“Everyone Thinks I’m Doing Fine, but I Haven’t Felt Like Myself in Months”
“I get up, go to work, smile when I’m supposed to, and even make plans with friends. On the outside, everything looks normal. But inside, I feel numb, disconnected—like I’m watching my life instead of living it. Everyone thinks I’m doing fine, but I haven’t felt like myself in months.”
Dear Alyssa,
That quiet line—“Everyone thinks I’m doing fine”—carries so much. It’s a sentence that holds exhaustion in its spine, even though it doesn’t shout. It’s the kind of thing you say when you’ve been holding it together just well enough that no one asks questions anymore.
I felt a pang of recognition reading your words, because what you’re describing is more common than most people admit. It’s a kind of emotional limbo—moving through the motions, showing up as the version people expect, while internally feeling like something essential has gone dim. You’re not in crisis. But you’re not okay, either. And that gray space is often the hardest to name.
There’s a deep tension in living that way. You are performing stability while privately grieving your own absence. And the worst part? It’s invisible. When you're not visibly unraveling, when you’re still functioning—working, texting back, even laughing when the moment calls for it—it’s easy for the world to assume you’re fine. But numbness doesn’t show up in red flags. Disconnection doesn’t always interrupt routines. Sometimes it slides in quietly and makes a home there.
You said you don’t feel like yourself. That’s such a quietly devastating thing to realize. It’s not a breakdown. It’s a slow drift away from your own center. Maybe you can still recall what “yourself” felt like. The sense of being present in your body. Being moved by music, or beauty, or something spontaneous. Feeling emotionally available to your own experience, not just managing it.
But when disconnection sets in, everything becomes muted. You become your own narrator, rather than the one living the story. It’s not always because of one major event. Sometimes it’s cumulative. Sometimes it’s the slow buildup of pressure, responsibility, fatigue. Sometimes it’s grief that never had a place to land. And sometimes, the distance comes from protecting yourself—from overwhelm, from change, from the disappointment of realizing you’ve outgrown something or someone.
When you start to feel numb, it’s rarely a choice. It’s your system doing what it needs to do to keep you moving. To get you through the day without crumbling. That’s not failure. That’s adaptation. But over time, that adaptation can become isolating—because even the people closest to you only see the version you know how to deliver.
And that’s where it gets tricky. Because you look okay, no one asks. And because no one asks, it reinforces the feeling that your inner world isn’t valid unless it’s dramatic or disruptive. But quiet pain is still pain. Emotional fog is still a signal.
I don’t think the goal is to rush back to some perfect version of yourself. This part of you—the one who’s tired, dulled, uncertain—is not a detour. She’s real, too. And she may be the one who’s asking for something different. Not just more rest or fewer expectations, though that might be part of it. But something deeper. Something truer. A reconnection to what is real for you.
That might mean slowing down—not because you’ve earned a break, but because your life is asking to be felt again. It might mean telling one person, gently, that you’re not fine. It might mean letting go of whatever idea you’ve had about being “the strong one” or the “reliable one” and giving yourself permission to be honest instead of admirable.
And maybe, for now, it’s enough to start noticing the small signals. What softens you. What stirs something. What makes time feel less mechanical. It doesn’t have to be big. This isn’t a productivity problem. It’s a presence problem. And sometimes, presence begins by simply telling the truth.
You haven’t felt like yourself. That’s not weakness. That’s a message. A quiet one, maybe. But persistent. And worth honoring.
You’re not broken. You’re just in between.
And you’re not alone in this.
–RJ