The In-Between: When You’re Functioning but Not Fine

There’s a strange, in-between space when it comes to mental health. You’re not falling apart, but you’re definitely not fine either. You’re functioning. But underneath, it's a different story.

There’s a strange, in-between space when it comes to mental health. You’re not falling apart, but you’re definitely not fine either. You’re functioning. You show up to work, reply to texts, maybe even laugh at memes. But underneath all that, there’s this quiet hum—a persistent background noise you can’t quite tune out.

It’s not the kind of mental health struggle that grabs headlines or makes for dramatic stories. It’s quieter. Subtler. And honestly, that makes it harder to talk about—and even harder to figure out what to do with it.

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Why We’re Obsessed with Fixing Everything

We live in a world obsessed with solutions. If something’s wrong, you fix it. Feeling sad? Cheer up. Feeling anxious? Meditate. There’s always a hack, an app, or a five-step process promising to “optimize” your mental health.

I share a ton of tips, which had me questioning:

“What happens when you’ve tried all of that, and you still feel… off?

Well, for starters, you can’t hustle your way out of feeling disconnected. That’s where I found myself. Not in crisis, but definitely not at peace.

I kept thinking, There has to be something else I’m missing. Some trick I haven’t stumbled on yet. But mental health doesn’t always respond to effort the way we want it to. You can’t hustle your way out of feeling disconnected.

In fact, the more you try to fix it, the more tangled it can get.

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Sitting with Feelings We’d Rather Avoid

Eventually, I realized that part of the work isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about learning to be with whatever’s showing up. And that’s uncomfortable as hell.

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” — M. Scott Peck

We don’t like discomfort. We avoid it. We scroll, binge-watch, dive into work—anything to escape that weird, unsettled feeling. But avoiding it doesn’t make it go away. It just pushes it further down, where it festers.

What helped me wasn’t some grand epiphany or life-changing realization. It was small, almost imperceptible shifts. Learning to name what I was feeling without judgment. Saying, “Oh okay, this is anxiety.” Or, “This is sadness.”

Not, I am anxious or I am sad, but this is anxiety, this is sadness. It’s a subtle distinction, but it creates space between you and the feeling. You’re not the emotion, you’re the person noticing it.

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The Boring Stuff That Actually Helps

When people talk about managing mental health, it often sounds like you need to overhaul your entire life. But in my experience, it’s the boring, mundane stuff that makes the biggest difference.

I started paying attention to the small things:

• Whether I’d eaten a real meal that day

• If I’d gotten outside, even just for five minutes, and if so do it again (I find the wind healing.)

• If I’d spoken to another human being in person, not through a screen

These aren’t groundbreaking revelations. They’re basic. But when your mind feels chaotic, those small anchors matter.

Please, don’t force yourself into some rigid routine. Recognize the patterns that either pull you deeper into that fog or help you come up for air. And sometimes, even when you know what helps, doing those things feels impossible.

That’s part of it too: learning to be okay with the days when all you can manage is existing.

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The Messy Middle We Don’t Talk About Enough

The hardest part of all this is accepting that there might not be a “before” and “after” moment. Mental health isn’t a problem you solve once and move on from. It’s an ongoing process. There’s no finish line where everything suddenly clicks into place and stays that way forever.

“Being able to be your true self is one of the strongest components of good mental health.” — Lauren Fogel Mersy

We don’t talk enough about that messy middle space—where you’re managing, but still struggling. Where you’re aware of your patterns, but that doesn’t mean they magically disappear. That space where growth and discomfort exist side by side, and you’re constantly learning how to navigate it.

And honestly? That’s where most of us live. Not in crisis, but not fully at peace either. Somewhere in-between.

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Learning to Live Without All the Answers

If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t always get closure.

Sometimes, you sit with questions that don’t have answers. You live with feelings that don’t get wrapped up in a neat little bow. And that’s okay.

Mental health isn’t about reaching some ideal state of perpetual calm. That would be pointless. It’s about learning how to move through the world with whatever you’re carrying. Some days, that load feels lighter. Other days, it’s heavy. But either way, you keep going. Not because you’ve solved everything, but because you’ve learned how to exist in the space between.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

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Sources:

• M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

• Lauren Fogel Mersy, Positive Psychology