Choosing Your Values
Values are the “principles for living” that capture what matters most to people. Elucidating values can serve many therapeutic functions, including clarifying a sense of purpose, informing goal setting and treatment planning, and motivating clients to engage with difficult experiences or therapeutic tasks. Values-focused interventions are used in many psychotherapies, most notably acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). This Choosing Your Values exercise is designed to help clients clarify their values and practice making intentional choices about what matters most to them. It can be particularly helpful for individuals who are unfamiliar with values or have a limited vocabulary for describing them.
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Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
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Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
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Introduction & Theoretical Background
Values are targeted in many psychotherapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; e.g., Beck et al., 2021), person-centered therapy (Rogers, 1964), behavioral activation (Kanter et al., 2010), motivational interviewing (e.g., Miller & Rollnick, 2023), logotherapy (e.g., Frankl, 2004), and positive psychotherapy (e.g., Slade et al., 2017). However, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has presented the most comprehensive theory for values, grounded in basic behavioral principles and relational frame theory, and has developed of a comprehensive range of values-focused interventions (Plumb et al., 2009).
ACT is primarily a behavioral treatment, which aims to help people pursue an actively meaningful path through life. Accordingly, all ACT interventions ultimately support individuals to live by their values (Hayes et al., 1999). In fact, ACT could be described as behavioral and person-centered in equal measure, since clients’ values direct the course of treatment (Wilson et al., 2004).
What are values?
Values are a vital
Therapist Guidance
Before starting this task, check that the client has a general sense of what values are and why they are important. The exercise can be introduced as follows:
- "I’d like to do an exercise to help us get a sense your values – the things that matter most to you. You could think of your values as what you want your life to stand for, or the type of person you want to be. Would you be willing to give it go with me?"
Step 1: sort
Present the list of values. This exercise works best if each value is printed and cut out onto separate pieces of card. The client can then order and rearrange them physically. Ask the client to sort each value into one of three categories:
- Values they want to make very important in their life.
- Values they want to make somewhat important
References And Further Reading
Beck, A. T., Grant, P., Inverso, E., Brinen, A. P., & Perivoliotis (2021). Recovery-orientated cognitive therapy for serious mental health conditions. Guilford Press.
Chase, J. A., Houmanfar, R., Hayes, S. C., Ward, T. A., Vilardaga, J. P., & Follette, V. (2013). Values are not just goals: Online ACT-based values training adds to goal setting in improving undergraduate college student performance. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 2, 79-84. DOI: 10.1016/j.jcbs.2013.08.002.
Dahl, J. C., Plumb, J. C., Stewart, I., & Lundgren, T. (2009). The art and science of valuing in psychotherapy: Helping clients discover, explore, and commit to valued action using acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications.
Emmons, R. A. (1986). Personal strivings: An approach to personality and subjective well- being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1058-1068. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.1058.
Frankl, V. E. (2004). On the theory and therapy of mental disorders: An introduction to logotherapy and existential analysis. Brunner-Routledge.