The Skill That Lets You Function When You’re Not Okay
Calm Is Not the Same Thing as Peace
Someone from our foreign staff says, “Good morning! How are you today?” She’s chipper and joyful.
My problems are not hers, so I say, “Ready for the day!” I am not ready for the day.
I can’t shake off this jet-lag. I kept waking up every hour last night. I’m between having coffee to keep myself awake and ruining my stomach or taking my chances of falling asleep during meetings.
Either path leads to discomfort and both would make me lose face.
Losing face in front of strangers is bad but losing face in front of people you know is really bad.
The staff member probably thinks my life is magical. But I’m really a duck paddling like crazy beneath the surface.
I’m not particularly resilient. It’s more like I’m complying with a system that doesn’t have space for my feelings, so I’ve become used to swallowing them.
Oh, la, la, quel dommage. French for: Oh, what a pity.
The Consequences of Being Human
I am on my boss’s plane, in the extra crew seat. I have a little claustrophobia issue in planes, for which I take anxiety medicine as soon as I board.
I’ve shown up for work.
My body feels everything I trained my voice not to say: nerves and then the sleepiness of the anti-anxiety med. But my body has learned to keep things to itself.
I turn back to see everyone sitting around a table playing dominoes. Oh no, this is going to be a long night and the medicine is already kicking in. I do everything I can think of to keep myself awake but it’s already 11 p.m. and they haven’t even had dinner yet.
The last time I check my phone it’s 1 a.m. It’s the last thing I remember. At some point, I fell asleep.
And they set up the table and plated all the food for dinner themselves, while the executive assistant slept. OMG, my stomach acid is out of control. I wonder why.
When we land, claustrophobia is not the cause of my anxiety. It’s me being trapped in a body that didn’t let me do my job. I know there will be consequences and I am freaking out.
My body feels everything I trained my voice not to say.
The Trap: Show up. Perform. Deliver.
It looks like strength. But it’s just something I learned not to question.
I’ve been conditioned to maintain dignity and save face. I can’t show weakness. If I lose control, I lose respect. I’ve worked too hard to lose that now.
I’m trapped. I created this version of myself because it worked. Because it got me respect. Trust. Access. Stability.
And now I don’t know how to stop. And I’m not even sure I want to.
My brain understands claustrophobia. It just shrugs. Oh, la, la, quel dommage.
Functioning Is Not Healing
People get used to you always being “fine”.
They don’t know you’re suppressing emotions or the symptoms of illness.
You’ve always been fine. That’s the only version of you they know. It’s the one they hired.
I learned this from my immigrant family and from my immigrant boss.
In our families, functioning wasn’t optional. It was survival.
If the multi-millionaire feels unwell and is working, what does the administrative assistant do? Keep up with the multi-millionaire.
Every morning, I picked him up at this hotel room with all the documents he’d need that day. I asked how he slept and he asked me the same. We both said we slept well. Lies.
But face must be preserved and immigrants don’t complain, we adjust.
When Your Ability to Endure Becomes Your Reputation
The dangerous thing about being “the reliable one” is that people stop checking if you’re okay.
You answered emails while sick.
You showed up grieving.
You handled crises calmly.
You smiled through exhaustion.
And now everyone trusts you to absorb pressure without complaint.
At work, this gets rewarded.
The person who breaks down is “unstable.”
The person who keeps functioning is “professional.”
So you keep going.
Not because you’re healthy. Because stopping feels professionally dangerous.
You become afraid of your own humanity.
The Performance of Being Fine
And so, you develop a skill that was never discussed when you signed with the company: the ability to separate what you feel from what you show.
You don’t stop functioning because things get hard. You stop when your body refuses to keep the lie going.
You are rewarded for functioning until functioning becomes self-betrayal.
Until then, you show up. You perform. You deliver.
And everyone thinks you’re fine. Including you, most of the time.
This is heartbreaking. I've been there -
- Smiling through meetings while suffering excruciating pain from endometriosis. Would I bleed through my pad before finishing my stand-up presentation?
- Having to leave my elderly father at home with a caregiver during the month our team was offsite. Being halfway across the country when the house flooded and he was confused and terrified. Flying home to rescue him during a critical time for the team, disrupting operations, knowing my professional image was greatly weakened.
- Being forced to bottle my grief when he died and keep working because the final report had to get finished.
That doesn't sound healthy. No human being should have to choose between their career and their health and human dignity. I know that, in individual cases, this is difficult or almost impossible.
But body and mind cannot be exploited indefinitely.