“I’m Fine” & Other Lies We Tell Ourselves
When I was in my residency one of my Supervisors told me that his acronym for “fine” is Fucked up, Insecure Neurotic, and Emotional. He believed that when anyone says they are “fine” they are using it as a place card to avoid identifying their true emotions.
When you think about it, we don’t really dig much further than that when someone tells us they are fine. We have accepted “fine” as a sufficient descriptor for someone's internal experience. When you consider how those internal experiences are actually varied, unique, and intricate, “fine” just doesn't seem to cut it.
Yet we still say it. It's how we describe our weekends to our curious coworkers on Monday morning. It's what we say to our partners when they ask how our day was. It's even sometimes how we describe ourselves to our therapist at the start of a session. Most people won't probe any further than that and oftentimes neither will we.
When you tell yourself and others that you're fine, is that true? Certainly we can't go around sharing our dark and twisties with every barista and Trader Joe's cashier who asks how our day is going. And we want to stop and ask ourselves “where is it safe to not just be fine?” Where and with who can I let my guard down and tell them about the fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional things that are swirling around in my internal experience? Who am I allowed to be messy and unprepared with? Do I have someone that I can bring the pieces of the puzzle to in order to help me put them together, rather than having to show up with the picture completed first?
Humans are an inherently connected species. There are studies (pre-Ethics Boards, of course) that show without human connection we die. We need each other. No one gets through life alone. This belief is the antithesis of the Eastern cultural philosophy of individualism and the self-made narrative, Which tells us to focus on ourselves, do it on our own, and Rewards people that we perceive as obtaining success without help.
So if humans are inherently connective and we need one another to survive but our culture is telling us to focus on ourselves and be individualistic how do we navigate that discrepancy? Oftentimes the people who choose the lone wolf route end up in the chair across from other therapists and me. They find themselves feeling lonely, disconnected, and overlooked. They can feel a craving for something that they can’t quite verbalize. And this often happens after something dramatic has occurred in their life. Their partner may have told them they are on the verge of leaving. Their children may not call anymore. They may have realized that their friends don’t call or respond when they reach out. Or, they may just feel immensely burnt out by maintaining the facade that they are ready to seek help.
Whatever the reason, therapy becomes about building bridges to their emotional experience. Developing a language to describe our emotions is useless if we don’t know how or are unwilling to experience them. It takes true vulnerability to allow ourselves to wander into the dark places that we deemed unnavigable years ago. Letting go of the armor that responses like “I’m fine” have become in order to truly connect with and listen to what our bodies and emotions are actually saying. It is a courageous process to make space for ourselves in a world that tells us that we are just fine.
