Why looking “fine” can be the loneliest place to be.

Some of the freakiest people you’ll ever meet don’t stand out at all.

They blend in. They’re competent, reliable, polished. The ones everyone depends on.

And quietly, they’re barely holding it together.

In this solo follow-up episode, Tonya Kubo reflects on her recent conversation with Rachel Alexandria to explore the hidden cost of being the strong friend, the capable leader, the one who never seems to need help.

This episode is for the high performers who carry what Rachel calls “secret messes”—the overwhelm, anxiety, and emotional labor hidden behind competence and credibility. Tonya unpacks the difference between having it together and holding it together, why competence often becomes armor, and how looking fine can train people not to check on you.

If you’ve ever been praised for being “so put together” while quietly falling apart, this one is for you.

You’ll hear how:

1. Holding it together often looks exactly like having it together—until it doesn’t
2. Competence can become a coping mechanism, not a sign of stability
3. High performers are often invisible inside their own excellence
4. Hyper-responsibility is learned early and rewarded later (at a cost)
5. The strong friend rarely asks for help—and why that’s not a character flaw
6. You don’t have to collapse to deserve care
7. Making yourself easy to say no to can help others feel safe saying yes
8. One honest sentence can open the door to real support

Timestamp Highlights

1. 0:00 – 3:10 Holding it together vs. actually being okay
2. 3:11 – 6:45 The curse of competence and hiding in plain sight
3. 6:46 – 10:30 Why the “responsible one” rarely gets checked on
4. 10:31 – 14:50 Competence as armor, not stability
5. 14:51 – 19:20 Hyper-responsibility and growing up in emotional chaos
6. 19:21 – 23:40 Why strong friends wait for someone to notice (and why it rarely happens)
7. 23:41 – 27:30 “I need help” even when you don’t know what that help is
8. 27:31 – 32:10 Being easy to say no to as a path to real connection
9. 32:11 – 36:45 Gentle check-ins vs. pressure, pity, and forced intimacy
10. 36:46 – 41:00 You don’t have to fall apart to deserve support
11. 41:01 – 45:30 A simple practice for strong friends—and for the people who love them

Resources & Mentions

1. Episode 14: The Freaks Who Look Fine with Rachel Alexandria
2. Lonely at the Top — Rachel’s podcast
3. RachelAlexandria.com

Meet Your Host

Tonya Kubo is a community strategist, marketing consultant, and rebel with a cause: helping people find the place where they truly belong. For nearly two decades, she’s built online spaces that feel less like comment sections and more like chosen family. She’s the fixer you call when your Facebook group has gone straight-up Lord of the Flies and the bouncer at the door of internet nonsense. As the host of Find Your Freaks, Tonya brings together unconventional thinkers and bridge-builders who know “normal” was never the point. Her favorite spaces? The ones where the freak flags fly high.

Support the Show

If Find Your Freaks matters to you, help us keep it ad-free by buying us a coffee (or two!). Every dollar goes to production so more weirdos can find their people.

You can purchase Find Your Freaks merchandise online through Abilities and Attitudes.

Let’s Stay Freaky

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2. LinkedIn
3. Instagram
4. Podcast Hub

What’s Next

Tonya talks with Jeff Yoshimi, a professor at University of California, Merced whose work spans philosophy, cognitive science, and neural networks. His book, Gaming Cancer, invites us to ask what becomes possible when we stop compartmentalizing who we are and let our whole selves lead the way.

[Speaker 1]

Holding it together is not the same as having it together. The people who look fine rarely ask for help because they don't want to inconvenience anyone, they don't want to lose credibility, they definitely do not want to drop the ball or be seen as somebody who isn't reliable, and they don't even know what help they need because help's never been an option on the table for them before. So if you're the strong friend, the competent leader, the person who holds everything together, you're probably the last person anybody thinks to check on.

