Why “I’m Fine” Isn’t Always Fine

I’m sure we’ve all done it. You see someone you know in the grocery store or church lobby. You haven’t seen each other in a while and you don’t have time for a huge conversation. Or, you don’t have the energy to tell the truth. So, when the inevitable, “How are you?” enters the conversation, you add the appropriate, fill-in-the-blank, “I’m fine.” 

“I’m fine.” Instead of “I couldn’t sleep last night and I’m exhausted.” 

“I’m fine” instead of “I had a panic attack before coming here.” 

“I’m fine” instead of “My kid had a tantrum that lasted an hour because she wanted to wear a dress that was too small.” 

I understand that most people simply don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth to discuss actual feelings in the cereal aisle. I do. But I’ve always been terrible at casual, social interactions. So, when I’m asked this question, and I’m at the end of my rope emotionally and physically, I tend towards socially inept in the worst way. 

I’ve learned over time that, “I’m fine,” is code for, “I don’t have time to have this conversation,” and, “I don’t know you well enough to tell you what I’m actually feeling.” But I hate it. Because it is very, very rarely an honest answer.

I don’t know what exactly to say in place of “I’m fine.” There isn’t, probably, a good answer, truthfully. Because, I don’t know about you, but when I’m trying to pick out lunch snacks, I’m not necessarily keyed into how others are feeling at the moment. I’m usually focused on the task at hand and not much else. Bu,t it feels to me like we could all do better about this. 

There have been days where I was one negative emotion away from a complete and total mental breakdown in the bread aisle of Aldi. Maybe a kid disclosed something triggering at counseling and it’s running around in my brain. Maybe there were 14 fights before breakfast. Maybe the car is broken and there isn’t enough money and I’ve been sick for a month and allergies are high and there was just a horrific hurricane and the political climate is a disaster wrapped in a basket of horror sitting atop a pile of garbage. 

Life is just hard, sometimes. Don’t get me wrong. It can be amazing, beautiful, fun, magical, and lovely. But people don’t usually ask me how I’m doing when I’m at an emotional high. That could have to do with my depression which sometimes makes “feeling sad” an understatement only on level with a class-5 hurricane being “bad weather.” I don’t think I’m alone in this. 

I think we can sense that others aren’t feeling well. We don’t have words for it or even a good idea of how to correct it but we want to help. So we ask “How are you doing today?” We’re hoping the answer isn’t complicated or if it is that we can help. But it’s also basically a reflex now. So we ask when we don’t actually want an answer, or don’t have time to appropriately attend someone else who might be having a bad day. 

Another lie I hear almost daily is a response to, “What happened today?” “Nothing”. If someone who is upset saying, “I’m fine,” is a little annoying to me, my kid saying “nothing” when I ask about what they did that day is the level of annoying that is only achieved by mosquitoes buzzing around my ears that won’t go away. Which is to say, very annoying. Especially if I know the kid in question had a day that should by all rights be interesting. And I get it. I understand the exhaustion that a day of school interactions can cause. And I’m not the most talkative at the end of my socialization battery. But gosh, kid, could you at least tell me a little bit about art class or something? 

“Yes, I slept fine.” 

“Yes, I had breakfast” 

“I did my chores”

 “I didn’t hit her” 

My life is inundated daily with a frankly ridiculous number of lies, large and small. I’m guilty too. “Mom, want to see my Minecraft house?” I absolutely do not but, “Sure sweetheart,” rolls off my tongue because I can’t bear to see the disappointment on her face if I say no. 

My point in all this is that very often we lie as much as our kids might. We don’t see it as lying because we can see our own reasoning behind it. We can understand our own justification for things. We can’t understand why a kid would take something from right in front of us and lie about having done so. We struggle to grasp why our kids might lie outright about something that seems obvious to us. I think we might need to take a step back and realize how hypocritical we can be to our kids in these situations. 

Ironically, when someone asks me how I’m doing and how I feel is written large on my face, it’s these times when I’m worn down, emotionally drained, and on the brink of crying that I am most likely to answer honestly. That brings about its own difficult situation though. Because there is such a thing as too much honesty. And airing my grievances when someone was probably just being polite isn’t demonstrating great social norms for my kids. So, really, I’m not sure that any response is the right one sometimes. 

I just know that I’m trying to be more patient with things I see as breaches of trust when the reality is more likely that my kid just doesn’t have a good answer for me at the moment. Maybe they can’t find the words to say what they mean and that makes them feel bad. Think about it next time someone asks you “How’re you today?” and your knee-jerk response is to say “I’m fine” and keep going about your day.