Mental Health Screenings

 Visit either of the links below to Learn about mental health and take an FREE anonymous screening to understand more about how you are feeling.
www.ulifeline.org/ptsem (click on "self evaluator" on the left-hand navigation)
www.halfofus.com (click on "check yourself" in the top right)

Self-Assessment Inventory

The Office of Student Counseling and The Wholistic Health Initiative (a PTS student group) would like to invite you to fill out an attached 80-question Self-Care and Wellness Assessment and Goal-Setting Tool.  Both are intended to help you assess your strengths in four overlapping areas of wellness.   After filling out the 80-question assessment, please use the Self-Care and Goal-Setting Tool to take stock of what you are  already doing that is working and to prayerfully consider setting a few goals for the semester to help you experience more balance and well-being.  If you are married or engaged, please encourage your partner to join you in developing a personal self-care plan.

You may choose to review your responses with a partner, friend, or small group and ask them to support your intentions with prayer, encouragement, and periodic check-in conversations.  You may also want to meet with Nancy Schongalla-Bowman, Director of Student Counseling or with Cathy Cook Davis, Director of Student Relations to review your goals and progress in the fall, winter and spring.  If you find you are resisting your own good intentions or need to fine tune your goals, you may want to meet more often.  These meetings will be confidential, and will not require disclosure of specific answers on the assessment inventory.  For more information or to set up a first consultation, contact Nancy or Cathy.

In late April, you will receive a certificate acknowledging your participation in a self-designed wellness program for the year if you have completed both the 80-item Wellness Assessment and the Goal-Setting Tool, and you have discussed goals and strategies for personal change with one of the administrators named above three times spaced through the academic year.  The Certificate of Participation can be shown to your mentors for ministry and will acknowledge your initiative in developing healthy habits to enrich and sustain you at PTS and in future ministry.

A brief word about goal-setting...

Be sure your goals are your goals.  If you set a self-care intention which feels like a "should", you may be setting the bar too high, too soon.  Try "soaking" your "shoulds" in prayer to soften them into goals you want to achieve.  It is better self-care to set doable goals than to reach too far out of your comfort zone and become frustrated.  Try to be affirming, persistent, but also forgiving as you coach yourself toward your good intentions.  You might want to limit yourself to an average of no more than 2-3 goals per area.  As habits form and you feel energized, you can always add another goal or two.

Inventory of Emotional/Spiritual Maturity

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality is a group designed with a mission to apply emotional health to biblical spirituality in order to transform leaders, relationships, churches and organizations.

Their objectives are to:

Pioneer and research the integration of emotional health and contemplative spirituality to discipleship and spiritual formation.
Improve the quality of leaders, relationships, churches and organizations through books, seminars, personal interaction, and other media.
Transform the quality of marriages, especially those of leaders, Integrate the application of emotionally healthy spirituality to the overcoming of racial, cultural, economic and gender barriers in churches and organizations.

They've designed an inventory that allows spiritual leaders to get a sense of where they are a disciple of Jesus Christ, both as an individual and as a church. It will help you get a sense of whether your discipleship has touched the emotional components of your life and, if so, how much. The inventory, and other resources are available on their website: www.emotionallyhealthy.org. Their book The Emotionally Healthy Church will be available in the lending library soon.

"Am I Living Out the Purpose of My Life?"

 Questions for reflection from Never Be Lonely Again: The Way Out of Emptiness, Isolation, and a Life Fulfilled by Pat Love and Jon Carlson. The book is available through the lending library.

"How do you spend your free time? What activity inspires you? What do you anticipate that also makes you feel good about yourself? What do you do easily that improves the lives of others? What do people thank you for that seems to take hardly any effort at all or is even a pleasure for you? The answers to these questions may reflect your purpose in life. Remember that your purpose in life does not have to include being paid to do it.

"If you are still unclear or want to further clarify your purpose, let us pose more questions to sharpen your awareness. Wat are your aspirations? What do you daydream about for the years ahead? Five years from now, what do you think you will wish you had done? What would you do if you knew you could not fail at it? What could you do that would make you proud of yourself? What could you do that would show that you were living a life in line with your core values?

"Taking a different perspective, we ask the following: How do you fill your physical space? What objects are important to you? What might someone who walked through your home say about you? What might he or she say is important to the person living there?

"How do you spend your time? How much is for work? For fun? For maintenance? How much of your time are you alone? How much are you with other people? Ar you comfortable with your friends?

"How do you spend your energy? What things do you feel you must do each day? What are you never too tired to do? What excites you?

"How do you spend your money? Would you be seen as frivolous, tight, or generous? Are you more of a saver or a spender?

"In what area of life are you most organizes? In what area are you least organized? Does this need to change?

"When are you most self-disciplined? What activities do you do well, and which ones can you just barely get done? Do you life to be in groups, or do you prefer individual pursuits?

"What do you think about? What do you visualize? What do you talk to yourself about? What do you talk to others about? How would your life be different if you had the education or training  you desired?

"What about you inspires others? What do you stand for? What is your attitude toward life? In what ways do you contribute to the community?

"If you had one day to live, what would you do? What do you want your obituary to say about you?

 "What are your goals? Assume for a moment that your purpose in life is quite evident, but you just have to see it. What is the obvious answer to the questions, 'What is your purpose in life?'" (pp 172-3)