Wellbeing Begins When We Stop Seeing Ourselves in Pieces

Written by Joyce Kattunilath

We live in a world that loves categories.

Work.

Family.

Health.

Relationships.

Mind.

Body.

Purpose.

We separate our lives into neat compartments and then wonder why wellbeing can sometimes feel so difficult to achieve.

What happens when wellbeing is viewed not as a collection of separate concerns, but as one living, interconnected experience?

It is a question that begins to look different when we step back and observe human behaviour as a whole.

The concept of interconnectedness becomes easier to understand when we look at how a forest functions. A forest does not divide itself into trees, soil, water, insects and air and then treat each as an entirely separate entity, but within the forest these elements are constantly influencing one another. The health of the forest cannot be understood by examining any one element in isolation. What matters is also what happens between them: the relationships, exchanges and dependencies that allow the whole system to function.

A condition or change in one part can influence another, sometimes immediately and sometimes gradually, through a chain of interactions that may not be obvious at first. The forest, in this sense, is more than a collection of individual elements and its character is shaped by the relationships between them.

The lesson for human wellbeing is not that every part matters equally, but that no part exists entirely on its own. What happens in one area of our lives can quietly shape another.

We can separate wellbeing into physical health, psychological wellbeing, relationships, work, social connection and purpose for the purposes of study or discussion, but in lived experience these dimensions do not operate independently. They interact continuously, often simultaneously, shaping one another in ways we may not immediately notice. What happens at work can follow us into our relationships. The quality of a relationship can influence our confidence, concentration and even the way we interpret an ordinary conversation. A prolonged period of uncertainty can affect how we sleep, eat, think and make decisions. A lack of meaning can make an otherwise comfortable life feel strangely empty, while a sense of connection can alter our experience of difficulty without changing the difficulty itself.

This is where holistic thinking becomes particularly interesting. It asks us to become interested not only in individual dimensions of wellbeing, but in the relationships between them. Rather than looking at an experience and immediately asking what caused it, we can become curious about the circumstances in which it developed. What was happening around it? What came before it? What has been reinforcing it? What other parts of life are being affected? And, most importantly, what might we fail to understand if we insist on examining the experience in isolation?

That shift may sound subtle, but it changes the way we see ourselves.

Take something as ordinary as feeling exhausted. The conventional response is often to look for a solution: sleep more, exercise, change the diet, reduce screen time, take a break. These may all be sensible responses. But exhaustion can also be connected to a life that has become chronically demanding, to a relationship in which someone is constantly managing other people's needs, to work that requires continual emotional effort, or to the quiet pressure of trying to live according to expectations that no longer feel like our own.

The exhaustion is real, but it may not tell us the whole story.

This is where observation becomes more interesting than judgement. We can learn to look at our own lives with the same kind of curiosity we might bring to any complex phenomenon. Not in a detached or clinical way, but with enough distance to notice what we usually overlook. When does this feeling appear? What seems to intensify it? When does it disappear? Who are we with when we feel most like ourselves? What happens when responsibility increases and recovery becomes scarce? Which situations repeatedly produce the same reaction?

Over time, these observations begin to reveal patterns.

A single argument may simply be an argument. A recurring kind of argument may tell us something about a relationship. A single period of procrastination may reflect tiredness. Continually avoiding something important might suggest fear, uncertainty, perfectionism or a conflict between what we say we value and what we actually have the capacity to pursue.

The point is not to turn every ordinary experience into a psychological investigation. That can become another form of self-absorption. The point is to recognise that patterns often contain information that individual events conceal.

We are remarkably good at noticing events and much less inclined to notice the systems around them. We see the person who is always late, but perhaps not the impossible number of commitments they have accepted. We see someone who has become withdrawn, but perhaps not the accumulation of experiences that made withdrawal feel safer than participation. We see irritability, but not necessarily the months of pressure that preceded it. We see a decision that appears irrational, while missing the history that made that decision perfectly understandable from the person's perspective.

This does not mean behaviour should never be challenged. It means that understanding and accountability do not have to be opposites. In fact, understanding often makes accountability more intelligent.

If we know what is generating a pattern, we have a much better chance of changing it. Otherwise, we are often trying to correct the visible behaviour while leaving the conditions that produced it untouched.

This becomes particularly important when we think about wellbeing because so much contemporary advice places responsibility entirely on the individual. We are encouraged to manage our stress, regulate our emotions, become more resilient, optimise our routines and develop better habits. There is value in personal agency, and none of us should underestimate the influence of our own choices. But there is a danger in assuming that every difficulty can be solved by improving the individual.

That distinction matters: A person experiencing stress may benefit from learning strategies to manage it. But if the source of that stress is an unsustainable workload, an unsafe relationship or an environment that continually undermines their sense of control, individual strategies alone cannot address the whole problem.

Likewise, encouraging connection is valuable, but connection cannot be reduced to another item on a wellbeing checklist. It is something we experience through our relationships, our sense of belonging and the everyday interactions that shape whether we feel known, valued and part of something. The same is true of purpose. It cannot simply be declared in an organisational statement; it is experienced when people can see meaning in what they do and recognise that their contribution matters.

Sometimes the environment matters. Sometimes the relationship matters. Sometimes the culture matters. Sometimes the expectations placed upon a person are unreasonable. Sometimes the problem isn't that someone has failed to develop sufficient resilience; perhaps they have simply been resilient for far too long.

