Healing Starts When We Stop Pretending We’re Fine

What if the thing keeping you from healing… is the lie that you’re okay?

We all say it. “I’m fine. With a smile that doesn’t reach our eyes. With hands shaking under the table. With a throat full of things we’ll never say out loud. We say it to friends. To coworkers. To partners. To therapists.
Sometimes we even say it to ourselves in the mirror.

But let’s be honest...“I’m fine” is rarely about being okay. It’s a survival script. A social reflex. A wall we learned to build because the truth was never safe. Because being not fine was too loud. Too much. Too needy. Because at some point, someone taught us that our pain made us a burden.

So we became masters of pretending. Masters of smiling with hollow eyes. Of cracking jokes while falling apart. Of functioning so well that no one thinks to ask what it’s costing us.

But pretending is heavy. Keeping up the act takes energy we don’t even realise we’re spending.
And the worst part? No one can meet you where you are if you’re never actually there.

Healing doesn’t start with knowing all the answers. It starts with telling the truth. Even a small one. Even if it’s just whispering, “I’m not okay,” in the dark where no one hears. It starts when we stop dressing up our pain as productivity.

When we stop hiding behind “I’m busy” and “just tired.” When we let someone see us raw. Messy. Afraid. That’s when healing starts to breathe. Not because everything gets fixed, but because we finally make space for the wound to be seen.

You can’t heal what you won’t admit is broken. You can’t soothe what you won’t let yourself feel.

And I get it... the risk of being real is terrifying...
What if they don’t understand?
What if they leave?
What if they use it against me?

But what if they stay? What if they say, “Me too”? What if being honest is the very thing that brings the connection you’ve been starving for?

Healing doesn’t happen in the mask. It happens the moment you let it slip, even just a little. When you say, Actually, today kind of sucks.” Or “I’m tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.” Or “I don’t know how to carry this anymore.”

That’s not a weakness. That’s the beginning. And no, you don’t owe your truth to everyone. But you do owe it to yourself. Because pretending might keep things quiet on the outside...but it will cost you everything on the inside.

So here’s your permission: To not be okay. To fall apart a little. To speak before you’ve found the perfect words.
To be a mess in progress.

Because healing isn’t a performance. It’s a reckoning. A return. A peeling back of every “I’m fine” until you find the part of you that’s been waiting to be held. And maybe, just maybe...you don’t need to be strong right now.
You just need to be honest.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post. If you'd like to explore it more deeply, read more in this series of thoughts.