Value + Perception of Value
Why what you value, how you perceive value, and why you have a value all matters.
What we value and how we perceive value is unique to each individual.
While many of us share similar core values, what makes them unique to each of us is the lens through which we use to perceive their value. Our individual lens of perception is created by a combination of internal and external factors such as lived experiences, our unique family of origin story, our level of mental and emotional intelligence and awareness, our ego (the mind), how integrated our shadow is (the subconscious), our trauma (both resolved and unresolved), influences from society or friends and family, and much more. An individual’s propensity for optimism or pessimism also influences the choice of certain core values.
Varying values and perceptions of values make us all unique, but they are often the most common point of contention behind conflicts, misalignment, and hurt feelings. We've all been there. One moment you're having a great interaction, and the next, there's that uncomfortable feeling of unease in the pit of your stomach, or you're fighting to contain your inner rage demon from being unleashed, potentially creating irreparable damage from a simple comment or perspective being shared. The rub here generally relates to what you value and a perceived threat to said value. That inner rage demon or ugly pit in your stomach is caused by your ego (your personal threat detector and defender of self), as well as your nervous system becoming activated (triggered). This is natural, normal, and what your amazing body is designed to do, but it can cause unnecessary chaos in your relationships if you're not self-aware, if there’s misalignment, or if you are emotionally immature, which is a category that over 50% of adults fall into.
What’s also important to understand is that just because two people share the same value, it doesn’t always guarantee alignment, because how someone perceives value is just as important as the value itself. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," "one man's trash is another man's treasure," and "different strokes for different folks" are all commonly used phrases that speak to how everyone assesses value differently. A diamond doesn't lose its value because someone doesn't want it or understand why it’s valuable, just as your value doesn’t change simply because someone can’t recognize it.
We are all different with differing levels of awareness and motivations.
What’s also true is that someone cannot recognize the value of something if they don't possess it or have awareness of why that value is important to them. For example, if someone lacks the value of honesty and is unaware of its importance to them, they may not perceive lying as immoral and might not understand why it's a concern for others. It doesn't make that person wrong; it just means they’re misaligned for you if you value honesty.
Alignment of values is important because it grounds connections in mutual understanding, creates trust, and supports greater long-term satisfaction and success. Shared values create lasting compatibility and purpose in connections because, unlike shared interests, which often change, our values remain relatively stable and enduring. When there is a misalignment of values, there’s a greater chance for misunderstandings and miscommunication, leading to unnecessary chaos and conflict.
Misalignment of values in any area of your life will be painful and a source of continued frustration and contention until you enact change. In your career, this can manifest as frustration if you highly value autonomy but are currently working under an unreasonable, demanding, or micromanaging leader. Until you actively seek and choose employment elsewhere that allows for more autonomy, you will continue to feel agitated and frustrated in your current career dynamic. In relationships, this often manifests as recurring conflicts stemming from differing values and perspectives. For example, one partner highly values solitude and the other highly values togetherness. Both values are on opposite ends of the polarity spectrum, so unless both people are willing to come together and create a framework that feels honoring and respectful to both individuals and their values, the relationship is doomed to fail because it lacks the proper ingredients for long-term success. This is why engaging in meaningful connections and entering long-term commitments that align with your values is so important.
When it comes to aligning with a romantic partner, many people confuse similar interests and chemistry with genuine compatibility. While having similar interests can be fun and easy on the surface, it's far more important to have your needs and values aligned in a partnership for long-term success. You can have friendships based on shared interests, but it's challenging to have a lasting romantic relationship with someone who has misaligned needs and values.
Signs of misalignment in romantic connections appear in the earliest stages of the dating process, and if you’re conscious enough, paying attention to the red flags can help prevent you from getting caught up in siuationships or entering commitments without long-term potential. For example, let’s say you are seeking a long-term partner, but the person you're on a date with evades answering the question or reveals they are only seeking friendship/companionship. Evasion in this instance most commonly sounds like them saying something like, “I’m just a go with the flow kinda person,” “I just want to have fun and see where this goes,” or “I like to start off as friends first and if it leads to something long-term, then I’m open to it.” In this case, the person sitting across from you knows on some level that they don’t want anything committed but still wants access to you, so they want to make you believe that there’s a possibility of the connection moving into something more committed, with the hopes that you’ll keep entertaining them. They may not fully be aware that this is what they are doing, but if you’re not careful and choose to continue investing in this connection, it will inevitably end unless there’s a dynamic shift where what both people want realigns, which is rare in this instance.
