Susanne de Munck Mortier
3 min readOct 18, 2020

What do our highly sensitive teenagers and Keanu Reeves have in common?

Keanu Reeves already said it…

“I always felt like I’m not not from this generation, I just live in it. Because the way my mindset differs from the majority, you’d think I come from a different dimension. That’s why I keep things to myself because a lot of people won’t understand me”.

In fact, these pronunciations are already being spoken by our sensitive youth.

Many are so wise and thoughtful and yet have to find their way in a society that is often not that at all.

Many sensitive teens are now homesick for “the eighties, where everything was more simple and clear”.

“What was it like to live in the eighties?”

It strikes me with much happiness that they are the generation that experiments with putting your phone away more often, less distractions, “smoking isn’t cool anymore” and getting drunk…”why on earth would you like to do that to your body?!”

Society often underestimates this younger sensitive generation. Teenagers are seen as ‘just teenagers’ and therefore reckless, not thoughtful and should be corrected often even for a sometimes unjust reason.

Instead of being seen as people who are in an early phase of their lives, who brought their own inner wisdom and are close to their inner core assignment ‘experimenting how you could best thrive in a sometimes confusing society when you have different values’.

Their evolved values are often different from our generation. Materialism isn’t on top of their essential needs pyramid and they often seek for a meaningful life.

Striving for something that our generation often only realizes at an older age, because they had to wear a survival character mask and that had its consequences.

So you had to take precautions to blend in.

Every generation has different priorities and that can often cause an explosion within a multi generational family.

I can imagine that it feels very lonely, when you think that you don’t fit in and “long to go home, wherever that is”.

Let’s give them some credit for living in an overwhelming society with so many distractions and unnecessary obligations.

What we can do is to evolve our skills, observe what they actually need and make them feel seen, heard and understood.

Here is what a young child of a client of mine said, when she had to duplicate another school year and her parents didn’t know how to share this news with her:

Parent- “We think it is better when you stay with the same teacher…for another year”.

Child shrugs her shoulders- “That’s okay, I don’t mind”.

Surprised parent- “How come, you can tell me.”

Child- “Because that fits with me”.

Our children teach us the biggest life lessons.

Be the example for them.

Are you actually doing in life what FITS with YOU?

You are allowed to think about it for a moment and then…ACTION.