SPIRITUAL WELLNESS FOR THE VETERAN
By Judy Skilling
When you think of spirituality, you might associate it with religion, or you may not fully understand the aspect of spirituality. You may even chalk it up to the “woo woo, out of this world” stuff. Don’t worry, we’re not going all “woo woo” on you.
To explain it simply, Spirituality is your personal connection to something beyond yourself. Some people label it as ‘soul’, ‘higher power’, ‘spirit’, ‘intuition’, ’God’, ‘Goddess’, etc. It goes by many names, but it all boils down to one thing…spirituality.
We each have a spirit within ourselves; some are more connected to it than others. Some live their life by the guidance of their spirit where others don’t even know it’s there. So why is your spiritual wellness important in your life? Why should you pay attention and nurture this part of yourself?
When we take the time to build this personal relationship with ourselves, we improve our connections with people and our environment. We become more in-tune with the rest of the world and ultimately, we feel more like ourselves. Many Veterans struggle with this aspect of themselves because they may not know how to connect with their spirituality or may not even know anything about it. So how do you start to build this relationship with your spirituality? Where do you even begin?
The first thing you can do to develop spiritual wellness is practice the mindfulness of your thoughts. On average, we run through about 6,000 thoughts per day, per the study done by Dr. Jordan Poppenk and Julie Tseng from Queen’s University in Canada (which you can read the published paper here in “Nature Communications” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17255-9).
When you strengthen the awareness muscle of paying attention to your thoughts, you can immediately catch yourself if you are having negative or positive thoughts. This is key to developing spiritual wellness and mental wellness as well. If your thoughts are constantly negative, destructive, and paralyzing, you from living your life, you can take the first action by asking for help. Your spirituality is there to help you, not harm you. What are your thoughts on a day-to-day basis? Practice being mindful of your thoughts so that you can actively take control of them.
The second thing you can do to develop spiritual wellness is become aware of your feelings and emotions. Emotions are energy with motion. Your emotions are created from two things: your thoughts and your environment.
Whatever you are thinking, you create the emotions triggered by your thoughts. If you are thinking happy thoughts, you generate the emotions of an elevated energy state which causes ‘happy’ feelings.
The opposite is true as well. If you are thinking sad thoughts, you generate emotions of a lower energy state which creates the ‘sad’ feelings. In regard to your environment, you may experience situations that generate feelings and emotions as well.
Like if you won $20.00 off a scratch off ticket (happy feelings) or got into a minor fender-bender (anger feelings). When you pay attention to a thought or an environment, do a self-check-in. Ask yourself “How am I feeling about this right now? Why is this making me feel the way I do?”
There is ultimate self-control and power when you develop this sense of awareness. You can respond to the situation by deciding how you want to feel, instead of letting your emotions and feelings run you.
Lastly, the thing you can do to develop spiritual wellness is look into alternative therapies that are designed for Veterans and military members. These retreats are helpful for Veterans to connect with other Veterans, take time in nature, work on themselves and whatever they may be struggling with, and take advantage of any treatment modalities, like yoga, coaching, exercise, animal therapy, etc.
Here is a fantastic resource for you to find a retreat that you can take advantage of (most of them are free, so why not!) This link has 20 different retreats for Veterans and active duty military. https://visiontopurpose.com/2020/07/Veterans-and-military-retreats/ .
Your spiritual wellness is just as important as your mental and physical wellness. It is something that shouldn’t be ignored or forgotten about. Whatever works best for you to build this relationship with yourself, find others that can support you as well. Remember, it’s not “woo woo.” It’s essential for your all-around well-being.