Why You Say “I'm Fine” When You're Not

“I know I’m overreacting, I hate it about myself. Why do I always have to make a drama out of nothing?” - this is a default line for one of my clients, let’s call her Alice. This time, her partner is late for dinner. Shaking inside, she keeps saying “I’m fine” when he asks “Are you ok?”. She knows she “shouldn’t be feeling this way” because it is really nothing. And she is not one of these drama queens who get into uncontrollable rage without a reason. By the end of the evening she feels exhausted. Trying to put up a happy face and secretly condemning herself for feeling otherwise, resenting her partner and feeling even worse about that. It feels like riding down a dark tunnel slide with no way back.

This is a very common loop. A strong feeling comes which seems to be completely out of place. The internal voice might whisper: if people knew about it, they would think I’m overreactive (or: hypersensitive, dramatic, unhinged, crazy… fill in the blank). There must be something wrong with me if I feel like this and no one else seems to mind. How do other people do it, why is it always only me who gets upset? Etc., etc. 

Alice isn’t overreacting. She does what she learnt she had to do to stay in the relationship. Somewhere in her life, maybe in childhood or in earlier relationships, she learnt that expressing disappointment creates a rupture. That when she gets angry, people leave. What is more complicated: maybe she has never even had a chance to actually be angry at someone - because the implicit message in her home was that “showing anger is a sign of weakness”, or she saw her parents’ arguments which resulted in one of them leaving. 

The pattern here is: “If I show what I feel, this is ‘too much’. People will leave me.” So she puts a lot of effort into doing the opposite: she makes herself smaller. She pushes down the feelings. She says “I’m fine” when she’s not. All this to keep people close. 

But it doesn’t work. Because the most important person in her world - herself - is abandoning her, over and over again. She (unconsciously) chooses to disappear from the relationship in order to… stay in it. Her partner is there - but he never really knows what’s truly happening for her. He doesn’t get to really know her. The relationship seems “safe” but really it’s just superficial. Alice is there, but not really. 

Even when in a relationship, Alice feels lonely because she is not seen, and this sense of loneliness pushes her to cling harder to the relationship. And she isn't seen because she's scared that when she is seen, her partner will leave. The loop closes. 

This pattern shows up not only in romantic relationships. Very often it hijacks our professional connections. 

Take Alex: in a team meeting, his colleague presents Alex’s idea as his own and gets praised for it. Alex feels shocked, betrayed, angry, the sensations of a sudden rush of energy and thumping heart are followed by an equally sudden softness in his arms and pang in his chest. He feels embarrassed with his internal reaction and quickly rationalises: it doesn’t matter who presents this idea, it is for the common good, it’s only work, I shouldn’t be too sensitive, this is a team effort. So he stays quiet and never mentions his disappointment. What disappointment? He’s already talked himself out of it. If he dared to confront his colleagues, he would risk their pushback. What if they turned against him? Or called him difficult? Alex tells himself it doesn’t matter. But somehow, he resents going to work. He denies being true to himself so he won’t be ostracised by the others, but the sense of self-abandonment sits deeply in him, something he knows but cannot rationally explain. 

What I observe often, is this pattern showing up in families. Dorothy’s mother hates being wrong and takes offence easily. Dorothy silences herself “to keep the peace”. One critical word or a different opinion, and her mother might go silent for days. So Dorothy learnt to edit herself - she is there for her mother but only partially, her mother doesn’t really know her, and Dorothy keeps hoping her mother will notice her. That one day she will ask a question Dorothy’s been waiting for. If only she keeps her happy. 

There's nothing wrong with any of them. Sometimes we can choose to silence ourselves for the greater good. 

I’m talking about a pattern that erodes the sense of self-worth and self-trust that is only created if we take our emotions, sensations and thoughts seriously. We tend to abandon ourselves when we believe that in order to exist in this world and have any sense of worth, we have to be in this relationship, and that the only way to keep it is to minimise, supres or dismiss any needs, wants, urges and impulses that do not seem to agree with the other person. 

To perform like this every day consumes enormous amounts of energy. The inner censor is on permanent alert. A sense of safety, groundedness and trust rarely settles if we constantly look for confirmation from the other person. 

It also puts enormous pressure on the other person. This pressure - even if not expressed - is felt. This is why, even when we try so hard to comply and do everything so the other doesn’t abandon us, they - unconsciously - pick up on these expectations, and withdraw. Which pulls us into more self-erasure to hold them closer, and them - to move further away. The loop closes.

How to solve this impossible dilemma? You need connection AND you need to be yourself in it. But you learnt that if you show yourself fully - with your sadness, your anger, your needs and quirks - people will leave. That being YOU makes you unlovable. 

So you choose to stay small, to fit in, to appease, because this way you belong. You abandon yourself before you get abandoned.

Superficially, it feels safe, like a connection. But deeper, you might sense this buzzing fear of “what if they find out who I really am”. Because without authenticity there is no intimacy. Who they know is not you - it is a version of you that you constructed that is trying to not be “too much”. 

And the real you, the one who gets angry when someone is late, who feels betrayed when taken advantage of, who has opinions and ideas, this person gets put into a corner, protected. But also - alone. 

Now, the important thing is: this is not your fault. This is not a personal failing. There is nothing wrong with you if you recognise yourself in this pattern. This is an adaptation that you didn’t consciously choose but one that at some point in your life made perfect sense. At the point in your life when you had to protect yourself. When you didn’t know any better. When you had no other choice. When showing up felt too risky. 

The problem isn’t your anger. The problem is when you think that BECAUSE of your anger you are unlovable. 

The problem isn’t that you need recognition. The problem is that you learnt that needing things makes you a burden, someone “difficult”. 

There is nothing wrong about you. You are protecting yourself the only way you know how. 

And this protection has grown to be a problem. Because when you abandon yourself to stay connected, you actually are never truly connected to anyone. Including yourself.

If you are like Alice, Alex and Dorothy, you can’t ‘unfeel’ your anger, frustration, disappointment. You can’t rationalise yourself out of the pattern. 

What you can do is to start noticing when it happens. When you say: “I’m fine” when you’re not. “It doesn’t matter” when it actually does. The tiny moments when you make yourself smaller to keep someone close. The moments you abandon yourself. 

That recognition - seeing the pattern as it happens - is the beginning of the shift. 

Not because recognition fixes it. But because recognising it means that you are not completely in it. You are not consumed by it. You create a little distance, a tiny space. And in this space a different choice is possible. 

And it doesn’t have to be the choice to suddenly express everything that you feel. Or to stop caring about the relationships. The answer is never that simplistic. 

It is a choice to give yourself a chance to question your assumptions. Notice how you treat yourself. Validate your feelings. Open up to possibilities. Listen. 

It is a choice to stay with yourself a little longer before you disappear.

Related articles:
- The Moment of Self-Abandonment - Recognising when you disappear on yourself
- When Success Hides Self-Abandonment - How high-achievers abandon themselves differently