I think what happens is that you just get fed up.
You get tired of repeating things to yourself that never actually came from you, but came from someone else entirely. You get tired of shrinking yourself smaller in order to make other people comfortable.
Once upon a time, shrinking yourself kept you safe. It made you less of a target. It protected you from insecure people who would direct their ire toward those they envied. It made it so that you could rely on the fact that you didn’t quite know how to defend yourself yet. You could rest under the guise of being harmless. And that worked for a while.
I think the fear of being who you are comes from a few things, including societal pressure, your immediate community, self-doubt, and the like. I do, however, find that it’s more dangerous to shrink yourself in the long run.
When you become less of yourself in order to appease the people around you, you are subconsciously telling your brain that it’s not safe to be as authentic, as charming, as intelligent, as funny, or as magnetic as you actually are. If you do that often enough, you begin to associate these traits with shame. After a while, you stop developing the traits you naturally possess and they fall dormant. You stop having deep, philosophical conversations because you aren’t spending time around people who can bounce ideas back-and-forth with you. You forget how you can work a room with your magnetic smile and keen sense of humor because you haven’t allowed yourself the freedom to do so for far too long. Those muscles weaken because you’ve neglected them. They weaken to the point that you eventually forget they were there in the first place.
I hope, reader, that it’s becoming clear to you how shrinking yourself not only is a disservice to your current self—-but also to your future self. Your psyche gets used to the nulled version of you fairly quickly. It doesn’t take very long at all. It may, however, take a longer time to recover. Shame tends to slow any process in that sort of way.
I have this ritual now. Sometimes, after exiting a room full of people I feel the need to shrink myself around, I tell myself out loud, fully phonating: “I did not like how that felt. That room did not feel good.” It’s useful to validate myself in those moments, almost as if to signal something to my body. It is communicating to my brain “The way my body feels in there is not a way that I would like my body to feel on a regular basis. It is foreign. Right now is a moment where I get to return to my body’s natural state.”
I started to get exhausted from the same story: A person with a lot of promise, big dreams, and unstoppable work ethic lets the fear of ruffling feathers stop her from living her life. It’s a story that I don’t need to watch play out in front of me in order to know how it ends.
I have two more harsh truths for you. Here is the first of the two: Many people settle in life. It is the norm. This second and final truth might scare you, but hopefully, that fear is greater than the kind that tempts you to shrink. That final truth is this: The only difference between you and those people who settle is what you’re willing to risk.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. Also, I have a special announcement:
My digital Controlled Chaos Workbook is LIVE for pre-order only for a short time. I’m letting my subscribers get first dibs on this discounted price because this community is sacred. And that is because of compassionate people who want to make their lives better.
About the Workbook:
I made this workbook for busy brains with chaotic schedules and big dreams. It’s a gentle map for nonlinear minds. As an autistic artist, I need more structures and systems that work for my brain, and figured someone else could use that too. Here’s to making the chaos work for us!
Pre-Order the Controlled Chaos Workbook Here!
-CM
Once upon a time, I wanted to be less of myself. No longer!
Chamaya. You said it! I feel this in my gut.