At a glance
Hearing that you are too much usually says something about loudness and speed, and very little about what you are worth. You long to be accepted as yourself, and you keep shrinking so that you are accepted at all. Here is what that bargain costs, and what shifts when you change your pace rather than your warmth.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- Self-editing at the door. Clients describe deciding how lively to be before they even arrive somewhere, and only later realising how draining that decision has become.
- Silent signals. Clients rarely report open criticism. They notice a slight cooling in the other person and then spend hours trying to account for it.
- Liked but unknown. Clients who have learned to be easy company often mention, in the same breath, that no one where they live really knows them.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
Why does my warmth seem to be too much here?
What you are sensing is usually a reaction to tempo and intensity rather than a judgement on whether people like you.
Where you grew up, showing interest may have meant moving towards someone: asking a follow-up, then another, and filling any pause before it settled. In a new culture those same gestures can feel like a demand on someone’s attention that has not yet been earned by time. You are the same person you were. The amount of expression that counts as ordinary has shifted around you, and your natural openness now lands just above it.
The hardest part is that nobody tells you where that threshold is. A face stays neutral where you expected it to brighten, a conversation narrows slightly, and you are left on your own to decide whether you overstepped or whether this person is just quiet. That uncertainty wears you down more than the reaction itself. And while you are unsure, you tend to keep talking, which is exactly what gets read as too much.
Why do I feel lonelier when I tone myself down?
Shrinking makes you easier to be around, and it also hides the very parts of you that someone might have grown fond of.
Perhaps you have developed a version of yourself for public use: briefer replies, fewer questions, enthusiasm kept at a level that never surprises anyone. On the surface it succeeds, because nothing awkward happens. Then, months on, you notice that the people around you are fond of someone who is not quite you, and the warmth they offer has nowhere to land. Being welcomed in a reduced form does not feel like being welcomed. It feels like being put up with, and that can be lonelier than the clumsy early days were.
Research hints at this, and I would not claim more than a hint. In my reading of it, a week-long diary study of 91 teenagers from immigrant families in Belgium found that their emotions lined up more closely with the majority during positive encounters in which the other person made them feel accepted.1 It did not measure wellbeing, it cannot say which came first, and school pupils are not adults in a new job abroad. What I take from it is modest: fitting in emotionally seems to come alongside feeling accepted rather than ahead of it. If so, the usual approach runs backwards. You shrink to fit so that acceptance will come, when it may be acceptance that makes fitting in possible.
Is it the culture, or is it me?
Some of each, and what matters more than the split is which part lies within your reach.
- How interest is shown. In some places people show they like you by showing up again the following week instead of being effusive on the spot, so the sign you are waiting for comes later than you expect.
- How fast closeness grows. Many cultures assume friendship takes months or years. If your instinct says weeks, you will keep arriving early.
- Circles that are already full. Plenty of people you meet have kept the same friends since childhood, and a full circle has little space at its edge. That describes the circle, not your worth.
- Your own history. If you grew up as the one who kept spirits up at home, sensed the atmosphere and smoothed every silence, you may be working much harder than this setting needs, and treating its calm as a problem you must fix.
Many cultures have unwritten rules against drawing attention to yourself, and it helps to know them. They still do not explain everything that happens to you. When a reaction hurts, ask which of these four is strongest in it, because only the last is truly yours to change.
What are new friends actually reacting to?
Often to how quickly closeness is offered rather than to the closeness itself.
In the second week you share something personal. It is met kindly, nothing similar is offered back, and next time things feel a little cooler. Where you come from, opening up like that was an invitation. Somewhere else it can feel like a debt: something is now expected, and the other person has not decided whether they want to give it. What you shared was fine. The timing asked them to commit before they had anything to base it on.
I cannot know what a particular person makes of you, and you will not know either unless you ask. People seldom offer that kind of feedback, and most will cushion it if asked to judge you. A narrower question tends to work. Instead of asking whether you are too much, which only draws reassurance, ask whether they would prefer a message before you call. A question about one concrete thing usually gets an honest answer, and an honest answer serves you better than a polite one.
How can I adjust without losing myself?
Slow the pace and keep the warmth.
- Give it more time. Choose one place you return to regularly, at the same time, and let people recognise you before you try to talk. Familiarity can do what intensity does elsewhere.
- Save the deeper question for later. Your curiosity is welcome. Reaching the personal layer all at once is what tends to shut a conversation down.
- Try the softer version. The same warmth, spoken more quietly, often comes across as steadiness, and steadiness is what gets you invited back.
- Keep one space where you do not edit yourself. An old friend, a circle that speaks your first language or a regular call. If every setting asks you to trim yourself, the trimming stops feeling chosen and starts to feel like your identity.
- Look for one person, not for belonging. Belonging arrives slowly and is mostly outside your control. One person who notices when you are missing is within reach, and is usually what you were hoping for all along.
These steps fit when the difficulty is about pace and fit. They will not be enough if what you carry began long before you moved. If, as a child, your feelings were more than the adults around you could manage, each cool response abroad presses on an old bruise, and turning yourself down will not answer the deeper question of whether your emotional life is welcome anywhere. That question seldom settles by itself, and it is hard to face without someone alongside you. It is also true that some groups simply will not open, and waiting at the door of one costs you more than it gives.
Questions people ask
Is therapy useful when the difficulty lies in the culture?
Yes, because the work focuses on what the culture keeps stirring up in you. The constant adjusting, and its cost to you, is very much something we can work with.
Will this pass on its own with time?
Sometimes, if things are gradually easing, and rarely if the pattern repeats unchanged. After a year of trimming yourself, feeling lonelier than when you arrived suggests another year will not change it by itself.
What would a first video session on this involve?
We would look closely at one recent moment when you felt yourself shrinking. A single concrete moment reveals the pattern faster than any general description of the culture.
Do I need to explain the country I live in?
No, I have lived and worked in nine countries and much of my work is with people living outside their home country. You can spend the session on what you are living through, not on context.
Is this individual or couples work?
Individual, when it is about friendships and your sense of being too much. If it is your partner who reacts this way, couples work is the better fit.
If you are tired of turning yourself down to fit in, online psychotherapy is a place to look at what it is costing you, wherever you live.
Sources
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
