Unfortunately, shrinking ourselves is how many of us spent our childhoods – something I’m all too familiar with. If we’re lucky, we’re able to realize this and learn to unpick that damage to free ourselves as adults.
Shrinking yourself so that others are comfortable is often a response to how you have been treated. You may not even have realized anything untoward was happening because the treatment was subconscious and covert enough for you to gradually shift yourself in order to comply.
It’s a learned behavior, and your experiences – likely these eight – will have made you feel that keeping small was a necessity. When you find out what they are, I have a feeling that you’ll understand so much more about your past.
1. In childhood, you were praised for being the easy one who never caused any issues.
It’s an unfortunate reality that easy kids will often get praised by their parents. No child should ever be pitted against their siblings for being “easy” or “difficult” to raise, yet it happens.
If you were constantly praised for being easy-going or low-maintenance (even if only comparative to a sibling), you’ll have internalized that it was better to agree wherever possible in order to be liked.
So when you did have something contrary to say, or an undesirable emotion that needed to be expressed, you kept your true opinions to yourself in the hope it would cause less drama. You’ll have wanted to stay out of trouble so that you were never punished or labelled a challenge.
This is known by therapists as a survival strategy, and it’s a recipe for learning to stay small. Why risk rocking the boat when you can blend into the background and be the invisible, yet compliant, family member?
2. You were criticized or rejected every time you expressed a need.
As a little girl, my needs were frequently brushed aside by one person. It didn’t matter if I was crying; I’d hear that familiar tut or sigh, like I was an inconvenience. I’d creep into my parents’ room at night with my duvet and pillow if it was thundering, and hear that tut and sigh again.
Over time, I learned to cry in private. I’d duck under the covers if it thundered, because I didn’t want to appear to be bothering anyone.
All for what? Someone else to be comfortable? So that this person wouldn’t get disturbed by me or my emotions, just because they seemingly possessed none themselves?
If you shrink yourself as an adult to keep others happy or avoid conflict, it’s likely you’ll have your own particular version of this. Perhaps you were repeatedly criticized when you expressed your feelings, told you were too sensitive, that you were overreacting, that you had nothing to cry about. Or worse, that if you didn’t stop, you’d be given something to cry about.
3. You grew up in a house where one person’s emotions took up all the space.
Oh boy. I’m here for all of those who can relate, and for those who can’t, I want to make it clear what it felt like.
You’re in a house, growing up with your family. There is one person among you all whose moods you learn to predict. As much as you think you’ve nailed those predictions, they still take you by surprise. You could have the best day ever, but the moment this person stomps through the door, the entire mood shifts.
Their mood takes up all the air, so it feels as though you can’t even breathe. You don’t want to make a sound in case you make things worse, and so you retreat, becoming so small that you could be mistaken for a mouse.
That’s what it feels like. Learning to shrink your emotions to make room for someone else’s.
4. You were the peacemaker in every dynamic.
I was too young to be the peacemaker. It wasn’t my job to negotiate. Yet I was forced to on occasion.
Seeing one parent crying, saying the other parent was leaving them and doesn’t love them anymore. Having to sit with that other parent, knowing how much I loathed them, and trying to convince them to stay. Knowing they were never really going to leave, but the threat brought them the much-needed attention they wanted.
Doing all of that as a kid.
Therapists call it parentification. It might not look exactly like my childhood, but essentially, it involves a child being relied upon as though they were an adult. And the result is that it becomes normal to shrink who you are in order to be who your parents need you to be at the time.
I’m far from alone in this. Unfortunately, it’s a more common experience than many people realize. And I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
5. Whenever you put yourself first, you were labeled selfish.
Wait, you mean to tell me you’re majoring in what now?! Why would you put yourself first like that? Don’t you know you were destined to take over the family business at some point? You can’t do that if you’re following some silly, selfish dream!
These are the echoes of many parents or even partners, who feel the need to tell you that living with autonomy is essentially living with greed for yourself.
