We live in a world where being well means doing. If you get to work on time do your job and get along with people everyone thinks you are doing okay. People only notice that you are struggling when it starts to affect your work. Until that happens, being able to get things done is seen as a sign that you’re healthy. Wellness is really, about how you can perform and that is not always a good measure of how you are really doing.
But functioning is not the same as being well.
People can look like they have it all on the outside.. On the inside they are often falling apart. They go to work. They do their job. They seem happy. They get things done.. They are not really okay. They have just learned how to deal with their problems without showing it. Success is like a mask that hides how they are really feeling. It covers up the fact that they are struggling with distress. They are good at what they do so it is easy to hide what is really going on with health issues, like psychological distress.
This article explores why “functioning” is a misleading measure of mental health, and how relying on it prevents timely care and honest conversations about psychological well-being.
Resilience is a word that sits comfortably in headlines, boardrooms, therapy sessions, and social media captions. We praise those who “bounce back.” We revere the survivor who keeps going, the widow who smiles at the funeral, the employee who shows up the next day after losing everything. In a world that feels increasingly unstable, resilience is framed as the virtue that will save us. It promises triumph, forward motion, and emotional durability. But buried beneath its shiny surface is a quieter truth—sometimes resilience is just well-dressed repression.
In theory, resilience is the ability to adapt and recover after hardship. In practice, though, it often becomes a script we perform to appear functional when we are anything but. Behind the encouragement to “stay strong” is an unspoken message: don’t fall apart where others can see you. Don’t make people uncomfortable with your pain. Don’t take too long to heal. This isn’t just personal pressure. It’s cultural. It’s systemic. And it’s everywhere.
When we talk about our minds and how we feel around people we usually only pay attention to our problems when they are really obvious. We often ignore burnout, anxiety, depression and trauma long as the person can still get things done. This means we have a limited idea of what it means to be sick. We only think someone is really sick when they completely break down but we do not notice when they are slowly falling apart due, to burnout, anxiety, depression and trauma.
People talk about being “high-functioning” when they encounter health issues. This is really common among people who work and those who do really in life. We think it is good when people can keep going even when feel bad emotionally.
People put off going to therapy because they think they are still doing okay. Others do not get the help they need because it seems like they are doing fine. Mental health issues like these are often ignored because the person, with them seems to be managing fine.
This framework is dangerous. Mental health is not defined by output, but by internal experience. When functioning becomes the benchmark, people are encouraged to endure rather than heal — until their bodies or minds force a pause.
Simone Biles is an example of this problem. She is one of the athletes of our time. Simone Biles was doing really well in ways. She was winning a lot of medals and breaking records. Simone Biles was also telling everyone what it means to be remarkable, at the level.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were actually excellent.Biles decided to withdraw himself from some events. She said this was because of concerns regarding and then explained that even though she looked like she was physically okay she was under a lot of pressure. This made it not safe for her to partake in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Biles was being honest about the whole thing.
This moment was important because of how people reacted to her situation. A lot of people questioned her decision. They thought she did not need to make that decision because Mental Health was not affecting her life and she was still successful. Her situation showed that people think you are okay long as you can do things.
Mental Health support really starts when we stop asking people if they are doing okay and start asking them how they are feeling. Mental Health is not about how much you can handle. Mental Health is, about whether handling thingss affecting you deeply.
Until we redefine health beyond productivity, many will continue to suffer quietly, praised for functioning while slowly breaking inside.
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