The Performance of Okayness: Why We Pretend We’re Fine and What It Costs Us

There’s a moment, maybe you know it, where someone offers to help, and before you’ve even thought about it, your mouth says, “It’s okay, I’ve got it.”

You might even smile when you say it. Maybe soften your voice. Maybe move faster to prove it’s true.

But if you’re anything like me, there’s a part of you inside whispering, “No, you don’t. Not really.”

I’ve been catching myself lately. In the doorway. In the breath I take before I speak. In the shift in tone that says, “I’m fine, really,” when actually I’m fraying.

It happens when my thirteen-year-old shrugs off a question with “I don’t know” and shuts down. It happens when my ex texts, “We need to talk,” and I feel my jaw lock before I’ve even replied. It happens when I’m hosting, prepping a meal, replying to emails, trying to remember when I last ate, while the thought runs underneath it all: “Don’t drop any balls. Don’t let them see.”

I’m not writing this because I’ve figured it out. I’m writing it because I haven’t. Not fully. Not yet. Maybe never completely.

I still take the pre-emptive breath. Still shift my voice. Still say, “I’ve got it,” when I don’t. I still catch myself stress-eating or not eating at all. Still find it easier to talk about other people than risk being fully seen myself.

And here’s the thing no one tells you: even healing becomes a performance if you’re not careful.

Even in the writing of this blog, I can feel the pull to package it up, to land the insight, to say, “But I’m learning, and here’s what you can do.”

But today, there’s no tidy bow. There’s just me, noticing. Naming. Sitting in the truth that I am still someone who sometimes performs being okay. And I think maybe you are too.

Maybe you walk through the front door of a family home and feel your body shrink, like you’ve slipped into an old version of yourself you outgrew but never quite left behind. Maybe you adjust what you eat at the table, not based on hunger but on who’s watching. Maybe you spend the holidays performing a version of “fine” while quietly counting down the days to leave.

Maybe, like me, you’re tired of it.

Because this performance of okayness doesn’t just exhaust us.

It isolates us.

We become the version of ourselves that no one can reach. The competent one. The agreeable one. The one who says, “I’ve got it,” even when the house is burning behind us.

And the cost?

We lose intimacy. We lose spontaneity. We lose the ability to say, “I’m not okay today,” without fearing what that will mean. We confuse being needed with being known. And we forget what it feels like to be received without effort.

This isn’t just a holiday habit. It’s a nervous system strategy. A way of surviving families, partners, cultures, workplaces, classrooms, and communities. It’s a way of disappearing in plain sight.

So I’m not going to offer you a clean ending. I’m not going to say, “Just breathe,” or “You belong anyway,” because maybe you’re not ready to believe that yet.

I’m just going to say: I’m in it too. Still learning how to be seen. Still catching myself performing.

And if you’re tired of doing it alone, there’s a space where we practise being real. No performance required.