Closing the Cancer Gap

Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer Truths: Sometimes You’re Not Fine

Concealing your pain helps no one — and it catches up with you.

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sometimes you're not fine
For many of us, answering truthfully “I'm not fine” is a learned skill. Stocksy

At a very early age we are taught to conceal our pain. Here’s a pacifier, please don’t cry. Here’s a lollipop, forget that you just got a needle jabbed into your arm. Here’s an ice cream, forget that bad dream, lost game, or traumatic event.

We’re taught not only to hide our pain, in fact, but to smile.

“How are you doing?”

“Me? Oh I’m fine.”

It’s considered impolite to discuss your cancer diagnosis at a dinner party, or your heartbreak at brunch with the in-laws.

It’s ill mannered to share your experiences of racism when asked about your day.

You’re supposed to laugh, make small talk, push the pain deep down, and suck an invisible pacifier — because, for some reason, someone decided a long time ago that naming our pain isn’t polite, and that hiding it and hiding from it makes more sense.

It doesn’t.

It’s a lie.

A lie that both comforts and destroys us.

According to the DailyMail, a study found that the average adult will say “I'm fine” 14 times a week, though just 19 percent really mean it. Almost one-third of those surveyed said they often lie about how they are feeling to other people. One in 10 went as far to say they always lie about their emotional state.

Check out this part: “59 percent of us expect the answer to be a lie when we ask others ‘How are you feeling?’”

Somewhere in the course of our lives we’ve been trained to go to our default — to stuff it, to play the part we’ve always been taught to play.

But it hurts us — in deeper ways than we may even realize.

A series of studies over the past few decades have shown that suppressing your emotions can — and does — affect your body and your mind. In fact, a study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research found that an ongoing reliance on concealing or suppressing emotion is a “barrier to good health.”

An earlier study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester showed people who bottled up their emotions even increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30 percent, with their risk of being diagnosed with cancer increasing by 70 percent. New research from the University of Texas at Austin suggests that bottling up emotions can make people more aggressive. There are other reasons we may not be inclined to answer honestly to the “How are you?” question. Gossip is one: When we’ve been hurt by others sharing our most intimate details it becomes almost impossible to open back up again, to trust again.

Another reason is the fear of not being believed or understood. When we bear our souls to another only to see them look puzzled and question our level of sensitivity or pain, it tends to immediately shut the door of our hearts.

The bravest souls I know are those who have had the courage to admit that something is actually wrong.

We also need to be the people we want surrounding us — people of empathy, trust, and love.

Pretending everything is “fine” will eventually catch up with us. Believe me, I know: I have to actively be honest with myself and my close circle of friends. After years of fighting breast cancer and living through racism, sexism, gossip, and more, my default is to hide from my trauma rather than confront it.

Anyone else out there?!

Past hurts from gossip and unbelief have me scarred, and I’m grateful for those in my life that have proven to me that I don’t have to pretend or be perfect because life is so much fuller together with honesty, trust, empathy, and love.

I wish the same for you, Beloved.

I wish it for us all.

To live with reckless love and to empower others to live the same.

To be brave enough to not suppress our feelings but to find safe spaces, or even create those spaces that offer safety and openness.

Important: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not Everyday Health.