A wellness coach’s role is to offer support and accountability as you build confidence to move towards your goals using your values, strengths, and inner wisdom.
Dawn Zitney is our well-being educator counselor who provides board-certified health and wellness coaching. She is also trained as a counselor and sex educator. She can help you…
- Improve emotional wellness for enhanced mental health
- Develop a stress-resilient mindset
- Enhance sexual well-being
- Improve sleep quality
- Reduce procrastination
- Cultivate self-compassion to minimize self-criticism and perfectionism
- Make confident and timely decisions
- Build self-confidence to navigate life authentically
- Strengthen relationships through effective communication and boundary setting
- Navigate life transitions, such as starting college or graduating
- Cope with chronic illness or health concerns
- Establish and maintain healthy habits
- Connect with campus and community healthcare providers
Wellness coaching is a collaborative process that empowers you to:
- Recognize yourself as the expert in your own life.
- Develop a vision of your ideal well-being.
- Experience and understand the components of well-being.
- Evaluate desired changes, weighing costs and benefits.
- Believe in your capacity for change.
- Harness your strengths and clarify your values.
- Boost your confidence and motivation to take action.
- Transform challenges into learning opportunities and celebrate successes.
- Sustain positive change over time.
Stress and Wellness Coaching
Stress in an inevitable part of life. If you're living a life of meaning, you will experience stress. The key is to get better at stress and wellness coaching can help. In coaching you won’t be given a handout or told how to get rid of stress. Instead, we will work together to help you build a stress mindset so that you build confidence to turn towards your stress and take action that creates helpful change in your life and and enhances your overall well-being.
Sexual Well-Being and Wellness Coaching
We understand that role that sexual well-being can have on one’s wellness during college and beyond. Wellness coaching offers an affirming, medically accurate, culturally responsive, and shame-free place to explore a variety of sexual health/wellness topics (e.g., sexual values and decision making, sexual performance, painful sex, sexual pleasure, STI diagnosis, communication and boundaries, sexual identity, gender identity). You can also make an appointment to ask questions you have about anything sexual health/wellness related; no subject is too taboo.
If you are looking for support around sexual trauma, we recommend that you connect with Psychological and Counseling Services (PACS) or The SHARPP Center. If you are looking for sexual health medical care, make an appointment with a Health & Wellness clinician.
How is wellness coaching different than therapy?
Wellness coaches don’t treat or diagnose mental illnesses, such as depression or anxiety. Instead, wellness coaches help clients look at the present and future to boost motivation and confidence to make behavior change. Student who are living with a managed mental illness are welcome to utilize wellness coaching.
If you are looking for treatment for a mental illness, we recommend that you contact Psychological and Counseling Services (PACS) or make an appointment with a Health & Wellness clinician.
Appointments
- Wellness coaching sessions are 50 minutes.
- All visits are confidential.
- Wellness coaching is available to student who have paid the student heath fee.
Graduate Student Wellness Group: Living with Authenticity & Purpose
Seeking a supportive environment? Our graduate student wellness coaching group could be just what you need. This 6-week group will offer a guided space to learn about your well-being and practice ways to more skillfully care for yourself (e.g., cope with stress, set boundaries). Each session builds upon the last, creating a comprehensive program for fostering a sense of ease and success in your life. To ensure a strong group dynamic and maximize your learning, we encourage registration only if you can attend most or all sessions. Facilitated by Well-Being Educator/Counselor Dawn Zitney (she/her). Next group starts soon. Space is limited; register by emailing dawn.zitney@unh.edu or visiting our events page.
Well-Being Class
LAP 520: Well-Being, 2 Credits
Our well-being course is part of the lifetime activity program collaboration with the Departments of Recreation Management & Policy and Kinesiology. The two-credit class follows the same structure of wellness coaching but is instead offered in a small group format. Through an exploration of your wellness, strengths, values, and identity you'll gain self-awareness, and skills to live life with authenticity and purpose. The course is offered during the fall and spring semesters, over 8 weeks. Refer to the time and room schedule for registration information.
I spent a lot of time applying what we learned in the classroom into my everyday life. When I was feeling very stressed or overwhelmed or having a bad mental health day, I would always think about the strategies we learned, and they honestly really helped me get through those tough times.
- UNH Student
