How to Answer When Someone Asks "How Are You?"

The Welp. This made me laugh... a lot.

Hey, LISTEN, beautiful souls. It certainly can be a challenge to know how to respond to this question, especially because I find that we tend to say "how are you?" to people without REALLY wanting to know how they ACTUALLY are. It's more at least in the USA, part of our culture to ask it as a greeting, than a true question of curiosity.

 

There is also the reality that some of us, (myself included) can be chronic over-sharers, just dying for an  opportunity to TELL somebody that we are NOT good; and give them a long, detailed, description of exactly what is going on inside us; hoping that they'll validate our experience, to be seen or heard, because we truly don't know how to do any of that for ourselves.

 

So one tool I tried to use and still use, when someone asked me how I am is to be "forward focused." This means I think about something, anything at all that I am looking forward to, and direct my answer to that thing.

 

The reason I like this strategy, is because it does not feel ingenuine. Because in reality, if they asked "how are you?" and I said "fine, thanks" it felt like a self-betrayal, if in fact I did not feel fine. I didn't like the lie.

 

In truth also, trying to explain all the things that were wrong with my body, or the exhaustion I felt, in response to the question, was often not received well, as they attempted to either relate to me by telling me that they were too were tired etc, or tried to "fix me" by telling me how to resolve my problem, when all I really wanted was to be heard. So, it only served to make me feel worse.

 

I like the "forward focus" answer because it gave me a chance to also reframe my own perspective in the way I answered that helped me for a moment to FEEL better. In the moment I was asked, I could ACTUALLY think about something I was looking forward to, even if it was just the bath I was planning in the evening. So it became a form of retraining me to orient to the positive without being a fake.

 

That's not to say that I did it every time of course; but I was choosy about who I would share my suffering with, and got to know who wanted to know and who really didn't. But I also tried (and I should say that still struggle with this) to remember that those asking, though they don't have MECFS, are ALSO struggling, in their own way, with their own lives. And though sometimes it can feel like we cannot hold the suffering inside us, and we NEED to vent it out to someone, we should be mindful of the capacity of others when we speak. Some child part of me used to feel so abandoned, by those people, but those people were doing the best they could at the time, and it was NOT easy to be on the receiving end of a constant stream of suffering every time I talked to them.

 

For a long time, I wanted to say "Don't ask me if you don't want to know the answer" when they said "how are you?" Even those who attempted to connect.... I felt bitterness and resentment and disconnect and quite frankly, rage. Maybe you do, too. But the question of "how are you?" doesnt need to be a reminder that you are in fact, not well. It's not a personal attack from the person asking; and the energy we spend on the injustice of it all, is precious, precious energy that we need to reserve for our own healing.