What do you answer?

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.