Why 'I'm Fine' Is The Most Dangerous Lie You Tell Yourself
How the Marching Soldier burnout pattern keeps you numb, disconnected, and running on empty.
Do you think the world will come crashing down because it all depends on you?
You can't focus on anything else because if you slow down or stop, it'll all break.
Work’s all that counts now, right?
I'm writing this on a Greek island, here for a ceramics retreat, but got sucked deep into this burnout pattern before.
There was too much going on.
I couldn't keep up.
It was all urgent.
So I chose to focus only on work.
I gave up any hobbies, distractions, and my evenings, but only until I ‘caught up’.
Because that's what reliable people do.
After that, I'd step back.
Of course I would.
People were counting on me even though I was frazzled and still reeling from a new health diagnosis.
I didn't want to drop the ball, so I worked longer and harder, and self-sacrificed over and over.
Until suddenly, I wasn't needed.
The Marching Soldier had lost her mission.
When reliability becomes self-sacrifice
If you’re living in Marching Soldier mode, it's a familiar drill.
You stay reliable even as you wear yourself down, because stopping feels like weakness.
No thanks.
You sacrifice your own needs because duty wins.
That's the kind of person you are.
The reliable, strong one.
Then it hit me earlier today, whilst I took clay from a wild clay pit in Greece.
Clay’s been taken from this pit for centuries.
It’s strong, but only if you treat it with respect.
Push it too hard or in the wrong way and it cracks.
Force it into shape and it resists.
Even if you realign it, the clay remembers how it was treated.
It returns to that shape no matter what you try to do.
That’s not endurance for the sake of it. It's flexibility and resilience.
Coming back to clay recently after years of illness, grief, and prioritising work, helped me recognise real resilience.
It's not stripping your life back until all that's left is duty.
It's about leaning into curiosity, a return to pacing, and listening to what matters most.
How the Marching Soldier shows up
The Marching Soldier looks strong and tough from the outside but it doesn't always match what's going on inside.
Here's how it shows up:
You keep going because someone has to, and of course it's you.
You feel guilty even thinking about rest or pausing.
You look reliable on the outside, but feel numb inside.
You don't have time for emotions or softer needs because they're a distraction from what has to get done.
“I’m fine” is your favourite lie, and has become a way of being.
Life becomes mechanical and ‘samey’. Like you're on autopilot but you've lost the ability to see the colours, hear the sounds, or feel the textures of being alive.
It's easier to self-sacrifice because what are you losing anyway? You don't feel much anymore so you might as well achieve something useful.
This differs from the Busy Bee pattern I wrote about a few weeks ago.
Busy Bees distract themselves by drowning in tasks and constant activity to outrun discomfort.
But Marching Soldiers cut life back as they're driven by duty, reliability, and endurance.
You feel a kind of pride in what you'll withstand, even if it comes at a cost. Proof you did it without needing help.
And often stopping feels like failure or weakness - it's a loaded, judgy impact.
The Busy Bee hides in motion, but the Marching Soldier hides in control.
And both will burn you out.
What's happening to your brain in Solider mode?
When you're relentlessly pushing through, your brain filters out signals it doesn't want to be distracted by.
It adapts by dampening sensitivity. So signals for eating, feeling knackered, or even emotions get muted because they don’t fit the ‘mission at hand’.
When I've coached people in Marching Soldier mode, they're often unaware of when they're hungry, thirsty, or how they feel about things.
They’ll skip meals or bathroom breaks, only stopping when someone else heads out for food or tea.
Emotional cues get ignored too, as they miss when loved ones need closeness or when they need it themselves.
Over time this creates fallout and a physical and emotional debt comes due.
The body can’t function properly when it’s constantly overridden.
Relationships suffer when presence is replaced with duty and deprioritisation.
Under chronic stress, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis becomes dysregulated, so you get worse at managing stress.
Stress hormones, like cortisol and noradrenaline, adapt less to internal signals to boost endurance and vigilance at the cost of flexibility.
Brain regions that normally help you notice and integrate signals from the body through interoception, like the insula and medial prefrontal cortex, show reduced activation under prolonged stress load.