But I want you to know it's not because you don't matter to them, it's because you've trained them to believe that you're unshakable. If you're the freak who blends in, the responsible one, the person everybody counts on, you deserve support as much as anybody else, in fact, maybe more. We're wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in.

I'm Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras. Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful.

Normal was never the point. Some freaks announce themselves with neon ink, bold choices, and loud, loud voices. But the freaks that I want to talk to today, you would never spot them in a crowd.

In fact, they're the ones who look competent, composed, and unbothered, while their inner world is barely held together with duct tape, bailing wire, self-discipline, and a smile that fools everyone, sometimes even themselves. And here's the thing that none of them, and I'll put myself in the mix here too, wants to admit. Holding it together is not the same as having it together.

Welcome back to Find Your Freaks, the podcast for people who were never meant to fit the mold. I'm Tanya Kubo, and in today's episode, we're going to be following up with the conversation I recently had with Rachel Alexandria. She's a soul medic who works with high performers carrying what she calls secret messes.

She's also the host of Lonely at the Top, which is a podcast that features these types of high performers. And what I don't want to do today, sometimes I kind of recap the interview and sort of go line by line with different things that the guest and I discovered when we were chatting. But today, instead of recapping the interview, what I want to do is talk about what it really costs when you go through so much effort to look fine and you're not.

Some of the freakiest people you'll ever meet are the ones who blend in the best. So today's episode is really for the good kids. You know, you've met them, right?

The strong friends, the reliable ones, the leaders, the perfectionists, the silent over functioners, and anyone who has ever been praised for being so put together while quietly falling apart. So to get into it, I feel like today is the best day that I could be recording this episode because I've been under the weather and I've been doing a lot of faking it till I make it. And it just reminds me of one of the most striking parts of my conversation with Rachel, which was how clearly she sees the people who hide in plain sight, right?

The people whose freakishness isn't visible on the outside. They don't look unconventional. You know, they're not covered in tats and piercings.

They don't look unstable. They don't look like they need help. They look perfectly fine.

In fact, perfectly frustratingly fine, probably. They are high performers who keep everything running. They remember birthdays.

They take on more responsibility because nobody else will. They hold their teams together. They show up polished and capable even when they're exhausted, even sometimes when their entire world or personal life is falling apart.

And because they look fine, people assume they are fine. And that's the curse of the competent, isn't it? It reminds me of this conversation I had once with a friend's dad.

He was talking about some challenging situations with his kids while they were all growing up. And, you know, they had the mix, right? They were like teens dealing with addiction and, you know, partying and breaking curfew and bad grades and maybe I'm not going to graduate from high school and all of those sorts of things.

And it was funny as he said, you know, I was worried there for a while as he summed up all the various issues, you know, his kids had gone through. And then he kind of smiled and he was like, except for Gina. I never worried about Gina.

Gina always managed just fine. Meanwhile, I know the truth because Gina and I have been friends going on 30 some years now. Gina struggled a lot as a kid, struggled a lot as a teen.

Some of it had to do with just general teenage challenges. Others had to do with just kind of fall out from her siblings' behavior. And, you know, she struggled like many of us do in early adulthood and as she grew and matured through her career and through life.

But though she struggled a lot, she kind of felt like telling the truth about those struggles, especially to her parents, was a luxury she simply couldn't afford, right? They didn't need one more thing. Their hands were full.

And so she learned to just paste on a great smile and pretend like it was all OK. If you've lived in that space where people admire your stability without noticing that you're faking it until you make it, you know the loneliness of being invisible, especially inside of your own excellence, right? It's a bit of your own making.

You're looking fine and pretty soon looking fine becomes the mask. And once that mask is locked into place, it's almost impossible to take it off. And so what I want to really talk about is the difference between having it together and holding it together.

You know, when my kids were little, I used to, you know, people would be like, oh my gosh, you know, like, you look great. This guy would be like, I am barely hanging on by a thread here, folks. Barely hanging on.

