Why Do You Imprison Yourself in Places You've Outgrown?
An exploration of evolution, belonging, and the radical act of choosing yourself
Two years ago, my friend — a psychotherapist with a gift for asking the questions that rearrange your insides — looked at me as we sat in the horse pasture, watching Mystic and his then companion Cactus play, and asked:
"Why do you imprison yourself in places that you've outgrown?"
The question hit me like a physical thing. Not because I didn't understand it, but because I understood it too well. It was the driving question that brought me to where I live now, and it's been working on me ever since, unfolding into every corner of my life like ink in water — relationships, work, cities I've lived in, even beliefs I've carried like talismans long after they stopped serving me. And now, it’s sending me somewhere else again.
When Life Stops Fitting
There's a feeling that comes before the knowing. Something deep inside you starts signaling that the life you've built no longer matches who you're becoming.
You wake up tired in a life that should energize you.
Conversations feel like you're speaking a language you've outgrown.
The places that once felt like home start feeling like elaborate costumes you have to put on each day.
This isn't about being ungrateful or unhappy. It's about that peculiar exhaustion that comes from being someone you're not — from living in a life built for a version of yourself that no longer exists.
The gap between who you're becoming and the life you're living widens until one day you realize: I don't fit here anymore.
But here's what makes it complicated…you built this life. You chose these relationships, this city, this career, these beliefs. You invested time, energy, money, and love.
How do you honor that investment while admitting that the person who made those choices has evolved into someone who needs something different?
You're Meant to Evolve
As women, we are evolutionary creatures by design. We're meant to change, outgrow, and become. It's human nature, yet we've been sold this myth that consistency equals integrity, that changing your mind means you were wrong before, that growth is somehow a betrayal of who you used to be.
But what if the betrayal is staying the same when everything in you is screaming to evolve?
Identity shifts happen quietly at first, then all at once. You might spend months or years sensing something stirring beneath the surface—new values emerging, old priorities losing their grip, a different version of yourself trying to be born. Then one day, you wake up and realize you're not the same person who chose this life.
But recognizing you've outgrown something and knowing how to leave it are entirely different challenges. The paralysis sets in—how do you dismantle a life you spent years building? The psychological weight of all that investment keeps you frozen, even when staying feels like slow suffocation.
Why We Stay…
So why do we stay?
Why do we imprison ourselves in lives we've outgrown, relationships that no longer serve us, places that make us feel like we're slowly suffocating?
The answer is fear, but fear is rarely honest about itself. It dresses up as responsibility, loyalty, and practicality. It whispers that leaving would be selfish, that staying is the mature thing to do, that real love means sacrificing your evolution for someone else's comfort.
Fear of starting over when you've already invested years building this life. Fear of the unknown when the known, however stifling, at least feels predictable. But perhaps the deepest fear is this: what if you change everything and you're still not happy? What if the problem isn't your circumstances but something unfixable within you?
It's easier to blame your dissatisfaction on external things — this job, this city, this relationship — than to risk discovering that the restlessness will follow you wherever you go. So we stay attached to the familiar, even when the familiar has become a prison. We convince ourselves that our discomfort is temporary, that we can make this work, that asking for more is ungrateful. The things we cling to become anchors that keep us from drifting toward who we're meant to become, and eventually what fed us poisons us.
What We Outgrow
Sometimes outgrowing is literal — the city that called to you in your twenties feels suffocating in your forties. The apartment you loved when you were healing now reminds you of who you were at your lowest point. Physical places hold energy, and sometimes that energy no longer matches who you've become.
But more often, we outgrow the invisible things:
The friend group that bonded over shared wounds no longer fits when you've done the work to heal yours.
The family dynamics that felt normal when you didn't know better become unbearable once you understand what healthy looks like.
The romantic relationship built on who you used to be starts feeling like a beautifully decorated prison when you evolve into someone new.
Professional identities can become the most elaborate performances of all. The job title you fought for, the expertise you've built, the reputation you've cultivated — all of it can become a trap when your interests shift, your values change, or you simply outgrow the person who wanted those things in the first place.
And then there are the beliefs we outgrow — the stories we told ourselves about what we deserved, what was possible, what kind of person we were supposed to be. Sometimes the most radical act of evolution is simply changing your mind about yourself.
Your Evolution Is Not Their Emergency
Here's where we need to get honest: when you start living authentically, people are going to have reactions. They're going to be confused, hurt, angry, disappointed. They're going to take your evolution personally, and they're going to try to convince you that your growth is actually selfishness.
Other people's reactions to your authentic choices are not your responsibility to manage, minimize, or fix.
When you outgrow a friendship, your former friend might feel abandoned. When you leave a job that no longer serves you, your colleagues might feel betrayed. When you move away from a city that's become too small for who you're becoming, people might accuse you of running away. They're not necessarily wrong—you have changed. And that's exactly the point.
People will weaponize disappointment to keep you small. They'll remind you of who you used to be, what you used to want, what you used to believe, as if evolution were a crime against your former self. They'll make your growth about them — how it affects them, how it hurts them, how it inconveniences their idea of who you should be.
Your growth threatens their status quo, and that's uncomfortable for them. But their discomfort with your evolution doesn't make your evolution wrong. It makes it necessary.
The difference between being considerate and being imprisoned by consideration is this: consideration is choosing your words carefully when you tell someone you're changing your life. Being imprisoned by consideration is changing your life based on how someone else might feel about it.
Permission to Choose Yourself
The radical act isn't just choosing yourself — it's giving yourself permission to want different things than you used to want. Permission to outgrow beliefs that once felt like truth. Permission to walk away from relationships that were built for who you used to be. Permission to disappoint people who preferred the smaller version of you.
This permission doesn't come with a manual. There's no guidebook for how to honor what served you while choosing what serves you now. There's no script for how to love people and leave them at the same time, how to be grateful for the past while refusing to be imprisoned by it.
What there is, is grief. Beautiful, necessary grief for the life you're leaving behind, for the person you used to be, for the relationships that can't survive your evolution. This grief isn't a sign you're making the wrong choice — it's a sign you're making a human one.
And there's something else: the bone-deep relief that comes from finally, finally living as yourself. The exhale that happens when you stop contorting yourself to fit into spaces that were never meant to hold all of who you are.
You can live with other people's disappointment in your choices. What you can't live with — what will slowly kill the most essential parts of you — is your own disappointment in yourself for being something you’re not in order to keep others comfortable.
Ask yourself: Why Do I Imprison Myself in Places You've Outgrown?
The question my friend asked me that day wasn't really about why we imprison ourselves. It was about whether we're brave enough to set ourselves free, even when freedom means walking away from everything familiar, even when it means disappointing people we love, even when we have no idea what comes next.
Questions for reflection:
What in your life feels like a costume you have to put on rather than clothes that fit?
When you imagine living completely authentically, what comes up first—excitement or fear?
Who in your life would be most threatened by your evolution, and why?
What permission do you need to give yourself that you've been waiting for someone else to grant?
If you knew that disappointing others was unavoidable, what would you choose differently?
The only thing scarier than leaving the life you've outgrown is staying in it until it suffocates who you're meant to become.
In closing, I want to say that:
“I give you permission to choose yourself, and leave what you have energetically outgrown.”