The Quiet Cost of Playing Small (Even When You Look Like a Leader)

She speaks with clarity. She’s highly respected. She’s achieved more than most.

And yet, she edits herself in meetings.

She hesitates to share her bold idea.

She says “yes” when she wants to say “no.”

Not because she lacks confidence.

But because a deeper voice quietly whispers:

Don’t take up too much space. Don’t make others uncomfortable. Don’t be seen as difficult. Be excellent, but stay agreeable. 

This is how playing small shows up, not in obvious ways, but in the invisible restraint that shapes how we show up and how we’re seen.

And for many women, it’s not a mindset problem, it’s a nervous system response.

• • • When we’ve been conditioned to equate visibility with risk, our brain associates self-expression with exposure.
    • When we’ve internalised pressure to be “likeable,” we begin filtering our instincts through someone else’s comfort.
    • And when we’ve experienced real or subtle consequences for being too direct, assertive, or powerful, we learn to protect ourselves by shrinking, even as we succeed.

As a doctor and a neuroscience-trained coach, I see this not as weakness, but as patterning, wired in over years, sometimes decades.

The cost?

A low-level disconnection from our true voice. A sense of never fully being ourselves, even in leadership. The exhausting effort of constantly self-monitoring in order to belong.

But here’s the truth:

Belonging that requires you to shrink isn’t real belonging. And success that requires you to filter yourself isn’t true success.

The way forward isn’t about pushing harder.

It’s about unlearning the instinct to play small, and giving your nervous system a new experience of what it means to be fully expressed, seen, and safe.

I’ll be exploring this more in the coming weeks, for the women who know they have more to say, more to offer, and more to reclaim.