Our fixation on being happier, healthier, more successful and better versions of ourselves has never been so powerful. You may wonder why we don’t just embrace our flawed human nature and let ourselves live (and some people indeed do that!), but there seems to be an empowering urge for perfection.
So to find out more about our society’s obsession with wellness, Bored Panda spoke with Helen Marlo, a licensed clinical psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst who provides psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and consultation. Helen is also a Professor of Clinical Psychology and the Department Chair at Notre Dame de Namur University, and as our luck would have it, she is as passionate about this topic as we are.
Marlo argues that a heightened focus on wellness, as well as the appeal of life hacks and simple life tricks, may tell quite a lot about how we’re all feeling right now. “[It] partially tells me how much stress and pain people are experiencing, and how helpless people feel, especially now, perhaps given profound cultural unrest, collective traumas (including the pandemic), polarized views, and divisive conflicts.”
Moreover, “these life hacks and wellness practices can sometimes help us feel better and enable us to cope with life stressors, while providing a respite from complex problems and pain that does not appear to have an easy solution,” Marlo explained.
“However, when wellness, life hacks, and simple life tricks become an obsession and fixation, I think the obsession reveals its dark side which can reflect the understandable human fantasy that human conflict and suffering can be bypassed, eliminated, or surpassed through these practices,” the Jungian psychoanalyst argues. Interestingly, life hacks and wellness practices can almost take on a magical quality, Marlo says. “if I do this practice then it will, somehow, address a more complex issue, trauma, or source of suffering.”
Moreover, “the obsession with wellness can reveal an intolerance or denial of the inherent conflict, complexity, and suffering that is part of human life,” Marlo explained and added that “Life hacks and wellness practices can bypass the healing power of becoming more conscious, including having difficult conversations in relationships with others.”
In her clinical work, Marlo often works with patients who adopt these practices. She says that there are “those who ardently wish these can resolve their suffering or problems, but who find they fail to offer relief for what is ailing them the most. When these wellness practices are coupled with the belief that they can heal complex pain, traumas, or issues, they can be destructive, because the individual is not focusing on what needs to be faced in their life, and is not engaging in what could help,” the psychoanalyst said.
On a more fundamental level, this obsession with wellness can also reflect a conflict we have in our society. Marlo argues that this conflict is about respecting interconnectedness and promoting interrelatedness. “An obsessional quest for one’s own wellness can reinforce an egocentric, solipsistic, or narcissistic attitude to life. That is, what promotes one’s own wellness may be at the dramatic expense of another’s wellness or the wellness of one’s community.”
“Wellness practices, life hacks, and simple life tricks can also reflect the very human fantasy of shortcuts. That is, the idea that we can achieve something great without putting in time or work. As a culture, and as a species, we have long been enamored by the promise of quick, easy fixes,” Marlo explained.
In that sense, “promoting wellness as the answer to having a fulfilling life can play into human vulnerabilities, because wellness can be instantly gratifying!” Marlo added: “It feels good; is positive; focuses on one’s self; and can be limitless. We can always have more wellness and our minds can delude us that more is better!”
When asked whether there is a point where obsessing over improving ourselves and our wellbeing becomes unhealthy, Marlo said that in general, anything that becomes an obsession, including wellness, is unhealthy.“The quest for wellness, improvement, and growth can be mistakenly regarded as healthy because it is lauded; tied to greater success, worth, and higher status; and is so socially acceptable. A lack of wellness is often associated with personal or moral failure or weakness that could or should be fixed.”
According to the Jungian psychoanalyst, “obsessional quest for improvement and wellbeing can obscure our real psychological challenges around knowing and accepting our human limits and the limits of others as well as accepting the inevitable limitations and suffering in life that have to be lived through.”
“In my practice, I usually find that individuals obsess over things that they have not actually thought about enough!” Marlo said. She explained further: “That is, they fixate on the part that is easy for them, and fail to look at the whole picture, especially what is hard for them, including what else is related to the obsession that they may not want to know about.”
Marlo also said that becoming lost in obsessions around self-improvement and wellbeing can preclude other kinds of knowing. “The obsessional pursuit of growth and wellness can often limit one from realizing the value of brokenness and imperfection. Often, it does not affirm or leave space for being receptive, patient, accepting, tolerant, and open to the understanding that genuine growth is, often, a developmental process that occurs over time,” she concluded.
