t as great as it seems.

Many psychologists have come to the conclusion that movements like the wellness/happiness movement and the positivity movement are actually contributing to people feeling more sad and less satisfied with themselves and their lives.

This is because we are starting to link wellness and positivity to status. We feel guilty for our sadness so we force positivity and then we look outward and find that our positivity does not match the positivity of someone else and therefore we start to feel inadequate. And this cycle continues and your forced positivity contributes to someone else’s inadequacy and so on and so on and so on until everyone is walking around with a big happy smile and hugging trees because we believe it is what needs to be done to keep up appearances. This sort of connects to my whole post on the social media persona and how we do things for the aesthetic. Well, these movements take that to the extreme.

Although, at their surface, these movements are absolutely wonderful and I would recommend reading up on wellness and choosing positivity to anyone I meet, there is a line that gets crossed too often where doing something to benefit you and make you feel good becomes competitive. You don’t need to be on 24/7. You don’t need to drive yourself crazy knowing where to buy the best organic produce or how to stop fueling the fast fashion industries or dreaming up small random reasons to be happy when you’ve just genuinely having a hard time. You don’t need to write positive and uplifting quotes on twitter all the time. These are things you should focus on if they bring you joy, not just because you are surrounded by people who make you feel it is the only right way to live. There is no “right way” to live!

So, the point I am trying to make is, be happy when you want to be happy and be well in the ways that make you most comfortable. There is no quota for happiness and wellness, just do you.

Jess