The Hidden Cost of Fitting In
- Patricia Ezechie
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
This week I've been thinking about adaptation.
Not in the sense of learning something new or developing a new skill, or even adjusting to a new job, new team or a new stage of life.
We all do those things, and often they're necessary.
I've been thinking about a different kind of adaptation. The kind that happens when we quietly conclude that who we are isn't quite who we need to be in order to succeed. Not because anyone explicitly tells us that. In fact, most of the time nobody says anything at all.
We learn what is rewarded, what is respected and what looks professional, credible, capable or successful. And somewhere in all of that and along the way, many of us begin adjusting ourselves accordingly. Sometimes it's a conscious decision. Othertimes it happens so gradually we barely notice it. And more often, it's probably a mixture of both.
Looking back over my own career, I can see periods where I adapted in ways that were useful and necessary. There were environments where I learned to speak differently, lead differently and present myself differently. There were rooms where I felt I needed to be more certain, more composed and more authoritative than perhaps felt natural at the time. And some of those adaptations helped me. They gave me access to opportunities, helped me navigate complex organisations and allowed me to operate effectively in environments that had their own unwritten rules.
But over time, I began to notice something.
The effort.
Not the effort of doing the work. The effort of maintaining a particular version of myself to survive on those environments.
The Versions of Ourselves We Create
I think many of us carry different versions of ourselves.
There is the person we know ourselves to be. And then there is the person we believe we need to be in order to belong, succeed or feel safe. For some people, the gap between those two versions is small. For others, it can be surprisingly large.
Women often talk about this in leadership.
For years there has been an unspoken expectation that leadership should look a certain way.
Rational.
Decisive.
Unshakeable.
Strong.
And many women have learned to adapt to those expectations, often by dialling down aspects of themselves that feel softer, more relational or more intuitive.
Men experience their own versions of this too. Expectations around strength, certainty and emotional control can create equally powerful pressures to perform a particular version of masculinity.
The details differ, but the underlying experience is often the same.
We learn which parts of ourselves are welcome, and we learn which parts are best left outside the room. And eventually we become skilled at managing the difference.
The Distance Between Who We Are and Who We Perform
The hidden cost isn't adaptation itself beacuse adaptation is part of life.
The hidden cost is the distance that can develop between who we know ourselves to be and who we believe we need to be. Because holding two versions of yourself takes energy.
There is the version that sits in meetings, gives presentations, manages expectations and navigates the environment. Then there is the quieter knowledge of who you are underneath all of that. When those two versions are reasonably aligned, there is very little tension.
When they are not, something else begins to happen.
The effort increases.
We start monitoring ourselves more closely. We become aware of what we can say and what we can't. We notice ourselves switching into a particular mode in certain situations and relaxing again when those situations are over. We feel relief when we can finally stop performing. And that relief is often more revealing than we realise.
Because it tells us something important.
It tells us that maintaining the gap betwee who we really are and who we think we need to be is costing us energy.
When Fitting In Starts to Feel Expensive
This isn't simply about workplaces. It can happen in families, friendship groups, communities and relationships. Any environment where there is a strong sense of who we should be.
Most of us can sustain that gap for a while. Sometimes for years. But eventually something begins to feel uncomfortable, and not because the adaptation was wrong. In many cases it served a purpose. It helped us belong, progress, stay safe. It helped us navigate environments that weren't always designed with us in mind.
The problem comes when we continue carrying adaptations that no longer fit the person we are or have become. When the role survives long after the reason for it has disappeared. When fitting in starts to require more energy than it used to. When we realise that the person succeeding on the outside isn't quite the same person we experience ourselves to be on the inside.
That realisation can be unsettling.
But it can also be useful. Because it is the beginning of awareness.
Awareness Creates Space
One of the things I have noticed, both in my own life and in my work with others, is that awareness often arrives before change.
Before decisions.
Before action.
Before clarity.
We begin by noticing.
Noticing where we feel most like ourselves, where we feel the need to perform, where our energy feels easy and where it feels heavy and noticing where we fit naturally and where we are working hard to fit at all. None of that means we need to make dramatic changes. It doesn't even mean the adaptation itself is wrong.
It simply gives us information.
And perhaps that is the real invitation.
To become curious about the gap.
To notice where it exists.
To notice what it costs us.
And to ask ourselves whether the version of us that learned how to fit in is still the version we want to be now and for the future.
Listen to the Full Episode
This article was inspired by Episode 18 of Proactive Empowered Careers® Podcast.
In the episode, I explore the idea of adaptation: how we learn to adjust ourselves to fit the environments around us, why those adaptations often make perfect sense, and what can happen when the gap between who we are and who we feel we need to be becomes too great.
Together, we explore belonging, identity, effort, and the subtle ways we can lose sight of ourselves while trying to fit into spaces that matter to us.
🎧 Listen to Episode 18: The Ways We Adapt (And What It’s Costing You)
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