“Be yourself” is easy advice for people who were never told their self was too loud or too foreign.

The advice assumes a world that receives you neutrally, and plenty of people have learned that it does not. If you have been told to tone it down, soften the accent, bring different food, then being yourself has had a price attached that the people handing out the advice never paid. That does not make the advice wrong. It makes it incomplete.

Choose the rooms where the full version of you costs nothing, and spend more time in them. Elsewhere, decide for yourself how much to adjust, as a choice rather than an apology. Keeping one place where nothing is filtered matters most.