“How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
It’s a conversation we have every day, a reply we give without thinking twice. The words come naturally. Sometimes they’re genuine, but sometimes they conceal deeper feelings….
Meet Sarah, a 25-year-old banker in the marketing department. She wakes up at 4 am every morning, prepares lunch for her twin daughters, gets them ready for school, and then gets ready herself. She does her 10-step skincare routine, wears an astonishing outfit that turns heads, and off to work she goes. She greets everyone with a smile. “How are you, Sarah?” her co-worker says. “I’m fine,” she replies with that bright smile that captivates her clients, and on with her day she goes.
The truth is some of the hardest battles are the ones no one else can see; sometimes you don’t even realize you are fighting them.
Let’s talk about mental health; it’s more common than you think. Everybody has it! But over the years, it has been mistaken for mental illness, for a problem, and so many avoid discussing it. Mental health exists on a spectrum. It defines how we think, feel, and act, determining how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines it as a “state of well-being where individuals realize their own abilities, can cope with normal stresses, can work productively, and can contribute to their community.”
Everyday emotions such as stress, burnout, anxiety, grief, loneliness, emotional exhaustion, feeling overwhelmed, sadness, depression, irritability, numbness, fear, worry, and guilt are common. Yet many people choose to suffer in silence.
Most of the time, we are out of touch with our emotions, so we don’t understand our feelings. The longer we ignore them, the faster they lead to emotional exhaustion. Recognizing genuine feelings is crucial to our well-being, yet societal pressures often lead us to dismiss them. Sometimes we fear being judged; we don’t want to sound like “the nagging wife,” “the dramatic friend,” “the attention seeker,” or even “the crazy one,” so we try to convince ourselves that others have it worse, that it’s just a feeling, and that it will pass. We feel an expectation to be strong, not to cry, and to carry the weight of the world like armor. But if left unchecked, that armor will eventually shatter. The silence will lead to isolation, hopelessness, relationship difficulties, low productivity, and challenges at work.
Every time Sarah said “I’m fine,” there was an unspoken “I feel overwhelmed, and I need someone to check in on me.” She meets her monthly targets, attends her kids’ school functions, goes to church every Sunday, laughs with her husband, gives him daily office gossip; her edges are always laid; she is the office fashionista. To the outside world, she looks perfect.
But one day, after she skipped an event, her husband noticed something. He came home and found her asleep. She looked exhausted. He thought about how she always collapses on her back when she gets home from work, how snappy she has been lately, and how one day she forgot the kid’s homework. So he made dinner, got the kids ready for bed, and let her rest. When she woke up, he asked, “How are you?” “I’m fine,” she replied. He looked at her again and said, “How are you really?” She paused for a second, took a deep breath, and said, “Exhausted.”
She poured her heart out to her husband; she cried and said things she had been hiding, and as she spoke, she realized she was facing more than she had even known. And then she finally looked at her husband and said, “I think I need help.”
Sarah could be you; she could be someone around you, scared to ask for help, scared to reach out, or unsure where to start. Asking for help does not make you weak; it doesn’t make you less of who you are; it makes you strong. Just as we normalize going to a doctor whenever we have a fever or a cough, we should also normalize reaching out for support and reaching out to someone we think is struggling.
Having that person who listens and understands makes you realize you are not alone. Look around you and think of someone you can confide in and unburden yourself to; don’t be afraid of being a burden to that person because they most likely don’t mind. It doesn’t have to be a therapist; it could be your close friend, your partner, your parent, a close family member, even a colleague at work or school who you think can relate to your struggles, or a religious leader.
If you are struggling today, it’s time to stop pretending everything is okay; it’s time to stop convincing yourself that “this too shall pass.” You don’t have to carry it alone, and you too deserve support. Recovery doesn’t happen overnight, but healing begins with one conversation.
The day Sarah finally said, “I’m not okay,” was the day she stopped carrying the weight alone. It takes one trusted person and one conversation to begin the journey toward healing.