The Intentional Midlife Mom Podcast | Simple, Practical Life, Home & Mindset Solutions for Moms Over 40

Ep. 155: When “I’m Fine” Isn’t Working Anymore: How to Finally Hear What You Need

• Season 2 • Episode 155

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We all say it:
“I’m fine.”
“I’m just tired.”
“I just need to get through this week.”

But what if “fine” is really a mask?
A script we’ve learned to repeat—especially in midlife—when we’re stretched thin, running on autopilot, and quietly falling apart behind the scenes?

In today’s episode, I’m getting real about the disconnect so many women feel beneath the surface… even when life looks “fine” on the outside. We’ll talk about the habits we reach for (like wine, scrolling, or overworking), not to judge them—but to understand what they’re really doing for us.

This is not about fixing or quitting.
It’s about noticing.
It’s about getting honest. 

It’s about finally listening to yourself again.

If you've ever found yourself saying “I’m fine” when you're anything but… this one’s for you.

Resources mentioned in this episode HERE

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Well, welcome everybody, whether this is your first time here or your 150th time here or another number entirely. I am so excited that you are here. And this is one of these topics that is gonna, it hits home for women. And I know this because as a coach for women, I talk to women about this concept in some way every single week, usually almost every day. I would say almost every day.

we touch on some type of this idea, which is this idea of how women so easily say, I'm fine. People ask how you are, I'm fine. And we say it and we don't even think about it anymore. It has become our go-to. And this is not a good thing because when you say I'm fine often enough, but you aren't, you start believing the surface answer over the actual truth. And so,

A lot of times this phrase, I'm fine, again, whether or not we're saying it out loud, sometimes we're just saying it to ourselves, trying to convince ourselves, I'm fine, everything's fine, this is fine, everything's fine, right? And so really what this phrase does is in a lot of ways it functions like a mask. It's almost like emotional armor that we wear in order to avoid going to a deeper level without having to

We put it on so that we don't have to think more deeply, so that we don't have to feel what we're actually feeling. If we just don't talk about it, if we just don't acknowledge it, if we don't think about it in any way, we could just keep pretending that everything actually is fine. But when we say I'm fine, there are some common things that I find that for us women, especially midlife women, there are some common things that that I'm fine phrase might actually be covering.

Number one, resentment. A lot of times this happens because you feel underappreciated or unappreciated. You feel unrecognized. You feel like you are invisible. You and the things that you do, the way that you hold everything altogether, the way that you hold yourself together, the way that you make the world okay for those around you, it goes unnoticed.

And when this repeatedly, day after day, week after week, month after month, goes unnoticed, resentment easily creeps in. And so I'm fine, could be covering up resentment. The second thing that I'm fine, could be covering is emotional fatigue. Emotional fatigue. You have been over-functioning for way too long. Over-functioning beyond your capacity. Because like it or not, we all have capacity.

in a lot of different ways in regards to a lot of the different roles, responsibilities and hats and challenges and people you have depending on you. We have capacity to meet all of those things every single day. And for a lot of women, they have been over-functioning for a very long time. And this leads to that kind of fatigue that is deep down into your bones. And a lot of times it's fatigue that doesn't make sense because we know, maybe you even know that you've been

taking more time for yourself. Maybe you know that you've been getting a good night's rest. Why am I still so exhausted deep down into the center of my being? Well, it's this idea of emotional fatigue. Now there can be mental fatigue too, but emotional fatigue, that is a lot of times what the I'm fine phrase is covering, emotional fatigue. The third thing that I'm fine could be covering is loneliness or invisibility.

Man, that is so hard for me when I hear my coaching clients use the word invisible. I just feel like I'm invisible. I feel that my thoughts, my means, what I think, what I ask people to help me with, it goes unheard. And it has for far too long. And therefore, I am just simply invisible. This is so hard.

This is so hard to talk to women about, but it is so prevalent. And so I'm fine could be hiding loneliness or invisibility. And the fourth thing that I'm fine could be covering is grief. And grief can appear in all sorts of ways, but let's talk about one specific type of grief that we midlife women can have a lot. And that is grief for a version of life that you thought you'd have by now.

I don't know about you, but I was surprised that when I got to midlife, I thought somehow it would be different. I thought that somehow it would be easier. I thought that somehow I would be more sure of myself or more sure of my life or the answers would somehow feel easier or the challenges or the obstacles would somehow just be very few and far between. And when they were there, I would know how to overcome them. And in doing so, it would be almost effortless.

