I Came Here to Rebuild Myself. They Keep Telling Me I'm Already Too Much.
I came here to rebuild myself. They keep telling me I'm already too much.
Dear fellow travellers,
There’s a saying about married life in Korea:
“When you get married, be deaf for three years, blind for three years, and mute for three years.”
It’s advice about keeping your head down, learning before speaking, and not causing friction in a new family.
At temples, they say: “All three. For three years. At once.”
Deaf, blind, and mute. Simultaneously. For years.
And here’s the fun part: after a Buddhist nun—my new boss—explained this to me, she immediately added:
“But actually, you have to listen to everything. Every conversation, even when they’re not talking to you. You have to read the room before anyone tells you what’s wrong. You have to know what people need before they ask.”
So.
Be deaf. But hear everything.
Be blind. But see everything.
Be mute. But know exactly when to speak.
Be numb to the outside world when meditating. But be hyper-sensitive to every social nuance when living daily life.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
This is my life now.
How I Got Here
After my relationship ended, I came to a temple thinking: This is where I heal. This is where I rebuild my shattered self-worth. This is where I learn to value myself again.
And then, within weeks, a woman I’d grown close to—a laywoman at the first temple—pulled me aside with some advice:
“You should pretend you can’t speak English as well as you do. Your skills make people feel threatened. It’s better to hide what you can do.”
I stared at her.
I’d spent months being told I was disgusting, manipulative, worthless. I came here specifically to rebuild my sense of self-worth. To remember I had value. To learn, maybe… I wasn’t the monster I’d been convinced I was.
And now: Dim your light. You’re too much. Be smaller.
The whiplash nearly broke my neck.
The Impossible Standards
Here’s what temple life actually requires:
Be humble. But not so humble you don’t notice what needs doing.
Don’t stand out. But be exceptional at your work.
Don’t gossip. But know everything happening in the community.
Don’t be nosy. But be so attuned to others that you anticipate needs before they arise.
Efface yourself. But be competent enough that your absence would be noticed.
It’s not just contradictory. It’s designed to be impossible.
Because every word you say in this tiny community can become a disaster you can’t control. Someone mishears. Someone misinterprets. Someone reports to someone else. Suddenly you’re in trouble for something you didn’t mean, said to the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong tone.
The solution, apparently, is to develop supernatural social awareness whilst simultaneously pretending you’re oblivious.
I’m exhausted just writing this.
The Westernised Mind Problem
I was raised to believe:
Mind your own business
Don’t be nosy—it’s intrusive and tiring
Respect people’s privacy
Focus on your own work
Independence is a virtue
Temple life requires the opposite:
Everyone’s business is your business
You must notice everything about everyone
You must keep your mouth shut
Your work affects everyone; everyone’s work affects you
Interdependence is everything
And look—I get it. I understand the philosophy. Community over individual. Harmony over personal expression. The collective good.
But I’m trying to rebuild a self here.
How do you reconstruct your sense of worth in a system that explicitly tells you: your individual self matters less than the group’s comfort?
How do you heal from being told you’re worthless by learning to… make yourself smaller?
The English Incident (And What It Revealed)
When that laywoman told me to hide my English skills, my first reaction was defensive:
Why should I pretend to be less competent? Why is my ability threatening? Why should I diminish myself to make others comfortable?
But then I thought: Is she right that I’m inconsiderate?
Because maybe it wasn’t about my English skills at all. Maybe it was about how I used them. Did I show off? Did I make others feel inadequate? Was I so focused on “rebuilding my self-worth” that I wasn’t noticing how my behaviour affected people?
I genuinely don’t know.
And that’s the problem with temple feedback: Is it wisdom about humility, or is it the same pattern of “you’re too much, be less” that broke me in the first place?
How do I tell the difference?
What “Humility” Started to Feel Like
After a few weeks, I noticed something:
Every time I did something well, I felt anxious.
Every time I spoke confidently, I second-guessed myself.
Every time someone complimented my work, I minimised it immediately.
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Anyone could have done it.”
“I was just lucky.”
I was becoming smaller again.
The same smallness I came here to escape.
Except now it was wrapped in spiritual language: humility, egolessness, self-effacement.
But it felt suspiciously like the same self-erasure that left me unable to function after my breakup.
The Contradiction I Can’t Resolve
Here’s what I can’t figure out:
I came here because I was broken down.
