Stop Shrinking: Take Up The Space You Deserve

There comes a moment in every person’s life when you suddenly realize you’re standing in a room you no longer fit inside—a room you once fought to belong to, but now feels far too small for who you’ve become.

Why We Keep Shrinking Ourselves for Rooms We Outgrew

There comes a moment in every person’s life—sometimes at twenty, sometimes at forty, sometimes at sixty—when you look around and realize you are standing in a room you no longer fit inside. A room you once fought to be part of. A room you earned your way into. A room you shaped yourself for, squeezed yourself into, contorted yourself to survive in. And suddenly, without warning, that room feels too small for who you are now.

But instead of walking out, we shrink.

We round our edges.

We quiet our brilliance.

We dim the parts of ourselves that feel “too much.”

We fold our voice into an origami version of itself—small, tidy, acceptable.

We try to become a more palatable human being so no one accuses us of changing, even when change is the only honest thing we’ve ever done.

And the hardest part is this:

Most of us don’t even notice we’re shrinking.

We only notice the exhaustion that follows.

It shows up as resentment. As silence. As anxiety that scratches at your rib cage. As the kind of sadness you don’t have words for. Because deep down, a truth is trying to surface:

You were never meant to outgrow yourself to stay in places you’ve already outgrown.

But we do. For years. Sometimes decades.

Why?

Because shrinking is easier than being misunderstood.

Because staying small feels safer than standing alone.

Because being accepted—no matter how shallow the acceptance—is something we’ve been taught to chase like oxygen.

We shrink because somewhere in our childhood, teenage years, early adulthood, or maybe in the quiet cruelty of a past relationship, we learned a false rule:

“You must make yourself less to keep the peace.”

So we shape-shift.

We make jokes at our own expense.

We swallow the words that want to rise.

We don’t share our dreams because we don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

We dim our confidence because we don’t want to trigger someone’s insecurity.

We pretend we are fine because we don’t want to be “too emotional.”

We try to fit into old versions of ourselves the way someone tries to slip into jeans they’ve long outgrown—breath held, heart aching, hoping no one notices the pain.

But life always notices. It always catches up.

Because the soul can’t breathe in a body that is busy suffocating itself.

Eventually, you either shrink so much you disappear…

or you stop shrinking altogether.

And that’s the moment—the sacred, terrifying moment—when everything changes.

You wake up one day and realize your light was never the danger.

Your silence was.

You realize the people who truly love you want your growth, not your compliance.

You realize the rooms that require you to abandon yourself are not rooms—they are cages.

And the people who get threatened by your expansion were never meant to walk with you into a bigger life.

Growth exposes things.

It exposes people’s intentions.

It exposes relationships built on comfort rather than respect.

It exposes the places where you learned to settle.

It exposes the old version of you that kept begging to stay small so everyone else could stay unchallenged.

But it also reveals something far more powerful: 

You outgrew those rooms because you were meant to.

You were meant to speak differently.

Think differently.

Dream differently.

Love differently.

Move differently.

Carry yourself differently.

Expect differently.

You were meant to become someone the old room could never hold.

Growth is not betrayal.

It’s birth.

And choosing yourself is not abandonment.

It’s alignment.

So if something inside you has been whispering, “I can’t do this anymore,” listen.

If your spirit flinches every time you silence yourself, pay attention.

If your body feels heavier in certain spaces—if you feel yourself shrinking without even realizing it—stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” and instead ask:

“Why am I still here?”

“Who taught me to fear my own expansion?”

“Who benefits from my smallness?”

“Who would I become if I finally let myself take up space?”

Because this is the truth no one tells you:

You don’t outgrow people and places because you’re arrogant.

You outgrow them because you’re awakening.

And awakening demands more room.

More honesty.

More depth.

More alignment.

More self-respect.

More light.

More voice.

More you.

So here is your permission—firm and unconditional—to walk out of any room that requires you to shrink. To stop apologizing for who you’re becoming. To take up the space your soul has earned. To make people uncomfortable if that discomfort is their unhealed insecurity, not your wrongdoing.

Here is your reminder that the right rooms do not fear your growth—they make space for it.

And here is your truth, spoken as clearly as it deserves to be spoken:

If the room can’t hold your light, it’s not your light that needs to change.

It’s the room.

 So maybe, if we are in this space right now, think about leaving this habit behind in 2025. Because the life that you deserve, the YOU that you know you are meant to be, has outgrown this way of thinking.

There is no room for this in 2026.

"We often shrink for shadows, for illusions of what we think we must be. Stand tall, and watch the smoke give way to light." - Gia Laurent