Because I thought it was important to acknowledge that it wasn't easy to be a working mom of young kids. And though just because I was able, you know, to get to work looking fairly decent, didn't mean that there wasn't a whole lot of chaos that came with it and didn't mean that I didn't need a little time to like emotionally regulate before I settled into my workday. You know, having it together means you're steady because you stand on a steady foundation.

Holding it together, on the other hand, means you are white knuckling your way through life, hoping nobody notices those hairline stress fractures in your emotional drywall. And the reason people confuse the two is that somebody who is holding it together, or like I used to say, barely hanging on by a thread here, folks, looks exactly the same as someone who has it all together. Until one small thing threatens to topple the entire house of cards.

And the crazy thing, or the wild thing, is that most people in your life have no idea which version you are. Because when you're holding it together, you've got a strong posture. You're doing a good job.

You're accomplishing everything on your to-do list, right? Your calendars look great. You're color coding that planner.

You show up on time. You over deliver. Holding it together looks like competence.

But competence doesn't mean stability. Competence oftentimes is the coping mechanism, right? Sometimes it's the armor.

Sometimes competence is the only thing that saves you from the collapse that you're terrified to acknowledge. So when Rachel mentioned to me that so many of the high performers she works with grew up in families with chaos, personality disorders, or emotional stability, like I felt that deeply in my bones. And let's be clear here.

Not everybody with a big job has trauma. We all love a good rags-to-riches story, but success doesn't actually require that you've had some form of suffering, okay? There are plenty of people out there successful who have had great lives that aren't marked by trauma or challenges that others have, okay?

But patterns matter. And when you grow up having to scan the emotional weather in a room, anticipating everybody's needs, or being the responsible one, you end up learning to listen to everyone except for yourself. And you learn to survive by becoming exceptional, which is what my friend Gina did.

Hyper-responsibility becomes your language. Competence is what makes you feel safe. And success almost becomes a costume that you're hiding within.

So by the time you're an adult, people see you and all they see is your capability. I mean, just like Gina's dad. Gina's dad never saw the cost that she paid to earn that capability.

And that's what I think sets people up to be the strong friend, to be the leader, to be the fixer, to be the person who holds it together because somebody has to. And I think that's why the freaks rise to the top, right? Because the traits that once kept them safe are now what make them excellent.

You know, I talk a lot of times about how a lot of people, what they think is their fatal flaw is actually their superpower. But while those traits that were developed in order to feel safe, make them excellent, make them revered, make them respected, make them what we would consider successful, it also makes them a little bit on the invisible side. And I loved what Rachel said when it came to like, okay, how do you break through that, right?

How do you break through that facade if, one, if you're the person who needs the help, how do you break through the facade of acting like you've got it all together when you don't? But also on the other side, you know, how do you break through the strong friend's facade? And what she said was simple, but definitely not easy, which was, you know, we all have to learn to say, I need help.

In fact, let me read my notes here. Yeah, she said, we all have to learn to say, I need help, even when we don't know what that help is supposed to look like. But when I think over my life, and I think in my own relationships, you know, I have to be honest, most strong friends never get that far, right?

The people who look fine rarely ask for help because they don't want to inconvenience anyone. They're afraid of being too much. They don't want to lose credibility.

They definitely do not want to drop the ball or be seen as somebody who isn't reliable. And they don't even know what help they need because help's never been an option on the table for them before. And so I think deep down, many of them are waiting, hoping that someone will notice without being told.

I remember conversations with my friend Gina years ago, and I'd say, I think I'm just, I think I have a Cinderella complex. And she was like, me too, right? Like we both realized we were kind of just waiting for some knight in shining armor to come down and like rescue us on a white horse.

The thing is, is people don't notice. They don't, no matter how much they love us, no matter how much they care, they don't notice. You would only need five minutes with Gina's dad to know how much he loved her or how much he loves her.

