“To survive this job I've made myself so small I barely recognize me.”

Survival shrinking starts as strategy and ends as identity. You told yourself you were playing it smart, and somewhere along the line the smallness stopped being a costume and became the man. That is the real danger of a place that punishes strength — not what it does to your week, but what it convinces you to do to yourself. A man stands on his own; he is not kept upright, or kept down, by the room.