1 How it all started
2 The cost of learning to hide
3 The problem is not your brain
4 The core value distortion
5 The day someone saw „Me“
6 How values get borrowed
7 The cage feels safe because you decorated it
8 How adults consciously reclaim your values
9 What happens if no reflection occurs or is distorted?
10 So how do we consciously build our own values now?
11 Why your values problems never affect only you
12 The black sheep or the cycle breaker

He took the card that said “faith” and placed it on the “this is very important to me”-pile.
I asked him, why is faith so important to you? He shrugged his shoulders and said “I don’t know. I don’t really know what faith means. Just people always say it’s important, so I put it there. But I don’t know what faith is.”

He is 10. I gave him cards with values written on them, such as loyalty, faith, authenticity, love, fun, etc. I asked him to put them on piles ranging from very important to not at all important.

Normally, I don’t do values work with kids his age for a reason I will explain later. But he saw the cards and wanted to try, so I let him.
But what this example already shows is how values are being formed and influenced at his age: He doesn’t know what it is, but he takes it on as his own.

That in itself is not the problem, it’s natural, but the following becomes a problem:

When I asked why loyalty is important to him, he told me, that being loyal is a good thing.
I told him all values are good in their base. That’s why they are values. It’s not about what is good or bad, but why this one is particularly important to you is the question.
People have different values. It doesn’t make them good or bad or right or wrong. It’s simply what they feel is more important to them and their kind of personality.

He thought for a moment and told me that he is very loyal and people trust him. And he likes that.  But he doesn’t care if others are loyal to him because he knows they are not. So he doesn’t expect it from anyone.

This is where it becomes difficult. Loyalty is important to him so he gives it, but the world taught him … he can’t expect it back. This in turn might probably teach him in the future to stay loyal to people or situations way too long than it is healthy for him.
Results may be toxic relationships (romantic, family, “friends”, work …), depression, anxiety, burnout …. Maybe not in the next 5 years, maybe not until he is 40 but the time will come and he will not understand why he is not well.

The problem is not even that he doesn’t receive loyalty. Some people give it, others don’t. The problem is that he doesn’t learn to set boundaries with the people who don’t give it. To understand those people are not your friends and also that family may be wrong at times, no matter how much we love them or they love us.

The cost of learning to hide

You see, in my job I work with children that are neurodivergent or have gone through trauma, family problems, physical or mental disability. … People always talk about accommodations in school for those kids. More time for exams, less distraction area seating, more time to hand in homework, … all that is nice, and important. But there is one thing that always gets overlooked. And this is the part that is actually the most important in all of this.

Let me tell you what I see.  I work in primary to university settings. So I see the general development of the kids.  In primary they are still easy to handle, in the first couple of years. But they start noticing that they are a little different than others, but it’s not as prominent yet, unless their challenges are severe. You can still see their individuality.

In year 5 they get much harder to spot. They lost part of their individuality. They are hiding it, to fit in with the rest. People are happy about that. Makes them easier to teach, parents often tell me “my child is healed”. Little do you know … he / she didn’t get healed, they just mask.

And inside of them, the mental loops are starting …but they don’t show that to anyone, because they understood that perceiving the world or thinking differently, feeling deeply, thinking deeply, asking questions why all the time, challenging common beliefs, thinking for yourself …  is not welcome.

And then comes secondary school. By the time they reach this age … this is what I deal with:
You would not believe what is on their minds. They know very well, that they are different, they suffer, they are aware of so many things … but they can’t talk to anyone, because people don’t understand. Most of the time not even their own mother … or maybe especially not her.

So when they come to me and I don’t judge them, and I listen … they tell me all the things that are on their hearts … I can’t describe to you the feeling I get. There is so much pain. So much questioning … why am I like this .. why am I different … I don’t like people, I hate people, why are people like this, … I dont understand the world, it’s all fucked up. …

They don’t know how to cope, because no one is listening and no one is helping. Parents feel their kids are different but are scared what the neighbors will think. That society would treat them differently if they knew their child was officially different.
And I understand that fear, but truth is … if no one helps them see the truth, they will find their own coping strategies. And they are not good ones!

What I deal with in secondary are not accommodations for exams. Those are running on the side. What I deal with are kids who don’t know how to cope and use drugs, smoking, porn, sex, self-harming, horror movies, suicide … at a very young age such as 12 or even younger.
And now that there finally is someone who listens and tries to help they leash out everything on their minds. The things they don’t tell anyone.

The saddest part of it all is … the kids I have in front of me … usually are the most amazing minds.
The way they think, the capacities they have, the passion they have, the connections they can make, the depth of their thoughts. Sometimes I read letters and diaries between the kids, and I must reread them 3 times to understand. This is how philosophical they can get. They understand things, their minds should not understand yet. And I have always been wondering, how such incredible minds turn against themselves like this.