Dealing with that consistently is enough to make anyone feel the easier option is just to stay small to keep everyone else comfortable.
But you simply can’t please everyone all of the time, so you may as well please yourself. Especially when it matters the most. It’s not about letting go of all thoughts for others, or putting someone in real danger because you did something selfish. This is about you refusing to shrink yourself to fit into a mold of you that wasn’t made by you.
6. Whenever you tried to apply a boundary, you were punished.
The first thing that springs to mind here is me as a teenager: “Could you knock before you come into my room, please?”
The response was a scoff, followed by: “Knock on a door in my own house that I paid for?”
I’d be told that when I contribute financially, I’ll have a say.
I shake my head in disbelief as I write accounts of what I’d once experienced, but that boundary was never respected. I’d instead be made to feel guilty for wanting reasonable boundaries as I got older and more self-aware of my right to autonomy, as well as my right to privacy.
Unfortunately, reasonable boundaries are punished by the people who don’t know how to respect them. Because with each one you make, you’re taking control away from someone who thinks they own you or that you are simply an extension of them.
Therapists call this kind of mindset enmeshment, and it’s a key driver in children not developing a sense of autonomy and feeling guilty about having and acting on their own needs and feelings.
But your reasonable boundaries are absolutely not the problem here. The right people will adhere. The wrong ones will make you feel small just so they can continue to take advantage.
7. You were told the ceiling was the limit, not the sky.
If you were taught to live with excessive external restraints, then you will live like a person with internal restraints, too. Being told the sky isn’t the limit for you, and to instead be more realistic, limits your own beliefs about what you’re truly capable of doing.
Of course, we do all have natural limitations, but limitations should never be placed on us by people who want us small so they can stay comfortable.
How many of you had big dreams as a kid, or even as a young adult, and those dreams were quashed by an overbearing parent? Or worse, a parent who couldn’t stand the thought of you being more successful than them?
*I raise my hand.*
Many will never admit that was why they kept you small, but it’s a common reason that parents hold their children back, even if it’s unconscious. And because we know no better at the time, we comply. We believe they know us best, and we hear them say, “I’ve been there, trust me. I know how the world works.”
It’s worth noting that it can also happen with parents who have the best intentions; parents who carry their own wounds and anxiety, passing them on to the next generation. It’s one of the reasons intergenerational trauma is so hard to break, and it’s something therapists see a lot.
But whatever the reason, the limits imposed keep us small. In time, we may learn to see that sky, and its endless possibilities for ourselves. And when we do see it, there’s no stopping us.
8. You were encouraged to stay small, to attract less attention.
“Just keep quiet and plod through life. You won’t run into any issues then.” “Stop making a scene, you don’t want everyone to stare at you, do you?”
Sounds like words spoken from a truly caring person, doesn’t it?
Wrong. Someone who truly cares about you and wants the best for you doesn’t want you to hide who you are just so you don’t draw attention. Often, these kinds of messages have little to do with the attention you are drawing and everything to do with the way that attention is reflecting on them.
Keeping quiet all the time is boring. Where’s your voice? Where’s your opinion? What makes you, you?
Of course, attention seeking is also not a healthy way to live your life, but there’s a meaningful difference between actively seeking attention and just not shrinking your natural self because other people can’t handle it.
If we are small, then by design, so are our lives. Our worlds. We learn not to follow our own path. And the more we stray from it, the less aligned with ourselves we feel.
I personally think that’s why so many people feel lost in life and have no idea why.
Final thoughts…
Have I made you want to travel the world, or go and get that career of your dreams? Maybe I did, or maybe I just made you think about where your learned behaviors may have come from.
Our behaviors and personality traits don’t exist in isolation. It’s always important to see the bigger picture, and the work of therapists has shown us that when you feel or make yourself small or irrelevant, it almost always means something more.
Learned behaviors can be unlearned, and in the same way those patterns taught you to shrink yourself, I know from experience that you can learn to untangle it all and begin to take up the space in your life that you deserve.
It’s never too late.
