We’d Rather Lie Than Say We’re Not Well

I cancelled meetings one day last week because I physically couldn’t get through them.

Not because I wasn’t prepared or didn’t want to show up, but because my body just wasn’t cooperating. Vertigo, tinnitus, one of those days where everything feels slightly off and concentrating takes far more effort than it should.

And even then, I sat there for a moment thinking about how to word the message.

That’s the bit that stuck with me.

Because the most accurate thing to say would have been simple. I’m not well today, I need to cancel. But that didn’t feel like the easiest option. It felt like the one that might need explaining.

So instead, like most people, my brain immediately started offering alternatives. Something vague. Something softer. Something that wouldn’t invite questions or make it feel like I was letting anyone down.

It’s strange when you think about it. We will happily say we’ve got a scheduling conflict or that something’s come up, and no one bats an eyelid. Those reasons are accepted instantly. They sound organised, controlled, professional.

But the moment you say you’re not well, especially when you look absolutely fine, it suddenly feels different. Heavier. As if it needs context or proof or a bit of justification to make it land properly.

I’ve been dealing with vestibular issues for a decade now and from the outside you genuinely wouldn’t know. There’s nothing visible about it, nothing that signals to anyone else that something is off. Which means every time I need to step back, there’s this quiet internal negotiation about whether I should just push through or whether it’s valid enough to stop.

That word “valid” is doing a lot of work.

Because culturally, we’ve created this invisible threshold for what counts as a good enough reason to cancel something. And anything that sits in that grey area, not dramatic, not visible, not easy to explain, starts to feel like it needs upgrading into something more acceptable.

So people do exactly that. They reframe it.

They say something vague. They shift it into a diary issue. They take control of the narrative so it sounds intentional rather than something that’s happened to them.

And I don’t think that’s about dishonesty. I think it’s about safety.

Saying you have a clash keeps you in control. It signals that you’re organised, that you’re managing your time, that you’re still reliable. Saying you’re not well introduces uncertainty. It opens the door to how that might be perceived, especially in environments where consistency is quietly linked to competence.

No one explicitly tells you not to say it, but the expectation sits there in the background. The people who are always available are seen as dependable. The ones who rarely cancel are the ones you trust to deliver. So you absorb that and you adjust your behaviour accordingly.

You learn to keep going. You learn to minimise. You learn to override.

And over time, it becomes second nature to question yourself before you question the expectation.

Should I just get through this one meeting? Is it really bad enough to cancel? Will it look like I can’t handle things?

That internal dialogue doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s built on years of subtle messaging that pushing through is admirable and slowing down needs to be earned.

The problem is, that logic completely falls apart with anything ongoing or invisible. Conditions that fluctuate don’t follow neat rules. You can be fine one day and completely off the next, and there’s no clear line where it suddenly becomes acceptable to step back.

So instead of listening to your body, you end up negotiating with it.

Trying to squeeze one more call in. One more meeting. One more task. Not because you’re capable of doing it well, but because it feels easier than having to explain why you can’t.

And that’s where the cultural piece really shows up.

We’ve made it easier to come up with an excuse than to tell the truth.

Not because people don’t understand illness, but because we’ve attached a quiet judgement to it, especially when it doesn’t look the way people expect it to. Visible illness gets immediate empathy. Invisible illness gets a bit more scrutiny, even if that scrutiny is just in your own head.

So we adapt. We keep things vague. We downplay. We present a version of events that feels more acceptable.

And in doing that, we reinforce the exact thing that made us hesitate in the first place.

The idea that “I’m not well” isn’t quite enough on its own.

It should be though.

It should be one of the simplest, most straightforward things to say without having to think about how it will land or whether it will be believed.

But until the perception changes, the behaviour won’t.

People will keep showing up when they shouldn’t. They’ll keep pushing through things that would be better paused. They’ll keep managing how it looks instead of responding to how it actually feels.

Not because they want to, but because that’s what we’ve quietly taught them to do and maybe the shift starts with calling that out for what it is.

Not resilience. Not professionalism.

Just a culture that’s made honesty about our health feel harder than it should be.