Well, wow, what a surprise when I discovered that that didn't actually, it didn't actually work out that way. And so a lot of times we get to midlife and we realize, wow, like, in fact, I saw on Instagram just the other day, it was somebody's post and it said something like, the average 50 year old has already lived two thirds of their life. The average 50 year old has already lived two thirds of their life. And I thought, my gosh, like that was.

such an awakening for me. I don't feel that way at all. I feel like I'm just getting started. feel like, I've had nine kids and I've got grandkids and I've having this amazing life. But at the same time, in terms of real life issues and really trying to get into the point where I'm figuring out myself and how life works, I have just started to crack the surface it feels like. And so to be told, two thirds of my life was already spent like

wow, that hit me like right between the eyes. It hit me in my heart. It hit me in my gut. Like it just, it kind of stopped me there for a second. But again, sometimes we can feel this sense of grief that life hasn't turned out the way that we thought it would or that we wished it would or that it should turn out, right? And so we have to kind of grieve this. And so you don't say I'm fine because you're being dishonest by the way. You say it because you're conditioned

to just manage rather than process. We are not taught how to process through our thoughts and emotions, especially the hard ones. We're just taught to kind of ricochet away from them. So let's talk about five signs that your I'm fine response is a red flag, meaning you need to pay attention. Number one, you feel tired even after a full night's sleep. I mentioned that just a short time ago.

Again, you have been getting good sleep. It's not even that you've been in bed tossing and turning. mean, hello menopause, right? This is just kind of the way that life works. But let's just say it wasn't that kind of night. Let's just say that you had a good night's sleep. And let's just say that happens to you quite often, where when you get a good night's sleep, you are still just that in your bones, tired. So that's one.

red flag to be on the lookout for. Number two, you scroll or do some other sort of escape mechanism instead of resting.

We're escaping from our life, but we're even escaping from the rest sometimes. I just need to get out of my own head and into the head, into the space, into the reality of somebody else. And so as a means to escape, we end up scrolling or binge watching some way to insert ourselves into somebody else's story. Again, we're stepping.

The only way that we feel like we can get relief is to step out of our reality and into a different one. That's a red flag to be on the lookout for. Number three, you exhibit, you come across as peaceful and calm on the outside, but on the inside, you are a boiling hot mess. And I don't necessarily mean that you're angry. It could just, you're just a flutter of activity. You're a flutter of thoughts. You're a flutter of emotions and...

You're always kind of just teetering on the edge and you don't even know on the edge of what. I've heard that from more than one of my coaching clients. I feel like I'm on the edge and I don't even know what that means. I don't even know what edge that is. All I know is I am just hanging on for dear life and I just can't understand it anymore than that. So again, you are peaceful on the outside. You are calm on the outside. You're not

getting outwardly flustered that often, but you feel anything but peaceful and calm and collected on the inside. You just have this deep, consistent, all the time, unrelenting movement on the inside, conflicting on the inside, battling emotions and thoughts and activity. It's just all the things.

The fourth red flag to be on the lookout is kind of something I just spoke about, which is you can't even pinpoint what would make you feel better. You can't pinpoint what would make you feel better. It's kind of like the client who was teetering on the edge. I don't even know what that means. I just know what I feel like on the inside. I know what my thoughts and emotions are. I know about that hot mess that is on the inside. And I just know that I don't think I can take it much longer.

but I have no idea what relief would even look like. So it could be that you say I'm fine, but you know you're not, but you can't even unpack it any more than that. So again, you can't pinpoint what would make you feel better. That's the fourth red flag to be on the lookout. And the fifth one is that you've stopped trusting your emotional signals. You've stopped trusting your emotional signals, meaning,

You don't really even pay attention to your emotions anymore. You just don't even worry about what you're feeling anymore because you don't even know how to respond. You don't even know how to understand it. You don't even know how to process it. Right? One of the best skills that I help women with is processing emotions because we don't know how to do that. But the thought of processing emotions feels impossible because you don't even know what they are anymore. You can't even trust what you feel.

because everything is just a big muddy mess. And so in this way, the word fine, it just kind of becomes a holding pattern when we don't know what else to say. It fills the space, it gets the job done, and it doesn't invite other questions, whether from other people or from ourselves. It just kind of settles things down, but it doesn't really...

tell you a whole lot either.