When this dynamic comes to its inevitable, painful ending, both people are left with hurt feelings due to misalignment. The individual seeking a long-term commitment feels led on, lied to, and betrayed by the other because they clearly communicated their dating intentions and likely didn’t realize the other person had no intention of ever offering commitment, or, at the very least, there was a very small chance that it would ever happen. On the other side of this dynamic, the individual who wants to “go with the flow” likely assumes the other person is okay with not expecting commitment from them and generally winds up feeling like the other person is being pushy, wanting something from them, or being unreasonable. In this dynamic, both individuals enter a subconscious pattern and ego loop stemming from a place of wounding related to being chosen, which originates from a place of unworthiness, but from opposite ends of the polarity. The person who does not want commitment gets an ego boost from the other person continuing to engage with them, as they feel special (chosen), while the other person's ego is depleted by subconsciously trying to prove to the other why they are safe and worthy of committing to (being chosen).
In this dynamic, the person seeking partnership will never feel satisfied with the level of effort and depth in the connection, and the person wanting companionship will feel the other person has unreasonable or high expectations of them that they have no desire to meet. Again, neither person here is wrong, but they are misaligned. Had one or both of these individuals been aware of the pattern about to unfold if they chose to continue engaging with each other, the chaos and wasted time would have been avoided.
How you perceive yourself, others, and the world around you also influences what you value.
Understanding your 'why' and its origin is a crucial part of comprehending your value system. Without being aware of where your values originate, how can you determine if they truly stem from a place of authenticity or from ego, pride, or fear? Your core wounds and unconsciousness (a.k.a. the shadow self: the parts of yourself you either reject or pretend don't exist) will cause you to cling to beliefs, people, places, or things that aren't in alignment with your authentic self. If you struggle to let go of past romantic partners, fake friends, toxic family, a toxic job, or anything else that no longer serves your highest good, the attachment is likely tied to a value but from an unconscious place.
Before I dive into how to identify your personal values, I think it's essential to address the topics of the ego and nervous system activation. I have other blogs that delve into these concepts more deeply, so feel free to peruse the archives if you're interested in learning more.
The nervous system is that part of your body that unconsciously scans the environment for potential threats to your safety. The ego is your mind that creates the narrative of what that 'threat' means. Since 90% of the brain is unconscious, the vast majority of what the mind creates are bullshit stories based on fear and unconscious beliefs. These beliefs can be yours, but most often stem from the beliefs of family or others you care deeply about and value their opinions, and most importantly, they are not based on reality. This is why it's crucial not to believe every thought that comes to mind!
Nervous system activation, also known as being triggered or activated, varies from a subtle hint of frustration, such as irritation and annoyance, to a powerful surge of anger, rage, or violence. If you ignore the whispers, your body will continue to escalate its signals until it gets your attention. If you have a nervous system attuned to chaos, you will never hear the whispers, only the roars. If this is you, you’ll be fine one minute and move enraged the next. Trust me, this was never true; you were never fine, you just missed the more subtle signals from your body telling you something was amiss.
Being in a state of disconnection with your body, along with lacking self-awareness and emotional maturity, is a dangerous combination with harmful consequences to yourself and those around you.
Abuse and violence often stem from this space because emotional maturity is required to process complex or overwhelming emotions. Someone who lacks that awareness often resorts to verbal or physical forms of releasing uncomfortable feelings and pent-up energy. Violence is the outward manifestation of inner turmoil and distress. The violence may be directed towards inanimate objects or others, but it almost always has lasting, damaging effects mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically for those involved. This is why emotional immaturity and a lack of awareness are dangerous, and something I will not tolerate in any connection or environment. I've learned this lesson the hard way, over and over, and I have zero desire to ever repeat it.
If you grew up in a chaotic environment or a dysfunctional family system, your nervous system is likely to be naturally misaligned. The most common cause of a misaligned nervous system is growing up with primary caregivers (not everyone grows up with their birth parents) who are emotionally unavailable and/or immature, which leads to unmet needs in childhood. This happens in family systems of all kinds, even the ones that appear to be 'perfect', stay together, or are close-knit, and the lasting effects of this will have you unconsciously searching outside yourself to fill unmet childhood needs until you do the healing work and learn to meet those needs yourself (a.k.a. reparenting or inner-child healing).