Those are the kids without support. Those whose values and self image and strengths have been distorted because no one mirrored them back to themselves.

Then I also have other kids that are neurologically the same profile. And yet, completely different. They are doing great, happy little puppies, steady mindset, using everything to their advantage. Strategies they have in place are healthy human connections, setting boundaries, knowing who they are and what they are capable of, conscious of their shortcomings but also conscious about their enormous advantages and using them, healthy outlets such as sports, and the list continues …


The problem is not your brain

The problem is the environment. People, society, school etc. And in many cases that can be fixed … at the latest when the kids get out of school and can create their own environment and workplace. But until then they must hold on tight to their self. My goal with my work in the schools is not the marks. It’s literally to get them through school with the least amount of mental damage.
And that happens through accommodations as well as identity work.


The core value distortion

I did the same exercise with a 15-year-old girl. Like most neurodivergents and trauma survivors, her core values show up with … authenticity, loyalty, love, justice, integrity and then a couple of others.
Interestingly enough … those are the values we violate ourselves the most and get violated on every single day.

Your core value is authenticity, the need to be who you are inside. But you are not authentic yourself … because you must mask. So, you betray yourself every day, the belief forms that you are not a good person, you don’t deserve the people who are actually good around you, you feel guilt and shame for not living up to your own core value. You think you are a horrible person. Even though, you didn’t really do anything to deserve this bad self talk. You just tried to fit in and be like everyone else without being like everyone else.

But so now also, not only do you not give authenticity to yourself, but you also can’t get it back like this. How do you want other people to recognize who you really are if you are not showing it yourself? And then you wonder why you are surrounded by fake people.
Because you yourself are not true to yourself.


The day someone saw “Me“

Im not judging. I lived my life against my own values for way too long. One example is that I lived like an introvert. Always calm, not causing any problems to anyone. Rare were the people I showed myself to.

Then one day, somebody changed my life. He told me … you are like your daughter. My daughter is a little crazy. I was surprised that he said that. Noone has ever made this connection between her and me. But he repeated it over and over and to a point where he gave me her name and said that she is version 1 and me version 2.
I started observing my daughter and myself, when I was at home alone .. where I didn’t have to perform for people.  And he was right. He saw me, before I saw myself.
I felt safe to show parts of myself and this revealed who I really was but was afraid to show … and then what happened was that little by little the whole house of cards fell down.

And the most beautiful things happened. I discovered myself. And if I could give one gift to someone in this world is this … to discover yourself and then have the courage to be …  yourself!
And this is why I do what I do. I will be this safe person for others until I die. So, all these years of suffering have not been in vain, and children don’t have to go down the same road. Because what is on the other side, is so beautiful.
If you discover yourself, your strengths, your values and you live up to them … the outside world aligns all alone.

God created you … you, with all your gifts and shortcomings. You have this special mixture that others don’t have. Did you know that if you scan your brain … it is like fingerprints … none are alike. Isn’t that amazing? And yet we believe we should all be the same. We were never meant to be. And this creates so much pain.

The interesting part was. I do the same what he did, I see people before they see themselves, it has always been my nature ever since I was little. But on myself, it did not work. Until I was held up a mirror to who I am and what Im capable of.

The one who did this for me will probably never know how many lives he changed by changing me by simply being a safe place and mirror. Sometimes this is all we need in our lives and it has ripple effects that we may never know.
Most people unfortunately will never have a mirror. Lucky are those who have them in their lives and keep them.

Often people ask me now….you are the safe place and always there for everyone … who is that person for you? I tell them … I’m not there for everyone. I’m there for who I chose has a place in my life.

And my safe place … is myself. I’m not looking for safety outside anymore. And noone should. That’s too fragile. Situations change. People leave. Some because they chose to, some die … and everything you built was around them … sooner or later it will come to bite you.
Now you are living somebody else’s life and the ones you did it for are not even there anymore. Others may stay … who knows. But unpredictability is part of human life. Control is an illusion.

Now I choose who I let in my life to stand next to me. And that’s the difference. Not out of need .. out of choice. Because I want to. Need creates distortion. You will accept things you normally wouldn’t.
When there is no need, but welcome by choice … a “nice to have-addition to life” … it changes everything. Hence the values.

It’s not easy though. Sometimes we think we value something but actually we don’t. It’s the childhood conditioned version. Our true values may be different from what we think. It took me a few months to see my distorted values and non negotiables. I had to observe myself for a while. How I am with people, how I am alone, what annoys me, who annoys me, who / what drains my energy, who / what gives me energy, what I’m thinking about, what I’m wishing for, what / who pushes me to get better …

How values get borrowed

Let me show you how values are learned and influenced in life and how or if ever you break free from the false ones. Sometimes all it needs is to make things conscious.