Someone I loved convinced me I was disgusting, manipulative, and worthless. I believed them. I spent months in crisis, unable to work, writing unsent letters, genuinely considering whether I should exist.
Temple life was supposed to help me rebuild.
But temple life also says: Don’t shine too bright. Don’t stand out. Don’t make others uncomfortable with your competence. Read every social cue. Absorb every criticism. Make yourself smaller for the collective good.
So… am I healing? Or am I just finding a spiritual framework for the same self-destruction?
Is “humility” teaching me healthy self-awareness, or is it just a more socially acceptable way to hate myself?
I genuinely don’t know.
What My Westernised Brain Keeps Screaming
My individualistic, Western-raised mind keeps rebelling:
You don’t owe anyone your dimness.
Your competence isn’t an offence.
You’re allowed to take up space.
Rebuilding self-worth means actually valuing yourself.
But then I think: What if that’s exactly the arrogance I need to shed?
What if my “self-worth” is just ego dressed up in therapy language? What if my resistance to “being small” is actually resistance to genuine humility?
What if the temple is right, and I’m just too Western, too individualistic, too self-centred to see it?
Or.
What if the temple culture is just another system that asks women, foreigners, newcomers to make themselves smaller for everyone else’s comfort?
How do I know which it is?
The Questions I’m Living With
I don’t have answers. I’m just sitting with these questions:
1. Is there a difference between humility and self-erasure?
Can you value yourself whilst also considering your impact on others? Or is that contradiction impossible?
2. Is “rebuilding self-worth” incompatible with community living?
Maybe you can’t have both. Maybe healing your sense of self requires a kind of individualism that temple life can’t accommodate.
3. Am I being asked for humility or compliance?
When they say “be smaller,” are they asking me to shed ego—or just to stop being inconvenient?
4. Can a westernised mind ever truly adapt to this?
Or am I just fundamentally unsuited to collective living because I was raised to value independence?
5. Is the exhaustion worth it?
Constantly reading rooms, monitoring reactions, anticipating needs, never relaxing—is this spiritual practice or just surveillance culture with prayer beads?
What I’m Trying (Sort Of)
I don’t have this figured out. But here’s what I’m attempting:
Notice the difference between:
“I shouldn’t show off” (humility)
“I shouldn’t be competent” (self-erasure)
Ask myself:
Am I hiding my skills to avoid ego, or am I hiding them because I’m scared of taking up space?
Am I considering others’ feelings, or am I making myself smaller to avoid conflict?
Look for the pattern:
Does this feedback help me grow, or does it just make me smaller?
Am I learning or am I shrinking?
Be honest about the cost:
Constant vigilance is exhausting
Anticipating everyone’s needs whilst suppressing my own is unsustainable
Maybe I’m just not built for this
The Pattern I Can’t Ignore
Here’s what keeps stopping me when I want to dismiss all this as “just a cultural difference”:
I’ve been told I’m inconsiderate. Repeatedly. By multiple people.
Not just by my ex. Not just by the mentor we both trusted. But now by people at the temple who have no connection to that relationship.
The laywoman who told me to dim my light? She wasn’t being cruel. She was sincere. I could feel that she cared about me, that she didn’t want to see me break down again.
She’s lived at Buddhist temples for over 60 years. She was honestly sharing what she’d learned, trying to help me avoid the mistakes she’d seen destroy others.
And she told me more than just “hide your English skills.”
She told me I make others uncomfortable because I can be impolite and selfish.
Specific examples: I sit incorrectly on the floor. I cross my legs in ways that show my feet to elders—which is apparently quite rude. Small things I had no idea about because no one taught me.
Things my Western friends never mentioned because they’re not rude in Western contexts.
But here? They matter.
What I’m Slowly Realising
I want to believe the problem is “temple culture is too restrictive.”
But the truth might be simpler and harder:
I’m too radical. Too direct. Too thick about what’s going on around me.
I don’t naturally notice social cues. I don’t think about how my actions affect others unless someone explicitly tells me. I do what feels authentic to me and call it being genuine, without considering whether it’s actually just being oblivious.
Western individualism taught me to value authenticity over harmony.
But maybe “authenticity” has just been my excuse for not learning to consider others.
My Western friends never called me inconsiderate because in individualist cultures, what I do is fine. Mind your own business. Express yourself. Don’t worry about others’ comfort unless they explicitly say something.
But every mentor from collective cultures—Korean, deeply Buddhist, community-focused—has said the same thing: You’re inconsiderate. You’re selfish. You don’t think about how you affect people.
