The Cost of Making Yourself Smaller

There comes a point when you realize how much of yourself you’ve folded away just to fit. How many opinions you swallowed, how many boundaries you softened, how many times you made yourself palatable for people who wouldn’t do the same for you.

I used to think shrinking was kindness. That making others comfortable was the same as being good.

Then I noticed the toll:

• The way your voice gets quieter over time, not because you have less to say, but because you’ve trained yourself to believe no one’s listening anyway.

• The way you downplay your achievements—“Oh, it was nothing”—because someone once called you arrogant for owning your success.

• The way you apologize for things that aren’t your fault, for taking up space, for having needs at all.

You weren’t made to fit.

Here’s what no one tells you: When you shrink yourself, you don’t make more room for others. You just disappear.

Your worth isn’t determined by how convenient you are for other people. It’s not measured by how little space you take up, how few waves you make, how easily you bend.

You don’t have to be loud to be seen. You don’t have to be aggressive to be strong. But you do have to stop confusing consideration with self-erasure.

So stand where you are. Unfold the parts of yourself you tucked away. Speak like your words matter because they do.

The right people won’t need you to be smaller.

And the wrong ones?

Well, that’s their problem.