I worked with a colleague on her core values last year. I haven’t see her in a while and recently met her on the street. She told me that I have no idea how much I changed her life and that she will be forever grateful.
A week ago, I worked with another colleague and he was mind blown when he looked at the results. He told me you have no idea what you just did. You changed my life!
I hear that a lot. But well, I also learned that future will show. You can always expose truth, but what people do with it, is another story.

What is important to know … somebody or something may have opened a door in you. But you are the one who must walk through it. Noone can make you.

My work in this life is to expose the truth to the people and then let them decide what they will do with it. Some people will stay in their shell. And that’s ok. As long as it was your conscious choice. You can’t complain about something you consciously chose.

Some will rise and have a different life from before. It will not be easy either, as it requires courage. You will be working against the things you thought are keeping you alive. It takes courage to risk that. But you will risk that because the other option becomes unsustainable with time also.

The cage feels safe because you decorated it
But what you call safety is just survival with better furniture. You know how to function there. So you confuse familiarity with peace. Predictable pain feels safer than unknown healing. So you keep on repainting the cage instead of walking out.

Freedom feels dangerous at first. Freedom gives you responsibility… to chose differently, to stop betraying yourself, calling survival love.

What you tolerate teaches your brain what it is allowed to call normal, and you will never outgrow your cage. The door has been open, but you were busy hanging pictures on the wall. You don’t need permission to leave. You need courage stop pretending this is home.

How adults consciously reclaim your values
We usually start by borrowing values before we ever consciously choose them. As children, we absorb values from parents and caregivers, culture and religion, school and authority figures, peers, rewards/punishments, painful experiences and survival strategies.

A 10-year-old saying “faith is important because people say so” is normal in one sense, that children often repeat inherited values before understanding them. That’s how development begins.

However, values can become conflicted or distorted when reality doesn’t match what a child is taught. For example, “loyalty matters” but then “nobody is loyal, so expect betrayal”
That creates a split between ideal and adaptation. He may still admire loyalty, but he’s already learning cynicism and self-protection.

So how do we develop our own values later? Usually through 5 stages …

1. Inheritance: We unconsciously copy what surrounds us.
2. Friction: Life exposes contradictions. For examples parents preach honesty but lie, friends talk loyalty but betray trust etc. This stage can feel disillusioning.
3. Reflection: We start asking if we actually believe this? Is this useful? Is this true in practice? Does this create peace or pain? This is where independent values begin.
4. Choice: We then intentionally decide: I value honesty even when others lie. I value boundaries, not blind loyalty. I value compassion, but not self-sacrifice.
5. Embodiment: Values become real only when lived repeatedly. Until then, they’re slogans.

So, there is an important distinction between borrowed values and chosen values.
Borrowed value is “Loyalty is important because people say so.”
Chosen value is “I value loyalty because trust creates safety and depth. If someone repeatedly betrays trust, I step back.”
That second one has thought, boundaries, and personal ownership.

What happens if no reflection occurs or is distorted?

People often become cynical adults repeating childhood wounds. They become moralistic but inconsistent, they become loyal to people who harm them. Masking grows, confusion grows, shame grows, false values grow, resentment grows because reality keeps violating inherited beliefs

When reflection is healthy identity emerges, courage grows  and alignment grows.

So how do we consciously build our own values now?

Ask yourself what traits in others make me feel safe and respected? What behaviors destroy trust for me? What principles help me sleep peacefully at night? What values survive even when inconvenient? Which beliefs did I inherit but no longer agree with?
Write answers down and patterns emerge.

About the boy … He may not be distorted so much yet as early awakened to contradiction. He already sees people are unreliable, words and behavior differ, trust is fragile.
That can become wisdom or bitterness depending on guidance.

If someone teaches him loyalty includes boundaries, trust must be earned, good people exist, but discernment matters, values are standards for self, not demands on everyone …then he can grow strong rather than cynical.

We don’t invent values from nothing. We inherit them, test them, suffer through them, refine them, and finally choose them.


Why your values problems never affect only you

Another thing I wish people would understand … you think with your values problems you only affect yourself. You don’t. You affect everyone around you. You are bleeding on others in every sense.

The easiest examples for this … I will take the core values of the girl I talked about earlier.

Love and connection were a strong one for her. Your core value is not just love, but authentic love. What I mean by that: The other person sees us as we are, we don’t have to perform, we can be ourselves … and they still choose us without trying to change us. Without trying to make us less.

Most people go into relationships and hope the other person will change, or it will somehow work out even if something feels off or wrong or empty. You think maybe you will get used to each other with time.

Our goal though is what you see is what you get. And either you can live with it or not.
If you can’t live with it … why don’t you go and find somebody else who has the qualities you are actually looking for? Instead of pretending or hoping for something that probably will never arrive. You will just make both of you unhappy. But this is not how most relationships work.