At what point do I stop dismissing this as a cultural mismatch and start accepting it as accurate feedback?
The Truth I Don’t Want to Face
I can’t just escape to somewhere “more accepting.”
There’s no heaven where I can live exactly as I am without ever having to adapt, change, or consider others.
If I leave the temple saying “it’s just not my path,” I’m avoiding the real issue: I genuinely don’t know how to live in harmony with others.
Whether they’re from individualist cultures or collective ones.
The temple is just making it visible in ways Western spaces don’t.
What I’m Actually Trying to Do
My goal isn’t to escape this discomfort.
My goal is to centre myself.
To find some balance between:
Valuing myself AND considering others
Authenticity AND appropriateness
Self-worth AND humility
Western directness AND Eastern sensitivity
Right now, I feel oppressed by the rules and values of this sacred place. Crushed by impossible standards. Exhausted by constant vigilance.
But maybe that’s what growth feels like.
Maybe the fact that it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong—it means it’s the exact place I need to be.
I need to face this difficulty now, or I’ll never learn how to navigate it.
There’s no shortcut. There’s no “better fit” community where I magically know how to be considerate without trying.
I need to actually learn this. Even though it’s crushing me.
The Uncomfortable Middle Ground
So here’s where I actually am:
Not “temple life is wrong.”
Not “I’m perfectly fine and just culturally mismatched.”
But somewhere messier:
The temple standards feel impossible AND I genuinely need to grow.
The constant vigilance is exhausting AND I’ve been oblivious to how I affect people.
Being told to be smaller feels like self-erasure AND I’ve been inconsiderate, calling it authenticity.
I’m being crushed by these expectations AND they’re teaching me things I need to learn.
Both things are true.
And I have to sit in that tension without escaping to either extreme.
For Anyone Else Caught Between Worlds
If you’re navigating the space between:
Individual worth and collective harmony
Healthy self-esteem and spiritual humility
Personal healing and community demands
Western individualism and Eastern collectivism
Here’s what I’m learning:
You’re not broken for struggling with this.
These are genuinely contradictory value systems. Of course, you’re confused. Of course, you’re exhausted.
BUT also: the difficulty might be the point.
If it feels crushing, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s wrong. It might mean you’re learning something essential.
“Humility” that feels like self-hatred probably isn’t humility.
Real humility should be liberating, not crushing. But also—if everyone in a culture tells you you’re inconsiderate, at some point you have to consider they might be right.
You might genuinely need to change.
Not because you’re broken, but because you’ve never learned to live in harmony with others. Individualism protected you from that lesson. Now you’re learning it the hard way.
But the standards can still be oppressive.
Both things can be true. You need to grow AND the expectations are overwhelming. You need to learn consideration AND constant vigilance is unsustainable.
There might not be an easier path.
The fantasy of finding a “better fit” community might just be avoidance. Maybe the work is here, in the discomfort.
Trust your exhaustion, but also question your resistance.
Your nervous system telling you something is hard doesn’t automatically mean it’s harmful. Sometimes hard is just... hard.
From another new place where I’m learning that growth and crushing pressure can look disturbingly similar
Emotionally yours (and staying put even though I want to run),
Suinny
P.S. - The Question I Can’t Shake
If I’m being completely honest: I don’t know if I’m resisting humility or resisting harm.
I don’t know if I need to learn to be smaller or if being asked to be smaller is itself the problem.
I don’t know if the temple is teaching me wisdom or if it’s just another place telling me I’m too much.
What I do know:
I’m too tired to figure it out right now.
But I can’t escape it either.
I need to stay. I need to learn this. Even though it’s crushing me.
Because if I leave now, I’ll just take my inconsiderate, oblivious, too-radical self somewhere else and repeat the same patterns.
The work is here. In the discomfort. In the confusion.
And that’s the most honest thing I can say.
Next week: Probably still confused. Possibly more humble. Definitely still exhausted.
Resources:
If you’re struggling with collectivist vs individualist values: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
On healthy self-esteem vs ego: Probably therapy, honestly
On whether temple life is right for you: I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out
Note: This isn’t anti-temple or anti-Buddhism. It’s one person’s honest struggle with cultural adaptation, genuine character flaws, and the question of whether crushing pressure means you’re growing or being crushed. I don’t have the answer yet. I’m staying to find out. Your path might be completely different. That’s okay.