So let's just say that you've listened to some of these red flags and you're starting to become intrigued and you're saying, I don't know, this could be me. What do we do, right? What do we do when we suspect that we're telling ourselves we're fine, we're telling others that we're fine, but we know that that's really not what's happening here. So here's what to do. And let me tell you what you don't need. You don't need a full six months sabbatical, right? You don't need a ton of time.

to figure this out because I don't know about you, but that's one thing I don't have a ton of. I can't take a weekend retreat away and try to sort through this. That's just not in the cards for me right now. That's not the season that I'm in. And if that's the season that you're in, that might be really, really helpful for you. But really what you need is you need to give yourself permission to help discover and uncover the truth. Basically,

we need to do some decoding, okay? So I've got three practical ways to begin decoding. Number one, notice when you say, I'm fine, to yourself and others. When are you saying I'm fine? And you wanna go a little bit deeper with a couple of follow-up emotions or follow-up questions here, but let me just give you a little bit more detail here.

What you're doing when I say notice your I'm fine moments, take a note of when are you saying that? What are the things that you're thinking and feeling? What patterns can you see? Do you tend to say that more at the end of the day rather than the beginning? Do you notice that after you've had an interaction with complicated relationships, do you say that?

after you get home from work and you know that your brain has been tapped out, do you know that you say that when you're touched out? Do you know that you say that when you're, notice that you say that when you're feeling emotional? And if it's emotional, what are those emotions? Right? You need to start by noticing. And it's really helpful just to use like an app in your phone, just the notes, right? I actually bought a little notebook for myself. It's actually more like what you would think of as a journal size.

And I carry it around with me everywhere. And it was just a place for me to put anything that's in my head. Sometimes there are things to not forget, like, you don't forget to call the insurance company, right? Sometimes there's super practical things like that, but also there are just other things that I can jot down. And so I often will use this little journal in that way. It will fit in. I can even carry it just on its own. It's not very big.

It will fit in my little backpacky over the shoulder backpack. It will fit obviously in my bigger laptop bags and things like that, but it's cute. It can sit on my kitchen counter. It can sit anywhere, right? It's just, it's really helpful, but start to write these things down. When are you saying I'm fine? Number two, a follow-up question. It would be to discover, uncover what's beneath it.

What happened right before? What are you really feeling in that moment? What are you really thinking? Of some of these things that I said, I'm fine, could actually be masking, what are you noticing? Are you noticing that you're perhaps feeling resentful or is it during that particularly fatigued time? Is it when you are feeling lonely or isolated? Some of these...

things that grief can often cover or that I'm fine can often cover that we talked about earlier, those might be some things that you can identify is beneath it. If writing is too hard for you, just open up the voice memos and leave yourself a voice memo. You can transcribe it later even. But it's important to ask yourself, what is beneath this I'm fine? What am I really saying here? And am I?

Am I really fine? If I actually take a step back and say, okay, but are you really? If you were honest with yourself, how would you answer that? How would you respond if a friend said, how are you? And you said, I'm fine. And she said, okay, but how are you really doing? What would you say to her if you were being just openly honest? That's what you want to get to. What is actually beneath the I'm fine?

And then the third step to take here is to track those repeat moments. Again, we're looking for patterns. What are you noticing is recurring? Because in reality, when you start to notice these patterns, they don't lie. They actually are amazing clues. It's almost like they whisper. And eventually though, when we keep repeating patterns, especially unhealthy patterns,

eventually those whispers turn into screams, right? And so it's important to notice and to look for what are these patterns.

So one of my clients, I'm gonna share with you a little bit about her experience. Her name, let's just call her Carrie. That's not really her name, but I'll call her Carrie. When she started to notice, when she started to track things in these three ways, here's what she started to notice. She realized that quite often when she said, I'm fine, there was resentment in there somewhere, somewhere. And it was often because she felt invisible.

It was because she felt like she was keeping it all together for everyone and no one ever cared how she was actually doing. She felt like she was doing all the things for all the people all the time. And she was just an afterthought. She was a no thought for anyone. And so because again, she had felt this way day after day, week after week, month after month, that resentment started to build in. And it was

feeling unappreciated about practical things like no one helped with the cleanup after dinner. But it was also that no one ever checked in with her, especially when they knew that she might've had a particular difficult day at work or maybe she talked to her husband about one of the challenging things she was working on with one of her kids and he wasn't really even available to listen. And if he did, it was all just on the practical side of things. wasn't, wow, that was really hard or how are you dealing with that?