He's still with us. And people aren't selfish either, but because you, like Gina, and like me at times, are so good at making everything look fine, people have no reason not to believe us, right? So if you're the strong friend, the competent leader, the person who holds everything together, you're probably the last person anybody thinks to check on.

But I want you to know it's not because you don't matter to them. It's because you've trained them to believe that you're unshakable, that nothing could ever crack through your armor. And the world loves an unshakable person, truly.

So I loved Rachel's advice on breaking through this armor, which was if you become easy to say no to, you get easier to say yes to. And this is something I have to tell you in my personal life, totally true, 100% true. Because it was in the moment that Rachel said that, that I realized that this is actually why Gina and I have been such good friends for so long.

I'm a really easy person to say no to. Because I appreciate people who are just as easy to say no to. I appreciate easy relationships.

I appreciate friends and acquaintances and even like business contacts who understand that I am a 360 degree human who is juggling a lot, right? And a lot of times the Lego pieces just don't fit like I think that they should. But like Gina, I don't dump my feelings on others.

I don't respond well to pity, to pressure, or what I would consider forced or contrived intimacy. And I really, really hate feeling like I'm a burden to somebody or that I have to be their project. What I value is gentle check-ins, low pressure invitations, no strings attached support, and someone who won't take it personally if I decline or if I have to reschedule.

And I find my strong friends like Gina are exactly the same way. So in my personal life and in my professional life, I have found people open up when they feel safe. And what safety looks like is the message of, I'm here, no pressure.

I won't chase you. I won't pry, but I'm not going anywhere. Because when someone feels like they can say no without disappointing you, I think that's when they start feeling safe enough to say yes.

In fact, I really hope it never comes to that for you. If you're the freak who blends in, the responsible one, the person everybody counts on, the one who looks fine, but rarely feels fine, you deserve support as much as anybody else. In fact, maybe more.

So let's keep this simple. I want you to try out one thing for me. I want you to try out being honest with those you trust.

Like, and it can just be a simple sentence, right? You don't have to weave a long, sad tale of woe. It is enough to say, you know, I'm a little more tired than I look today.

Or, you know, I'm a little more tired than I look right now. It's just a single sentence. You don't have to explain it.

You don't have to say anything more. You're just opening the door a crack. And you get to see if they choose to open it further.

Now, if you're on the other side, right? You're a friend of mine, a friend of Gina's, a friend of somebody, you know, who's like this. You're the helper.

You're the friend. Maybe you're the bystander. Try this instead, right?

Try dropping a text or an email or something on Messenger or picking up the phone and leaving a voicemail because you know they don't pick up calls. They just don't. And just say, hey, you've been on my mind lately.

No pressure to talk, but I'm here if you need a human. Make yourself easy to say no to and you will become safe to say yes to. So I just want to thank you for spending time with me today.

It is a busy time of year as this episode drops and it may be a time when you're feeling a little reflective and maybe this episode hit a little too close to home for you. Totally cool. I promise not all of them are like this.

But if you've recognized yourself in the strong friend, the one holding everything together, I hope you recognize also that you're not alone. I mean, I wouldn't have a whole episode if you were the only person on the planet who felt that way. You deserve a community that sees parts of you that you've been hiding from everybody else.

And one way to get that community is simply to share this episode with someone else, you know, who seems to look perfectly fine, who you think has it all together and maybe just maybe is holding it all together. Share this episode with them and then circle back and ask them what they thought of it. Sometimes that's all it takes to start a real conversation where you both can put your masks off.

And if nothing else, in this time of year, when you're surrounded by friends and family and messages that maybe are telling you that you should feel differently than you do about your circumstances or should be a certain way in your life or at this stage of life or in your work, I just want you to remember that normal is not the point around here. Whatever it is that makes you weird, whether weird to yourself or weird to others, is what makes you wonderful. It's the supposed fatal flaw that actually is your superpower.

And join us again in a couple of weeks when the next episode drops and we can talk more about what that looks like for other freaks in our community. That's it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.

And if you're craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.