Have you ever said, “I’m fine” while clearly not being “fine”?
There’s solid research on what saying “I’m fine” while feeling otherwise actually does to us. In mental health we call it expressive suppression: hiding the outward expression of an emotion you’re already feeling.
Unfortunately, suppression doesn’t change the emotion. It only hides it. The effects in our body carries on regardless: the cortisol rise, the elevated heart rate, the broken sleep. You’ve contained the emotion, not processed it.
The research findings are consistent and a bit sobering. James Gross’s work at Stanford, replicated many times since, shows habitual suppression is associated with depressive symptoms, anxiety and lower life satisfaction. And in healthcare and other high-pressure professions, suppression is often built into the role expectation. We train people to do it, then wonder why they burn out.
There’s a useful contrast in that same research. Reappraisal, which means changing how you think about a situation, is consistently associated with better mental health. Suppression, which means hiding what you feel about it, is consistently associated with worse. Same stressful event, very different outcomes, depending on whether the emotion gets processed or just contained.
The alternative isn’t oversharing. Nobody needs you to cry in the Monday meeting. The research points to something much smaller: having at least one place where the truth can be said out loud.
That single shift, from suppressing to speaking honestly somewhere safe, is one of the most evidence-supported and most underrated burnout interventions we have.
“I’m fine” seems like a coping strategy. Used daily for years, it becomes a risk factor.
Human Foundations is a weekly look at the science behind high performance and wellbeing at work, from keynote speaker, psychiatrist, comedian and author Dr Jo Prendergast. Subscribe to get each edition as it lands.
Next week: the people who look like they’re coping best, and why they’re often the ones most at risk.
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