No one ever checked in with her. And so again, she kind of just felt like she was all alone. So resentment started to build in. What she actually needed was just this opportunity and really this invitation that I gave her to just kind of step back and ask herself, am I really fine? So here are some things that make this hard. So if this sounds hard to you, know that that's pretty normal. It's also important to know that

If you're saying I'm fine and you're not, it's not because you're failing at life. So here's what I know to be true. For the most part, we're just not taught how to ask for what we need, especially as moms, I feel like. Because again, there's always so many other people who need us that the longer we're moms and the more times that we are fulfilling other people's needs, the more and more of an afterthought.

and eventually a no thought, our needs become. And so we don't even ask anymore. And this especially can become a pattern when maybe you ask and no one responds. That's hard too, right? But we aren't really taught very well how to ask for what we need. That's kind of one reason that it can be hard for us really to get what we need.

The second reason it can be hard for us to verbalize and actually truly get what we need so that we can actually be fine is that really this easy going, go with the flow, helpful, peaceful, calm behavior, it's really what was held as the gold standard. We, I think, were very much conditioned into thinking that the goal was to always be outwardly fine, right?

Don't show any of that vulnerability online. Don't anywhere on the outside. Don't let any of your cracks show. Don't let any of your truth ever seep out. The goal is to keep it all in because we wouldn't want to be a bother. We wouldn't want to hurt someone else. We wouldn't want to upset someone else. So a lot of times, again, it's almost like we're rewarded for just holding it all in.

And really the third reason why this can be so hard for us to do is that really there is this, I think this, cultureization that happens that teaches us to over function. It teaches us to over do. It teaches us that our worth and our value, it really comes as a result of how productive you are, what you're able to accomplish. Everything that you're able to do, it's performance related. And so,

Because the goal is performance, really we learn to over function and to really never look at what's underneath the surface. That just would take away from your ability to be productive. And since that's not a productive activity, there's just not time or space for that.

So here's what I want you to know. If you are in a place where you feel like you are in this over-exhausted place, know that really it's not a problem that you have to fix. It really becomes this message that you need to decode. If you are saying, I'm fine, and you know you're not underneath, you're not actually fine inside, you've got to decode what is actually happening here.

And so to speak to this, I actually created the I'm Fine Decoder. And it helps you to notice patterns. And by the way, down in the show notes, you can find a link for this. But it's gonna help you notice patterns. It's gonna help you understand kind of your emotional defaults. And really it's gonna help you kind of reconnect and begin to process your thoughts, your feelings.

your emotions, your needs. And it's for women who really don't necessarily feel broken, but they don't necessarily feel whole either. And so down in the show notes, you'll find a link to grab this decoder kit. So if this has this decoder tool, I guess it is. And so if this has resonated with you at all, and if you know, fine, it's just kind of your default response.

you're gonna wanna figure out, all right, what is actually happening here? Am I actually fine? And that decoder tool is really going to help you do this. So here's one more challenge for you. The first challenge would be go down to the show notes, make sure that you grab that free guide. The second thing would be after this episode, after you finished listening to this episode, I want you just to kind of be, we're trying to build this awareness in ourselves, right? And so I want you to,

write down somewhere again, even if you're leaving a voice memo, you're leaving a note in your phone, whatever it is, I want you to journal, journal your way through one of these I'm fine moments that happens this week. What does it look like? Again, what is underneath? What was it in response to? What happened right before? And how does it feel? Here's another great question. How does it feel after you say I'm fine? Do you actually feel any better? Do you feel worse? Right?

So journal yourself through one of these I am fine moments. And then after you kind of pour all of that out, I want you to ask yourself, what do I really need right now? What do I really need right now? Because in reality, you're not too much. You're not too emotional. You're not lazy. You're just tired of kind of living your life on mute. And so this decoder really is an amazing tool that

isn't here to fix you because you don't, again, you don't really need fixing. You need to finally be able to understand yourself and really hear what you are saying. And this tool is gonna do a great job of that for you. Make sure that you grab that in the show notes down below. Also, if this episode resonated with you, please would you leave us a review wherever it is that you listen to this podcast. Reviews help other people find the podcast, they help.

other people who need to hear the same message to hear it. if you know personally of someone who needs to hear this, make sure that you share it with her. And if someone has shared this episode with you, know that you are truly genuinely cared about by this person and they want to make sure that you get the help that you need as well. So thank you so much for joining me here today. I will talk to you in the next episode. Until then, make it an intentional day.