There are people who learn to smile at work while slowly falling apart inside.
They arrive on time.
They complete their tasks.
They answer politely when someone asks how they are doing.
“I’m fine.”
But sometimes they are not fine.
Sometimes a person sits alone in a car outside the workplace in the morning, trying to gather enough strength to walk through the door.
Sometimes someone stands in a job interview with their heart racing from anxiety while their voice struggles to sound calm.
Sometimes people spend all their energy hiding the fact that they are struggling.
Not because they want to be dishonest.
But because they are afraid.
Afraid of not getting the job.
Afraid of being seen differently.
Afraid of becoming “the one with depression” or “the one who cannot handle pressure.”
During many years in social work, I met people who lived exactly like this. Competent people. Responsible people. Human beings with warmth, experience, and talent. Yet beneath the surface many carried a silent fear:
What happens if others truly see how I am doing?
This question has stayed with me for a long time.
Perhaps that is why our research project on mental health and working life affected me so deeply. Beneath the statistics, interviews, and analysis lay an existential question that concerns us all:
What happens to human dignity when vulnerability meets the workplace’s demand for strength?
Work as More Than Work
Work is never only about work.
Work is also about belonging.
In modern culture, employment has become deeply connected to identity. When people meet, we often ask one another:
“What do you do?”
Behind the question lies something more than curiosity. Work tells us where we belong and what place we occupy in the social world.
That is why exclusion from working life can become so profoundly painful.
People who fall out of the labour market lose more than income. Many lose rhythm, structure, colleagues, social contact, and the feeling of still being needed.
I have seen this many times.
People who gradually withdraw from others. People who stop believing they have anything left to contribute. People who feel ashamed of being at home while others go to work.
For people struggling with mental health problems, this shame is often especially heavy.
Not only because they suffer psychologically.
But because our culture still tends to associate psychological suffering with weakness.
The Modern Silence
What is striking is that we live in a time when mental health is discussed almost everywhere.
And yet, a deep silence remains.
A silence in hallways.
In job interviews.
In lunchrooms.
A quiet understanding that there are still limits to how much vulnerability working life truly tolerates.
In our study, we interviewed leaders from both public and private organizations about their experiences employing people with mental health problems. Many expressed a sincere wish for greater openness around mental health. Yet at the same time, they described uncertainty and hesitation when considering applicants who openly disclosed previous mental health struggles.
Perhaps this is the most painful paradox in the entire discussion.
The workplace says:
“We want openness.”
But many people simultaneously hear something else:
“Just not too much.”
“It Would Have Been Better If They Had Been Open …”
One statement from one of the leaders in the study has never left me.
The leader spoke about employees who later revealed struggles with anxiety and depression:
“It would have been much better if they had been open about all their problems during the interview. But whether I would still have hired them is difficult to say.”
In that single sentence lies the entire dilemma.
The employer wants honesty.
The applicant fears the consequences of honesty.
And so many people learn to hide.
Not necessarily through lies.
But through silence.
And silence can become very heavy to carry.
I remember a man I met early in my years as a social worker. He had been on sick leave after severe depression and was trying to return to working life. He once told me:
“Once you’ve been mentally ill, you feel like you have to spend the rest of your life proving you’re not crazy.”
He smiled as he said it.
But I could see the fear in his face.
The fear of being labelled.
The fear of being judged differently.
The fear of never again being seen as “normal.”
I believe many people carry this fear, even if they rarely speak about it.
When Human Beings Become Risk Projects
Modern working life is largely built around ideals of efficiency, flexibility, and control.
People are expected to function.
Preferably without complications.
Preferably without emotional fragility.
As a result, psychological vulnerability is often perceived as risk.
Not necessarily because employers lack compassion. Many genuinely want to help. But workplaces are also shaped by deadlines, pressure, productivity demands, and economic realities.
Gradually, human value can become reduced to functionality.
Can this person deliver?
Can they handle stress?
Will there be frequent sick leave?
In this way, the human being risks becoming a kind of management problem rather than a person.
Here, the work of Michael Oliver becomes important. He distinguished between having a difficulty and being disabled by the way society is organized.
This is a profound insight.
Many people could function well if workplaces were more flexible, relational, and humane. The problem does not always lie only within the individual. Sometimes the problem lies within the structure itself.
Some workplaces make people smaller than they are.
Others help people return to themselves.
The Workplace as Human Community
One of the most beautiful aspects of our interviews was hearing leaders describe workplaces marked by trust and openness.
Not therapeutic environments where everything revolves around problems. But workplaces where people could simply say:
“This is difficult right now.”
I believe such environments represent something deeply human.
