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From fitness to trauma healing to your “villain era,” here are the wellness trends experts say are actually useful.

HuffPost.com | Jillian Wilson | Dec 14, 2022, 12:24 PM EST | Trends | Shield Health Insurance

A lot of things trend on social media, and many of those trending topics aren’t good. In fact, they can be pretty harmful (looking at you, NyQuil chicken). But, like all trends, they capture attention for a reason — some of these popular topics even prove pretty useful.

In the wellness world, including fitness and mental health, hundreds of trends have come out this year or simply grown in popularity. From hot girl walks to healing your inner child, many healthy trending topics are in the zeitgeist for a good reason.

And just because they’re trending now doesn’t mean they need to end in 2023. If anything, they should be continued and explored more. Lindsay Monal, a yoga teacher at YogaRenew Teacher Training, said that it’s important to follow the trends that you like and that will keep you consistent in your practice, whether mental health or fitness.

Here are the most useful fitness and mental health trends of 2022, according to experts:

Mental health trends

End of people pleasing and entering your “villain” era

The simple search “villain era” on TikTok brings up thousands of videos that showcase people putting an end to people pleasing and embracing their so-called villain era.

But while boundary setting and putting an end to people pleasing are both valuable for your mental health, there is something wrong with this being phrased as villainous behavior, according to Sarah Sarkis, an executive coach and senior director of performance psychology at Exos, a corporate wellness company.

“The ‘villain era’ is really an inaccurate depiction of people setting healthy boundaries,” Sarkis said. “While the trend means well, we shouldn’t be vilifying taking a step away from pleasing others to prioritize our own needs and well-being.”

She asked: “If we are always pleasing other people but never addressing our own needs, who are we actually being a villain to? Ourselves perhaps? Is that OK?” The answer: No, it is not.

She noted that burnout (think: holiday stress, work stress, family pressure and more) is a significant driver of this end of people pleasing. “We’re starting to see this shift to reverse years if not generations worth of conditioning to put others’ needs before our own,” Sarkis said.