Values or rules for living?
Sometimes we find ourselves in a position where we feel we are struggling to live life in alignment with our values. We can experience a state of internal conflict and find it impossible to make decisions, even small ones, consumed by worry about the best course of action, or what might be right or wrong. This sense of confusion around values and choices can be a recipe for poor mental health, anxiety, self-criticism and perfectionism, and at worse can lead to a prolonged state of inaction or even depression as we battle with our minds and reach no satisfactory conclusion.
Exploring values is often therefore an important part of therapy. When we are caught in a bind we need to be guided through a compassionate enquiry in order to gently untangle and find our way. And what we are likely to realise is that our values are not actually what we thought they were….
A true value is something that truly matters to us and creates a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. It provides a helpful ‘compass’ in terms of our motivation, a sense of connection and belonging, and contributes to our well-being.
But often our values are no such thing because what we perceive to reflect our integrity is in fact a confused mix of goals, ideals and codes of conduct that we have developed as a result of what we have been taught, told and sold by people, systems, culture, media and anything else that has influenced our brain as it has developed. What we consider to be our ‘values’ are actually our absorbed ‘rules for living’ – a set of unhelpful and unrealistic standards that we believe we need to live up to in order to be worthy and receive love.
What is motivating us is actually not coming from within us, but from an idea of whom we ‘should’ be.
A therapeutic process helps to unlock us from our habitual unhelpful belief systems, and to develop new ways of being based on what is authentic and right for us as individuals, creating a clear motivational path forward that is energising and fulfilling.