Growing up in dysfunction leads to a misaligned nervous system that feels comfortable in unhealthy or harmful environments and connections but uncomfortable in healthy connections and environments. Essentially, your internal guidance system is pointing south while it feels like it's guiding you true North, so you are naturally pulled to what’s bad for you and repelled by what’s good for you, but on a subconscious level. Since your nervous system is a blueprint formed by replicating your primary caregiver’s, you will most likely unconsciously repeat the same patterns and possess the same negative, internalized beliefs they do until you make them conscious and take action to change them by rewiring your nervous system to healthier patterns and beliefs.
The lack of embodiment and attunement is most often why people repeatedly fall into the same negative cycles, even though they believe they’re consciously choosing differently.
A different story and set of characters, yet the same outcome, in a sense. This happens because your mind knows better, but your body hasn’t gotten the message.
A quick example of this is having a conscious boundary of not dating anyone you work with, especially someone subordinate to you, and yet finding yourself romantically entangled with your mentee and calling it fate. I hate to break it to you, that’s not a fated romance, it’s your subconscious running the show and leading you to repeat a toxic pattern because your shadow is being activated. The purpose of the romantic entanglement is not a fated long-term love story; the connection is actually meant to help you reveal that the unhealthy unconscious attachment point is still very much alive within yourself, even if you consciously believe it to be true otherwise. If your internal compass is still set to chaos, you'll run straight toward it every single time, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
Filling voids and numbing the pain you feel (mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually) disconnects your body from your mind and further distorts your perception of reality, thus misaligning your internal compass even more.
Void-filling and numbing behavior can be using drugs routinely (yes THC/weed and nicotine are included here), drinking often or to the point of numbing, doom-scrolling on social media, surface-level or casual relationships, excessive partying or socializing, bed-rotting, avoidance, unhealthy sexual behaviors (excessive self-pleasure, sex for validation, casual hook-ups, sneaky links, friends with benefits, etc.), unhealthy eating behaviors (restriction, binging, and emotional eating), or anything else that takes you out of your body or numbs your senses (a.k.a. addictions). Work, family, and friends can also become a form of void-filling if you’re using them as a source of distraction and a point of disengagement from yourself.
All of this is important to understand because, as long as you continue to allow addictions or distractions to be present in your life, you cannot heal and reset your internal compass. All void-filling behaviors do is dull your senses, keep your vibe or energy low (a.k.a. energy vampires), and only reinforce your internalized feelings of unworthiness and unlovability. Void-fillers are soul-crushing! While they may bring temporary satisfaction and relief, they never lead to long-term fulfillment. Engaging with these behaviors and addictions most commonly stems from unhealed childhood pain and persists due to unconsciousness around unmet needs. Understanding the underlying reasons and triggers for void-filling behaviors is crucial for properly overcoming them.
Unmet childhood needs can feel like an insatiable desire that is never met, no matter how much outside fulfillment you get.
It can also show up as a rejection of that need altogether. One example of how this can manifest in romantic partnerships is never feeling close to your partner, regardless of the amount of time you spend together, and never feeling satisfied with the level of attention you receive. Additionally, you may view time apart from your partner as a threat to the relationship. On the opposite end of this polarity, this may manifest as rejecting people who openly show affection and interest but run towards those who reject or ignore you (signs of self-abandonment and emotional unavailability), feel uncomfortable with physical or emotional closeness yet crave it (can be a sign of having a disorganized attachment), or push away those who care about you because you view them as 'clingy' or 'codependent' due to you perceiving them as craving an abnormal amount of physical and emotional space in partnership (ahem - hyper independence trauma response much).
Both of these opposing feelings or polarities stem from the same place: a lack of proper nurturing from your primary caregivers. As a result, you may either reject love or search for it outside yourself in all the wrong places due to an unconscious misaligned compass. Whether the lack of childhood nurturing stemmed from physical or emotional distance (or both), the internalized belief as a child is that you are unlovable and therefore unworthy of love. As a child, you believed that something about you was 'bad' and that you were the sole reason your parent didn't love you like they did your siblings or how your friends' parents loved them, making you ultimately feel unworthy of love. As a child, you lacked the understanding that you had an emotionally unavailable and emotionally immature parent (or parents) who passed on their internalized belief of being unworthy of love because they never took the responsibility to heal. This is how generational, cultural, and ancestral trauma is passed down from one generation to the next. Someone must break the pattern to prevent it from being passed on.