I have never understood people who got married because society wants it, because money, because status and all the other superficial reasons… that can only lead to unhappiness in the end … or at least a shallow life.
You marry for your family, for society … someday they will all die and you will be left in a marriage that you are not happy with.

And if you think its ok because you are the one carrying the burden …
you are not. You are bleeding on your partner because you can’t be present with a person you don’t really love.

Ok that then makes 2 people that must deal with it, that’s still ok.
No, it doesn’t. You will have children … and then I have the people in front of me whose children have all the mental issues because their families are not well.

Every single day, several times a day, I have those children sitting in front of me. They tell me they want their parents to divorce to finally be in peace themselves. They tell me they wish mum or dad would disappear because of all the pain they are causing to each other in the family.

And at the same time mum or dad is telling me “I’m staying for the kids”. You are hurting your kids more by staying than by leaving. You teach them all the wrong things about life. Its ok to be unhappy but be overly loyal …

You can’t give what you don’t have inside. You don’t have happiness and peace, you can’t give happiness and peace. You don’t have love inside, you can’t give love. You don’t have respect for yourself inside … you think you can teach respect to others? You yourself must be clear first because you can give anything to anyone.

Money .. how many men have I seen … rich … married the woman he can show to the world because she is pretty. She marries him because he has money not because for who he is. How many have I seen making a wrong investment and losing everything in a day … not just the money … followed by the wife and kids …

And I can dissect all of the reasons why people may call it love. But it’s not. Real love is … I know you, and I see you .. even the things you maybe don’t want me to see, but I’m still here and I choose you anyways or maybe exactly because of that. You don’t need to be perfect because no one is. We’re good.  Everything else is fake and I can’t accept that.

Next core value she had …

Authenticity… something we learned is that being authentic is not safe. We are told we are too much or too little of something. Too talkative, too shy, too much moving, not enough moving, too much feeling, too cold, … so we learn to adapt. Not because this is our nature.

You get told that no one can follow your thoughts because you connect many things at once and you jump from one topic to another … so you are told that no one understands you … you learn to stay away from people because apparently people think you are weird. So you stay away feeling ashamed of yourself for being this way.

You are maybe too quiet … so you try to adapt. Going against your own nature of needing calm. Draining your energy.

You are hurting yourself … and others … they will maybe like you, but they like the wrong person. Because this is not you. It’s a construct. The idea of a person.
While your own energy gets drained every minute of the day because you have to hold it all together for the people that like the wrong version of you.

Every single day your authenticity gets violated by the world around you but also the other way around.

Justice … Loyalty….

All those are core values most of neurodivergent and trauma survivors share. And those are exactly the ones who get violated on a daily basis. What are you expecting … that this will turn into a happy and peaceful life? How? Happy life for you? Happy life for your future friends and family? How? Happy life for the people already around you? How?

What those kids have to learn is .. what are your core values?
Teach them about the 2 sides of the values coin, the healthy manifestation and the distorted one. And then make them aware how they apply it in life…

Learn to set boundaries is essential. Yes, I’m loyal like no other. But I also expect loyalty back. Yes, I love deeply and I expect to be loved deeply back. If you can’t give me that .. I’m sorry but we won’t be a match. It may work for a while. Maybe months, maybe even for 10 years but there will come a time where the masking will stop working and then it turns into resentment …

I show you my real self .. show me yours. Don’t be scared. I wont judge you. Because I hate to be judged myself.
I will treat you justly … I expect justice from you.
I give you freedom, I expect you give me mine …

This is how it goes. But that’s not how most relationships work. And I’m not just talking about romantic relationships. It includes all types. And then we wonder … why families are unhappy, why children are messed up. They are the victims of the people that went against themselves.


The black sheep or the cycle breaker

And now you have those kids who will continue the cycle, and they will have the same consequences … generational trauma is created.

Until .. the black sheep of the family arrives. Often looked at weird by family and society … because they are finally the ones who do it right, but not like everyone likes because it goes against the norm. They are the cycle breakers .. they are the ones who have courage. They are the ones protecting the future children and society …

Interestingly enough, what i see so many times … the black sheep are looked down at … but once they succeed, and so far, I haven’t seen one who didn’t… people are proud of them. Suddenly you have parents telling them wow … suddenly you have society who looks up to them and tries to be like them …. Ironic, isn’t it?

People don’t suffer only because life is hard. They suffer because they keep living against what matters most to them.
And once you live up to your core values, true to yourself, yes maybe some people may leave or you leave them …

You don’t lose people. You lose illusions of who they were of what it was of what you thought it could be. Truth doesn’t take from you. It clears the weight.
Anything you lose by being real, was already fake.

And then people will enter or re-enter your life … who are aligned with your truth.

This is where healing and change of your life starts.