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What to Expect from a Health Coaching Appointment for Stress

Lifestyle & Wellness | Wellness

Today, I'm going to give you a quick overview of what a stress management appointment with a health coach at PartnerMD may look like for you. This will vary from person to person. We all deal with stress a little differently, and we all feel stress a little differently.

Overall in your appointment, we're going to sit down and go over what is stressing you in your life right now.

This could be something new. This could be something that's changed recently, whether it's work, dealing with family, or changes in your day-to-day activities. 

We have different types of stress — acute and chronic. And so we kind of want to unbury that and see what's going on in your world, so we get an idea of what is your stress. And then after we want to really figure out if there are any triggers in your life that stress you out more.

How are you coping with your stress? Do you have any coping strategies that you're utilizing right now to help you with your day-to-day stress?

We want to start looking at things like that. And then once we get an idea of what your triggers are, how are you reacting, and what's the behavior, right? So what are you actually doing?

For example, many people feel stressed and overwhelmed, and then that leads to things like eating. And then they're not feeling great about that and weight gain can happen.

We want to start implementing ideas for you to better handle stress in a healthier way, and during the session, you're going to have a conversation, because the ideas, tips, and strategies need to be mutually agreeable.

You feel comfortable with the ideas, and then we want to start implementing them. During a stress management appointment, we're working on discovery. We're working on triggers. We're going to talk about things like mindfulness.

We're going to talk about really paying attention to your patterns and behaviors, so we can identify what's going on. Sometimes that may take a little while to really pay attention to our patterns and behaviors.

We'll be talking about that during your session, but you will be left with a little homework if you will. We want to come up with a couple of strategies for you to start implementing so that you feel better about dealing with your stress in a healthier way.

We'll go into much more in detail in your session, as they are customized individually for each person, but hopefully, this gives you an idea of how initially this will look.

Your follow-up visits are going to build off of each one. So we're going to go through, what was your homework? What are you identifying? What are you learning? And how well are we implementing these strategies to make a healthier you?

So we'll continue to follow up and continue to monitor it so that you're feeling comfortable, and strong with it.

Keep in mind, it's not a just do this and it's gone. It's really learning to manage your stress. We want to keep that relationship between you and your health coach so that you get better and better, because these habits take time to change. 

Access Wellness University & Certified Health Coaches

PartnerMD memberships include access to our members-only wellness program, Wellness University, which delivers more than 70 physician-approved courses and certified health coaching targeting the 4 areas most critical to your health, including stress and sleep, brain health, nutrition, and strength and mobility.

With offices in Richmond, VA; Midlothian, VA; Short Pump, VA; McLean, VA; Baltimore, MD; Greenville, SC; and Atlanta, GA, you can experience primary care built around you, one focused on wellness and prevention to help you stay as healthy as possible, as long as possible. Learn more about health coaching at PartnerMD