“Everyone Thinks I’m Doing Fine, But I Haven’t Felt Like Myself in Months”
“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, 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. I don’t know how to explain it, because nothing is obviously wrong.”
Dear Maylin,
That sentence—that everyone thinks you’re fine—carries so much weight. It’s the kind of quiet suffering that doesn’t get much airtime, because from the outside, you’re still functioning. Still doing what life requires. Still performing the role of a person who’s okay.
But inside, something’s off. Not dramatically. Not in a way that stops everything. Just… enough. Enough that you feel like you’re not in your life anymore. Enough that your days blur together, and your emotions feel muted. Enough that you’ve started wondering when you last truly felt like yourself.
That feeling of watching your life from the outside? That’s not uncommon. It’s a form of emotional detachment that often comes after long periods of stress, burnout, g, or even subtle disappointment that never had a place to go. It’s your nervous system trying to give you a buffer—a little distance from feelings it doesn’t think you have the capacity to process.
And because nothing is obviously wrong, it’s hard to name it. Hard to talk about it. Hard to justify why it matters. But it does. That distance between your inner world and the outer performance? That’s not nothing. It’s a signal.
We often think of emotional crises as dramatic breakdowns. But more often, they’re quiet. They sound like “I’m just tired.” They look like productivity. They pass as normal. But inside, something essential is missing—presence, spark, connection to meaning.
You’re not imagining it. You’re not broken. But you are in a kind of liminal space—a psychological fog where your life still works, technically, but you’re not really in it. You’re not emotionally embedded in your own story.
That might be because you’ve been pushing through for too long. Or because you’ve been performing stability for others. Or because life has subtly taken more than it’s given lately, and your system responded by shutting off the part of you that feels too much.
The way back to yourself isn’t always quick. And it doesn’t always begin with a grand revelation. Sometimes it starts with something small and sincere—like naming what you just did. Saying the quiet truth: I don’t feel like myself, and I’m tired of pretending.
You don’t need to justify your pain for it to be valid. You don’t need to explain your numbness for it to deserve care. You don’t even need to “fix” anything right now. You just need to stop gaslighting yourself. Stop demanding that your body and mind keep moving at full speed while your soul begs for you to slow down and feel.
Start where you are. Let one person see the real version of you. Let one moment pass without performance. Let one feeling land, even if it’s uncomfortable.
This isn’t the end of your story. It’s a pause. An invitation. A whisper that something deeper in you wants more than survival.
You don’t need a breakdown to deserve support. You just need to tell the truth. Even quietly. Even here.
–RJ
You’re not lost. You’re just overdue for your own attention.