It's Ok To Not Feel Ok…And You Are Ok

I was with friends this morning sharing some of the things that are feeling hard for me at the moment, and somewhere in it I said 'and I'm ok'. One of them stopped me and said how powerful that was, the 'AND I'm ok' part, because as she heard it she realised that she'd been linking her own struggles with not being ok. Her story was things were hard and she had let that mean ‘I’m not ok’. At times things feel hard, AND I'm ok, both of those are true at the same time.

We've all heard 'it's ok to not be ok', and I understand why it's become such a well used phrase, because it gives people permission to stop pretending everything is fine. And there's one word in it I'd change…it's ok to not feel ok.

'Be' sounds like a statement about you, something you're declaring as a fact about who you are and how you are, 'I'm not ok'. 'Feel' is describing what's moving through you at this moment, which is a completely different thing, because how you feel shifts and changes and passes.

And then there's the part that comes after it…and you are ok.

That one small change makes a huge difference. When the story we're telling ourselves is 'I'm not ok', it lands in us like a survival level threat and everything responds accordingly, parts of us go looking for how to fix it, how to get out of it, what it says about us, and the hard thing we were already feeling now has a whole layer of alarm sitting on top of it. When what's true is 'this feels hard and I'm ok', it changes the experience.

There's something else the 'and I'm ok' makes possible, and it's that it gives us room to admit when things feel hard. Most of us don't, we make light of it, we say we're fine, we change the subject, we don't want to be a burden or to worry anyone. Without the 'and I'm ok', it can feel too heavy to actually acknowledge or bring out into the open, and so we keep pushing through. Those three small words can allow us to be honest about how things actually are, with ourselves and with the people around us.

Because that's how life feels at times, hard. There will always be moments and seasons that feel hard, that's part of being here, and if we can only be ok when life is all rainbows and unicorns then we're going to struggle our way through it, because that isn't how life goes for any of us. Something feeling hard has never been proof that anything is wrong, it simply means this feels hard right now. Emotions come to tell us something and then they move on through, and the being ok sits underneath all of that, it doesn't disappear because something difficult is passing through you.

I want to be really clear that I'm not saying any of this to invalidate how you're feeling. However you're feeling is valid and it's important to validate it. Reach out for the support you need, let yourself feel it, listen to the part of you that's struggling, and alongside all of that, know that you're ok. This feels hard AND I'm ok.

It's the same 'and' I wrote about last time, when I talked about doing the work and living your life. That little word lets more than one thing be true at once, which is almost always closer to what's actually happening, because something can feel really hard and you can be ok at the same time. Life isn't binary, there's always more than one thing that's true at any given moment, and we tend to forget that when something difficult has our full attention.

And the more work I do, the more true this feels for me, even in the hardest moments. It's what curiosity gives you, because when you're willing to look at what's actually going on rather than taking the story at face value, you get to see that the hard feeling is telling you something about the moment you're in rather than something about you.

A Gentle Invitation to Explore

Over the coming week, notice a moment where something feels hard.

See if you can catch what your mind does with it. Does 'this feels hard' quietly become 'I'm not ok'?

Then try the other one on…this feels hard AND I'm ok. Say it to yourself and notice what happens in your body, in your breathing, in how the moment feels.

As always, curiosity and no judgement. See what you learn.

If you'd like some support on this journey or to get started, you're welcome to book a Free chat with me here.