If you grew up with being told “don’t be so sensitive” or “just get on with it,” those reactions become habits.
And you learn early being reliable keeps you safe. You squashed your needs and kept going, seeing it as a strength.
It fast became your identity, your way to belong, and the way you earned trust.
The true cost is you never went back to ask what you actually needed.
Reliability turned into self-sacrifice.
And when the mission ends, whether it's the job, the project, the role, you’re left hollow, because everything was tied to duty, not to what mattered.
It's the confusion, exhaustion, and disconnection keeping you stuck in burnout.
Make the shift from duty to values
Duty feels like a point of pride but becomes an unbearable weight.
This is the sting for the Marching Soldier.
Putting your own needs aside for so long leaves you physically and mentally wrecked.
Detached from meaning and purpose.
The real shift doesn't come from patching yourself up to march harder.
And it's why I get so frustrated with hacks that trick you into thinking you'll be OK and still ‘productive’.
Sure you do that for a few more decades and then realise you've wasted your best years on a legacy you never wanted or cared about.
The real work is asking:
What do I actually value without fear?
What’s the legacy I want to leave behind?
What do I need to ditch before it breaks me?
I'm all for grit at the right time, but real resilience isn’t about proving how much you'll blindly endure and sacrifice.
It’s about choosing what matters before it's too late.
Do this: the ARC values reset loop
Marching Soldier mode feels like numbed-out autopilot.
You override your body, ignore emotions, and keep going because it's safer than stopping.
But another productivity hack isn't going to fix it.
Learning to reset from duty back to values will help.
Plus updating the messaging and pride tied to being reliable or undistracted needs focus too.
Here’s a 60-second loop to get started:
Awareness:
Notice the numb.
Notice what and where you're overriding.
Is it physical, like food, drink, going to the loo, or emotional, like awkwardness, fear, loneliness?
It might be a weak signal at first but keep searching for what your body tells you.
Reconnection:
Name the value you're ignoring.
Maybe your values include health, creativity, family etc, so reconnect to what you used to enjoy or prioritise.
Ask yourself: when did I last give this any space? What did I used to enjoy or prioritise that I’ve ditched or ignored in the name of duty?
Consider what other identities it'll support when you reconnect to this value, other than “reliable.”
Your identity and need to have impact is greater than being reliable.
Bring this to life and think about how others would describe you.
Containment:
Choose one small, value-led boundary.
Some examples: Rest for ten minutes without doomscrolling. Call a mate. Step outside to touch something real. Delegate something even if it makes you twitchy.
Small acts matter. They remind you stopping is safe, and rebuild self-trust beyond just being “the reliable one.”
Choose what's important to you or someone else will do it for you.
But each time you choose, it offers a positive reinforcement to retrain your old habits into new ones.
This week's permission slip
You're allowed to stop without proving you’ve earned it.
It's OK to put health, family, or creativity back at the centre of what you do.
For me, reconnecting to my creative core, and building my knowledge and skills in this space through clay has been an awesome and exciting shift.
It's given me the pacing, perspective, and curiosity I was missing.
And I've returned to my old tribe whilst discovering new ones every day.
Here's an extract for The Marching Soldier from Sweet Darkness by David Whyte:
“Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”
David Whyte
Living by your values, not just your duties, leaves a lasting legacy to those who matter in the end.
Key takeaways
The Marching Soldier mode feels noble and strong at first, but leaves you hollow over time.
You keep going, but you lose colour, texture, and connection along the way.
The stuff that makes life worth living.
Your brain even adapts to make it possible, muting hunger, fatigue, and emotions.
This cost shows up in your body, your relationships, and in that quiet voice that asks, “is this really the life I wanted?”
Real resilience isn’t about how long you can blindly endure.
It’s about the courage to stop, listen, and realign with tough choices you need to make.
But it's way more satisfying in the long run.
P.S. Have you caught yourself in Marching Soldier mode? What signs do you recognise?
Enjoy the Greek island, Sabrina. Let go and live big.
Indulge all of you, continually.
Come back to us refreshed and revitalized.