People can often endure far more than we think when they no longer have to carry everything alone.
I often think here of Martin Buber and his reflections on human encounter. We are not truly seen through diagnoses, labels, or categories. We become fully human in relation to one another.
Perhaps this is why some workplaces feel warm while others feel cold, even when both display beautiful value statements on the walls.
It is not only about policies.
It is about how people look at one another.
The Hidden Face of Anxiety
Martin Heidegger wrote that anxiety is not merely fear of something concrete. Anxiety can also be the feeling of losing one’s footing in the world.
I think many people in working life experience precisely this.
Usually not dramatically.
More quietly.
A feeling of never fully measuring up.
Of always having to perform.
Of fearing exclusion.
And perhaps this is one of the great lonelinesses of our time:
People may spend every day surrounded by colleagues while still feeling they must hide who they truly are.
The Fragile Balance Between Openness and Protection
Several leaders in our study emphasized that openness regarding mental health is important, but that “openness also has its limits.”
I believe they were right.
No workplace can carry everything all the time. Working life cannot become a boundless therapeutic space.
But there is also danger in the opposite direction:
When efficiency becomes more important than humanity.
Then people learn to remain silent.
And silence can be dangerous.
Not only because problems remain hidden, but because people gradually begin to believe they must carry everything alone.
To Be Believed In
Throughout my life, I have seen something that continually returns:
People grow when someone believes in them.
Not usually through grand speeches.
More often through small acts.
A leader saying:
“We will find a solution.”
A colleague staying a little longer at lunch because she senses something is wrong.
A workplace where it is not necessary to pretend all the time.
I especially remember a woman who had been outside working life for years because of anxiety and depression. Eventually she was given a new opportunity by an employer who saw the human being before the problem.
Slowly, something changed.
Not because all the difficulties disappeared.
But because she once again experienced herself as needed.
I think we underestimate how deeply human beings need exactly this:
To feel that there is still room for us in the world.
Practical Philosophy Begins Here
For me, this subject is ultimately about practical philosophy in its most concrete form.
How do we meet people when life no longer functions perfectly?
It is easy to speak about human dignity in theory.
Much harder when vulnerability is sitting directly in front of us during a job interview.
That is when our true values are revealed.
Do we see a problem?
Or do we see a human being?
Perhaps this is where society itself stands at a crossroads.
If human beings are valued only through productivity and stability, more and more people will eventually feel inadequate.
But if working life can preserve something humane — something relational — then work may still become a place where people grow, heal, and slowly return to themselves.
“Should We Talk About It?”
The title of our article has stayed with me for years.
“Should we talk about it?”
Perhaps the question is about more than mental health.
Perhaps it concerns how much human vulnerability society is actually willing to see.
Because the truth is that none of us move through life untouched.
Every human being carries something.
Grief.
Anxiety.
Shame.
Loneliness.
Loss.
The difference is often only how well it is hidden.
A Quiet Ending
I do not believe the most important workplaces of the future will necessarily be the most efficient.
I believe the most important workplaces will be those that still manage to preserve humanity.
Places where people are not valued only according to productivity, but are also met as persons with life experience, vulnerability, and dignity.
For perhaps this is what human beings fear most:
Not being ill.
But being left alone with what hurts.
That is why the question still matters.
Not only in working life.
But between human beings.
“Should we talk about it?”
References
Biggs, D., Hovey, N., Tyson, P. J., & MacDonald, S. (2010). Employer and employment agency attitudes towards employing individuals with mental health problems. Journal of Mental Health, 19(6), 509–516.
Borg, M., & Davidson, L. (2008). The nature of recovery as lived in everyday experience. Journal of Mental Health, 17(2), 129–140.
Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Scribner.
Cook, J. A. (2006). Employment barriers for persons with psychiatric disabilities: Update of a report for the president’s commission. Psychiatric Services, 57(10), 1391–1405.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
National Strategic Plan for Work and Mental Health. (2007–2012). Oslo: Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Health and Care Services.
Oliver, M. (1996). Understanding Disability. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Ose, S. O., Kaspersen, S. L., Jensberg, H., Kalseth, B., & Lilleeng, S. (2009). Mental health and working life – the need for new approaches. Søkelys på arbeidslivet, 1, 75–89.
Pettersen, K. T., & Fugletveit, R. (2015). “Should we talk about it?”: A study of the experiences business leaders have of employing people with mental health problems. Journal of Work.
Thagaard, T. (2009). Systematics and empathy: An introduction to qualitative methods. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
For perhaps this is what human beings fear most:
Not being ill.
But being left alone with what hurts.
The text is mine and written in a canversation with openAI/ChatGPT, which also made the illustration
