Toxic Friendships & Playing Small: Why Growth Feels Like Betrayal

The most dangerous friendships aren't the ones that blow up, they're the ones that quietly convince you your growth is an inconvenience. That wanting reciprocity on your birthday makes you entitled. That their abandonment is somehow your fault. They'll split the check, call you a user while you're taking care of their dogs for days, and gaslight you into believing you're the problem. This is how people keep you small while wearing the mask of friendship.

Michelle dissects last year's birthday in the Canadian Rockies; the moment a "best friend" revealed herself as someone who needed Michelle stuck to feel secure. Why she spent this year pet sitting without her own place, carrying shame about not having her life "together" by someone else's standards. Three podcast launches and deaths. A mastermind investment that actually demanded growth. The brutal truth about commitment issues: they're not about choosing wrong, they're about finally choosing yourself when everyone else is comfortable with who you used to be.

This episode exposes what happens when you stop performing smallness for people who mistake your stagnation for loyalty. No healing arc, just the reckoning.

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