Supporting Clients in Mental Well-Being
When Simone Biles bowed out of competing during the 2021 Summer Olympic Games for self-care, the act helped open up the conversation around mental well-being.
Mental health has been a largely hidden disease because of the stigma around discussing the topic. But pretending that it doesn’t exist isn’t making it go away.
According to the 2021 State of Mental Health in America report, 19% (47.1 million) of people in the U.S. are living with a mental health condition nationwide. That’s an increase of 1.5 million people from the year before.
Not surprising, the report also found that more people are seeking help for anxiety and depression since the beginning of the pandemic. From January to September, 2020, the number of people that took anxiety screens jumped 93% from the year before. The number of people seeking depression screens increased 62% from 2019.
Coaching for Healthier Mental Habits
Mental illness needs to be treated by qualified professionals who are licensed in psychology, psychiatry, or social work.
There are still ways that you can support your clients’ mental well-being as a health coach without crossing the line into therapy.
You can offer tools and techniques that support clients to eat better, have more energy, and build overall resilience – and not just physically. Many tools and techniques that you offer to support the physical body can also support your client’s mental wellness.
Start Clients on a Meditation Practice
Meditation is a simple and powerful way to teach your clients how to slow down. Simply learning how to breathe and to be present can take them out of the cycle of worrying about the future. And being present also keeps them from dwelling in the past.
Meditation has been found to support both mental and physical health. Among its many benefits, meditation can help reduce anxiety, reduce pain, and promote heart health by lowering blood pressure.
You can have clients use the meditation timer in the MBODY360 app to practice. Let them start with a small goal of 5 to 10 minutes per day. Each week, your clients can add a few more minutes to their meditation sessions. You can even upload your favorite guided meditation from YouTube or Vimeo, and your clients can use it in conjunction with the timer.
Help Clients Build Awareness Around Self Talk
How do your clients think about their progress with their wellness goals? Do they think positively? Or do they punish themselves with negative self-talk?
You can help your clients cultivate self-awareness around their mental chatter and thought patterns, and help them choose better thoughts.
When you give your clients access to the MBODY360 app, you can encourage them to use the notes section in their plan to record their thoughts and feelings about their progress. You can include prompting questions to help clients become more aware of their own thoughts and internal dialogue.
As your clients journal their thoughts, you will be able to read their entries in your practitioner portal.
When in coaching sessions, you can discuss your clients’ notes, helping them to see when they are thinking and speaking positively or negatively to themselves. You can help them come up with revised, positive thoughts when you both identify unhelpful, negative self-talk.
Teach Clients to Become Mindful Eaters
How healthfully and mindfully do your clients actually eat?
Many clients believe that they generally make healthful food choices. But if they rely on their memory to keep track of every meal they eat, it’s likely that they are forgetting some of the splurges they make.
You can teach your clients to be more mindful by assigning the 7-day food diary when they first sign up to work with you.
You can let your clients know that they should track everything they eat — and that the food diary it’s a no-judgment zone. You will be looking at their entries just to get a sense of how they eat.
As your clients track their food, they will automatically become more aware of what they are eating. They will be able to see a week’s worth of meals inside their app, and it will be clear to them what they are consuming.
With this new level of awareness, some clients may start making healthier food decisions on their own, knowing that they will need to write it all down.
Support Mental Fitness With Supplements
You can also pair nutrition plans with supplements from the MBODY360 Wellness Store to help clients get even better results.
The Wellness Store contains dozens of supplements and herbs that can offer mood support and better sleep. When they shop through your affiliate link, their products will ship directly from the manufacturer. You can be assured that they are getting high-quality, verified products at a fair price.
If you are not yet an affiliate of the MBODY360 Wellness Store, you can sign up as an affiliate right here.