Asked how you feel? 'I'm fine.' Narrator: they were not fine.
You have a PhD in changing the subject. 'How are you feeling?' 'Want food?' 'Can we talk about what happened?' 'Haha anyway did you see that thing on TikTok?' You're not lying, you're REDIRECTING. Deep emotional conversations feel like standing naked in a spotlight, and you'd rather do literally anything else. You show love through actions — making dinner, fixing things, being present — but when someone asks you to VERBALIZE how you feel, your brain plays a Windows shutdown sound. The irony is you feel DEEPLY. You're not empty — you're FULL. You just never learned that letting someone see the full version of you wouldn't destroy the relationship. It might actually save it. But that would require vulnerability, and vulnerability is basically your final boss.
Get your read — free on iPhoneyou deflect because you decided your real feelings would be too much. so you gave them the edited version and called it fine.