"Outgrowing people isn't cruelty. It's proof you stopped watering the version of yourself they preferred."
Have you ever started healing, set a few boundaries, and suddenly felt like the villain in other people’s stories? That sick feeling in your stomach is not proof you did something wrong. It is proof you are changing.
No one talks about how lonely growth can feel. Everyone posts about “leveling up” and “becoming your best self,” but they rarely mention the quiet grief of realizing some people only knew how to love the version of you who did not know any better. The version who overexplained. The version who said yes while shaking on the inside. The version who put everyone else’s comfort above their own.
When you start healing, you stop watering that version of yourself. You begin saying no. You stop laughing at jokes that cut too deep. You stop being available for crisis on demand. You stop shrinking so other people can feel big. To the people who benefited from your smallness, this will feel like cruelty. To your nervous system, this is oxygen.
Outgrowing people is not about deciding you are better than them. It is about realizing you are no longer willing to live at a level of self-abandonment that used to be normal. Some friends will rise with you. They might feel confused at first, but they will ask questions, listen, and adjust. Others will guilt trip you, call you selfish, or reminisce about “the old you” as if she were more lovable because she needed less.
It hurts when people you care about prefer your unhealed version. It can make you want to go back, to prove you are still loyal, still easy to love. But loyalty that requires you to leave yourself is not loyalty. It is self-betrayal dressed up as connection. Real connection can survive your growth. It might need honest conversations, time, and new agreements, but it does not require you to shrink back into who you used to be.
You are allowed to grieve the friendships that do not make it through your healing. Grief does not mean you made the wrong choice. It means you are human. You can miss what was familiar and still honor what is healthy. You can love who someone was to you and still accept that the relationship cannot continue in the same way without costing you too much.
Outgrowing people is not cruelty. It is evidence that you finally chose to keep watering yourself.