This is one of the places where holistic thinking becomes more humane. It widens the frame without removing personal responsibility. It allows us to ask not only, "What can I change?" but also, "What am I living inside?"

Context is particularly important because we rarely experience ourselves outside of it. We may think of ourselves as confident or insecure, patient or impatient, optimistic or pessimistic, but these qualities are not always as fixed as we imagine. Put the same person into two very different environments and an entirely different side of them may emerge.

A person can be extraordinarily capable in one setting and hesitant in another. Someone who is naturally generous may become guarded after repeated experiences of being taken for granted. Someone who appears unambitious may flourish when their work becomes meaningful. Someone who has spent years feeling inadequate may behave with remarkable confidence once they enter a relationship or community in which they feel genuinely valued.

This doesn't mean that circumstances determine everything. It means that the relationship between the individual and the environment deserves our attention. This perspective is increasingly consistent with the way wellbeing is understood across psychology, public health and organisational research: human functioning is influenced by interacting individual, relational, social and environmental factors. The implication is important. Supporting wellbeing cannot always mean adding another intervention to the individual. Sometimes it means changing the conditions around the individual. (World Health Organization - 2014)

There is another dimension to holistic thinking that is equally important: perspective.

We tend to believe that our interpretation of an event is the event itself. Yet what we experience is always shaped, to some extent, by our own history, expectations and assumptions. If someone disappoints us, for example, we do not experience their behaviour in isolation; we experience it through everything we bring to that moment. The other person may be experiencing that same interaction through a very different history, with different expectations and assumptions of their own. Neither perspective automatically contains the complete truth.

This is not an argument for relativism. Some things are true, some things are harmful, and some behaviour should be named clearly. But complexity asks us to resist the temptation to reduce every disagreement to a simple division between right and wrong.

At times, two apparently contradictory perspectives are both revealing something real.

A manager may experience an employee as disengaged, while the employee experiences themselves as exhausted. A parent may believe they are being protective, while their adult child experiences that protection as control. One person may believe they are communicating honestly, while another experiences the same communication as criticism.

The question is not always who is right, but what allows two people to experience the same situation so differently. That question takes us beyond individual perception and towards understanding the relationship between people.

And relationships are where much of human wellbeing actually happens.

We can have excellent routines and still feel lonely. We can achieve things we once desperately wanted and discover that achievement has not given us the sense of belonging we expected. We can understand ourselves intellectually and still struggle to change because our patterns are being reinforced by the people and circumstances around us.

Wellbeing is therefore not something we create alone. It is also shaped through our relationships and the environments we share with others. It is influenced by whether we feel safe enough to be honest, whether we have people who know us beyond our usefulness, whether our relationships allow room for disagreement, whether we can ask for help without feeling ashamed, and whether we have opportunities to contribute as well as receive.

This is why wellbeing may be better understood as a relationship with change rather than as a perfectly balanced state. Human beings are not static. Our needs change. Our circumstances change. The things that sustain us at one stage of life may become restrictive at another.

Wellbeing, then, involves noticing when something is no longer working, remaining curious about why, and making adjustments without turning every adjustment into a verdict on ourselves.

There is humility in that way of thinking. We do not have to know immediately what something means. We can observe before interpreting. We can change our minds when new information appears. We can accept that our first explanation may be incomplete. We can recognise that a problem may exist at several levels simultaneously: within an individual, between people, and within the wider circumstances surrounding them.

This is why a holistic approach does not reject individual responsibility. It places it within context. We each have agency, but we do not exercise that agency in a vacuum.

And yes, this is what makes holistic thinking so compelling. It doesn't necessarily give us simpler answers; it gives us a deeper understanding of the questions we need to ask.

Instead of asking only, "How do I fix this?" we might ask what created the conditions for it. Instead of asking, "Why am I like this?" we might ask what experiences have shaped this response. Instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?" we might ask what our current way of living is making difficult. Instead of treating one part of our lives as the problem, we can step back and consider the relationship between the parts.

There is no guarantee that this will make life easier. In some ways, it makes life more complicated because we begin to see more. But perhaps seeing more clearly is a worthwhile form of wellbeing in itself.

Human beings are wonderfully complicated. We carry histories into conversations without realising it. We respond to things we cannot always name. We adapt to circumstances and then sometimes forget that we adapted. We inherit beliefs, expectations and patterns, and occasionally mistake them for personality.

To think holistically is not to have all the answers. It is to remain sufficiently curious to know that there is probably more to see. And that is where wellbeing begins: not in the relentless pursuit of becoming a better, more efficient version of ourselves, but in developing the patience to understand the whole person who is already here.

To notice the connections, recognise the patterns, question the context, make room for another perspective and pay attention to what keeps returning. And, every so often, to step back far enough from our immediate experience to realise that the thing we thought was the whole story was only one part of it.

Reference:

Bircher J, Kuruvilla S. Defining health by addressing individual, social, and environmental determinants: new opportunities for health care and public health. J Public Health Policy. 2014 Aug;35(3):363-86. doi: 10.1057/jphp.2014.19. Epub 2014 Jun 19. PMID: 24943659; PMCID: PMC4119253.

World Health Organization. (2014). Social determinants of mental health. World Health Organization.

Keever T. The Whole Well-Being Model: A Layered Framework for Thriving People, Systems, and Planet. Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health. 2025;14. doi:10.1177/27536130251364869