And not shockingly, when it comes to romantic attraction, we tend to subconsciously seek the opposite polarity in another. This is why the anxious/avoidant or empath/narcissist dynamics are so common in relationships. The partners you have attracted, along with any future partners you’ll attract, will generally possess the opposite polarity of your wounds. In my previous example, the internalized wounds surrounding being 'unlovable' or 'unworthy of love' will continue to draw in a partner with the opposite polarity, who triggers those wounds, allowing you the opportunity to become conscious of them, but only if you allow it. If one or both people in the relationship are unconscious or lack emotional intelligence and maturity, this triggering will be very painful and most commonly leads to the end of the relationship. In healthy relationships, the triggering due to polarity still happens, but because both people have enough self-awareness and EQ, they both experience deep healing, and their bond is strengthened as a result.
True healing occurs in healthy relationships, not in isolation or a vacuum.
This is why shying away from romantic love until you're 'healed' or 'love yourself enough' is total BS. Humans are social beings and need support from others to properly heal and feel fulfilled. Other people are mirrors, reflecting what we both love and reject within ourselves. The deepest and most transformative healing can only occur within a romantic partnership because of the way it activates your core wounds, unlike any other relationship can.
So what are values, and how do you determine what yours are?
Values are a set of a person's principles or standards of behavior, as well as their judgment of what is important in life. Examples of values are: compassion, courage, integrity, creativity, responsibility, gratitude, honesty, loyalty, achievement, curiosity, dependability, adaptability, authenticity, generosity, humility, innovation, accountability, kindness, adventure, altruism, fairness, freedom, and boldness.
What we value and the importance we place upon each value is unique to each of us, which is why values and perceptions of value may unintentionally cause conflict or contention at times. If you value freedom but perceive another person to be encroaching upon it, your nervous system will become activated (the body detects a threat) and your ego (the mind - both conscious and unconscious) will start telling you a story about it and what it means. And what did I say earlier about the mind? Don't believe every thought because 90% of what it's telling you is complete BS! Your values, perceptions, needs, nervous system, ego, past unresolved pain (trauma), and the unconscious all combine to paint a perception of the person or situation as either safe or unsafe for you to engage with. This perception can vary significantly depending on whether you are naturally more optimistic or pessimistic and what the combined average outcome of your past similar experiences has been. However, it is essential to note here that it's merely your perception of reality, not reality itself. Much more information and time are needed to determine what's real. Reality is met in the convergence of perceived reality between two people, which is why you can’t base reality solely on what you believe to be true.
Going back to the example I gave above, in that instance, there's a perceived threat that the other person is attempting to stifle your freedom, which is solely based on feelings and a fear-based story with little to no factual basis to support that perception. We are all guilty of this behavior from time to time, even the most self-aware of us! However, guess what - your perception of what is happening is rarely the reality. This is why asking clarifying questions and meeting the other person from a place of curiosity is so important if you feel unsure about someone or something.
How many times have you thought something was going to turn out one way but ended up with a completely different outcome? This is one example of how the ego (the mind)is trying to keep you safe by attempting to predict an outcome or talk you out of something to avoid perceived potential pain (emotional or physical). While this is extremely helpful for avoiding real pain, avoiding everything out of fear or ego often results in accepting less than what you deserve in life, staying stuck, or not pursuing what you want due to fear of being hurt, repeating a past painful experience, or being disappointed.
When your head and heart are out of alignment, it’s common for patterns of overthinking to emerge out of fear and anxiety, causing you to easily overthink your way out of a blessing if you allow your ego and pride to overrule your heart.
Guilt, shame, and feelings of unworthiness will have you in a chokehold (and not in a good way) every single time if you allow it. The best way to break through overthinking is through practicing radical self-acceptance and self-compassion, combined with taking intentional action. If you have a fear of rejection, you're already rejecting yourself and what you desire by not pursuing it, so you might as well try.
I know this is a longer post, but please bear with me, as all the context is necessary to drive this final point home:
Your perception of reality is rarely accurate and is often skewed by your past, unconsciousness, emotions, ego, pride, and the various other themes I have covered.
What you can put your faith in and trust is that your values will lead you down the right path every time, as long as they're rooted in authenticity. When you take on values from others as your own, it will lead you down the path of living a life that is inauthentic to you. The same applies to others in your life. If they are operating out of a place of ego or inauthenticity, their perception of you and your value will change the moment you don't show up in a way that serves them.
So the next time you feel snubbed, devalued, misunderstood, activated, rubbed the wrong way, or hurt by the choices or actions of another, check in with yourself to see if it was a case of misalignment of values. Take the time to understand how and why the misalignment occurred, and how you can make healthier choices in the future that are rooted in your values and that honor your needs.
We all deserve to be in connections and environments where we feel valued. The best way to ensure this happens is to understand your needs and values, and only entertain connections and environments that align with them.