“Shrink if you want. Just don’t call it love, growth or healing.”
By N.E.N.I.N
The Lights Are Going Out and Everyone’s Clapping
We’re living through an extinction event of personality, and everyone’s acting like it’s a wellness retreat. People keep dimming their light and calling it maturity. They’re dulling their edges to be digestible. They don’t shine. They flicker politely.
And the world rewards it.
If you play small, they call you grounded. If you hide your brilliance, they say you’re humble. If you suppress your opinion, they say you’re emotionally intelligent.
But make no mistake: dimming your light is the beginning of death. Not the poetic kind. The slow, bureaucratic kind. The death of vitality. The death of clarity. The death of self.
It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a series of tiny internal compromises that look like social cohesion, politeness, or compatibility. But they’re not. They’re erasure.
The Cult of Compatibility
It starts small.
You make your voice a little softer. You laugh when it’s not funny. You dress how they expect. You pretend you’re not as clever, creative, angry, opinionated, ambitious, or sexually experimental as you are.
Because someone — a partner, a job, a friendship group, your parents, society — gave you a box. And you decided it was safer to fit than to fight.
That box becomes your coffin.
Psychologically, this is known as self-silencing, a term coined in feminist theory to describe how people, especially women and queer folks, internalise the idea that to be accepted is to be less. According to a meta-analysis published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, chronic self-silencing is directly linked to depression, anxiety, and loss of identity clarity.
Translation: playing small makes you mentally unwell. But no one talks about it because it looks like being “nice.”
You’re Not Well, You’re Just Tolerated
Being liked is one of the most overrated achievements in modern existence. You can be well-liked and completely erased.
You can be celebrated for how little you inconvenience others.
You can become the emotional equivalent of wallpaper: neutral, non-offensive, and designed to blend.
And here’s the kicker — most people know this. They just prefer tolerated to lonely. Even if it costs them their colour.
Mental Health: The Dimming Effect
There’s a direct correlation between suppressing your personality and declining mental health. You’re not tired for no reason. You’re not anxious out of the blue. You’re not depressed because Mercury is in retrograde.
You’re incompatible with your own life.
Clinical psychologist Dr Julie Smith explains that when your external self no longer reflects your internal reality, you begin to fragment. Your brain registers it as a threat. You start leaking energy trying to maintain the act.
It’s not burnout. It’s betrayal fatigue.
The HR Version of You Is Killing the Real One
Every time you filter your truth to be palatable, you send a signal to your own nervous system that authenticity is dangerous. That being you is risky. That truth equals punishment.
This isn’t just psychology. It’s neuroscience.
Studies from the University of California show that masking behaviours increase cortisol levels, suppress immune function, and lead to long-term cognitive decline. The more you perform, the more you dissolve.
But sure, keep calling it “professionalism.”
Shrinking Is Not Sexy
There is nothing noble about making yourself smaller to be easier to love. This isn’t a romcom. It’s a eulogy.
You’re not being considerate. You’re being erased.
You’re not compromising. You’re disappearing.
If someone only loves you in dimmed mode, they don’t love you. They love your silence. Your softness. Your absence.
And the longer you play along, the more you convince yourself that this diminished version is who you are.
The Economy of Bland
Capitalism loves people who dim their light. Easier to market to. Easier to control. Easier to break.
An unexpressed person is a good customer. You don’t need creativity when you have consumption. You don’t need power when you can perform.
So, they give you roles:
- The Cool Girl
- The Respectable Black
- The Functional Queer
- The Quiet Immigrant
All of them designed to make sure your edges never scrape the walls of polite society.
It’s not inclusion. It’s assimilation with better lighting.
They Will Call You Difficult
The moment you stop dimming, people get offended.
“You’ve changed.”
“You’re too intense.”
“You used to be so easy-going.”
What they mean is: you used to shrink on command. You used to make them feel comfortable. You used to pretend.
And now you don’t. And they don’t know what to do with someone they can’t reduce.
Brilliance Without Apology
This isn’t about being loud for the sake of it. It’s about being undeniable.
You don’t owe anyone dilution.
Your light is not a resource for other people’s convenience. It’s not something to be bartered for approval. And it damn sure isn’t something to be dimmed just because someone else lacks sunglasses.
Be sharp. Be luminous. Be unmanageable.
And if they flinch? Let them.
About the Author
N.E.N.I.N is a political writer, cultural commentator, and professional slayer of beige narratives. With a voice sharpened by satire and a mind allergic to mediocrity, they dissect British politics like it owes them rent. Founder of Nubian Narrator News and longtime critic of establishment theatre, N.E.N.I.N doesn’t believe in sacred cows or silver spoons — only in systems that work and ideas that slap.
Explore more at https://nenin.co.uk
