The Silent Shrinking
Have you ever sat in a room full of people perhaps even the people you love most and felt yourself growing quietly, noticeably smaller? On paper, everything is fine. You are doing what is expected of you. You are polite, accommodating, and supportive. Whereas you are bending yourself to fit into the un-spoken rules, familial norms, and cultural expectations designed to keep everyone around you happy and comfortable. By every external standard, you are doing the "right" thing. So why does it feel like you are suffocating? From a young age, many of us are conditioned to equate being "good" or "nice" with non-disruption. We learn that keeping family or community peace requires suppressing our personal boundaries, opinions (or) desires. Overtime being nice becomes a defense mechanism rather than a genuine choice. We confuse keeping the peace around us with having peace within us and in trying to be "enough" for everyone else, we slowly lose sight o...