What do you say when someone asks you, "How are you?"
Do you pause to assess your own condition before responding
Or do you default to one of the well-known "excellent, OK, OK" phrases?
I used to go with the instinctive response. It simplified things. That way, no one would be put off by what I had to say. After all, I had the idea that no one cared. It was simply a nice question that demanded a courteous response. During my earliest forays into self-awareness, I used another well-known response: "I'm OK, or I'll tell you," accompanied by a quick false chuckle.
That was my first attempt at being truthful. I was no longer comfortable lying about how I was feeling, but I wasn't ready to go through the anguish of admitting the truth either. So, when things weren't going well, I resorted to irony. That, however, did not work. So I did what I needed to do and found a way to cross the gap and just say hello. How did I manage to achieve it? Not only did I learn to understand that it is OK not to be OK, but I also learned to stay in intimate contact with those sensations that were uncomfortable for me. I was only able to talk about them after that. It was not those who were offended when I said, "I'm not having a good day, I'm depressed, I'm not OK." It was my discomfort in admitting it that made me uneasy. I also altered my thinking from "nice inquiry" to "when someone asks how I'm doing, it's because they want to know how I'm doing."
I know I do when I ask the question.
