Performing Fine Isn’t the Same as Being Fine

You've kept it together. Through the reorgs, the shifting team dynamics, the quarters that never let up. Something underneath hasn't matched the surface in a long time. Jami de Lou names it: functional masking — the practiced, often unconscious skill of performing composure while your nervous system runs something else underneath. This one is for the leader or individual contributor who has been holding it together for so long, they can't remember what not holding it together even feels like.