Workbook (PDF)
A workbook containing elements of psychoeducation and skills-development.
Values: Connecting To What Matters
A comprehensive guide to help clients explore their values and live a more meaningful life using acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).
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Overview
Values: Connecting To What Matters is a guide designed to help clients to live a fulfilling life, attuned to their personal values. This resource provides step-by-step guidance to explore, identify, and act upon personal values — encouraging clients to thrive and flourish even amidst difficult life circumstances.
The guide is centered around acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) principles and includes practical exercises to help clients navigate their values and overcome barriers. It's an invaluable tool for those wanting to focus less on avoiding pain and more on moving toward what genuinely matters.
Why Use This Resource?
Values exploration is essential for enabling clients to live intentionally and with purpose. This resource offers:
- A framework to clarify what individuals value most in life.
- Practical exercises for integrating values into daily actions.
- Guidance to help therapists facilitate values-based discussions.
- A focus on sustaining behavioral change by aligning actions with personal values.
Key Benefits
Clarity
Helps clients clarify and articulate personal values.
Integration
Supports integrating values within various life domains.
Actionable
Provides practical exercises for making values-based decisions.
Flexibility
Applicable across different therapy modalities and client issues.
Who is this for?
Anxiety Disorders
Assisting with values-based actions to alleviate anxiety.
Depression
Providing a sense of purpose to counter depression.
Trauma-Related Disorders
Facilitating recovery through meaningful engagement, especially during 'reclaiming' work.
General Life Dissatisfaction
Helping clients who feel lost or stuck find direction.
Integrating it into your practice
01
Clarify
Assist clients in defining what's meaningful (e.g., "I value being present with my family.").
02
Explore
Use exercises to explore these values across different life domains.
03
Define
Help clients define specific actions that align with their values.
04
Overcome
Discuss potential barriers with clients and strategize overcoming them.
05
Reflect
Evaluate how living according to values is impacting their life satisfaction and mental health.
06
Sustain
Encourage ongoing reflection and recalibration of values-driven actions.
Theoretical Background & Therapist Guidance
This guide employs acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), focusing on the notion that while pain is an inevitable human experience, the real choice lies in directing energies toward what truly matters — our values. Values are not destinations but ongoing directions guiding how individuals live.
ACT suggests that values act as a guiding compass, providing consistency amidst life's changes. ACT emphasizes the connection between values and psychological flexibility, encouraging clients to embrace what truly matters to them, even if this choice is accompanied by pain. By leveraging exercises such as exploring valued domains, or identifying values in personally significant moments, therapists can assist clients in embedding values deeper into their daily lives.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) emphasizes the importance of values as central to psychological wellbeing and behavioral change. In ACT, values are defined as freely chosen, verbally constructed life directions — ways of living that matter deeply to the individual (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2016). Unlike goals, which are finite and achievable, values are enduring qualities that can guide behavior across contexts and over time.
Living in alignment with one’s values enhances psychological flexibility, the core aim of ACT. Psychological flexibility refers to the ability to act effectively in the service of one’s values, even when faced with internal obstacles such as difficult thoughts, feelings, or memories (Hayes et al., 2006). This stands in contrast to experiential avoidance — the attempt to control or avoid distressing experiences — which has been linked to poorer mental health outcomes (Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010).
Helping clients clarify and commit to their values can be especially powerful when they feel stuck, lost, or emotionally numb. In such cases, values work can offer direction, vitality, and meaning — even amidst ongoing emotional pain. For clients with depression, anxiety, PTSD, or general life dissatisfaction, values-based work shifts the therapeutic focus from symptom elimination to meaningful living (LeJeune & Luoma, 2019; Harris, 2022).
Therapists can support clients by:
- Exploring valued life domains (e.g., relationships, health, learning, spirituality).
- Identifying personally significant moments that reveal values in action (Ciarrochi et al., 2006).
- Using tools like the Values Card Sort (Miller et al., 2001) to foster reflection and prioritization.
- Encouraging values-consistent action, even when emotional discomfort is present.
Importantly, ACT recognizes that pursuing what matters often involves facing what hurts. In ACT, clients are supported to defuse from unhelpful thoughts, open up to painful emotions, and commit to values-driven behavior — a process described as the “choice point” (Bailey et al., 2014). Over time, these actions can generate a greater sense of agency, coherence, and personal integrity.
By helping clients move toward what matters — rather than away from what hurts — this guide fosters sustainable therapeutic change grounded in values, not avoidance.
What's inside
- A client-friendly introduction to values and valued living.
- Exercises for identifying and clarifying personal values.
- Guided reflections on aligning actions with values.
- Strategies for overcoming barriers to valued living.
FAQs
Values are ongoing actions that give meaning to life — they are directions rather than destinations. Goals are specific outcomes that we achieve along the way.
Clients might face internal resistance, fear of pain, or external barriers that conflict with values-driven actions. This guide provides strategies to help navigate these challenges.
Yes, focusing on values can provide a solid foundation for addressing various mental health issues by promoting psychological flexibility.
Emphasize the long-term gains of values-based living over the short-term alleviation of discomfort. Encourage patience and ongoing reflection to sustain engagement.
How This Resource Improves Clinical Outcomes
Values: Connecting To What Matters enhances client outcomes by:
- Deepening understanding of personal motivations.
- Increasing psychological flexibility, reducing experiential avoidance.
- Fostering a resilient mindset capable of enduring life's adversities.
Clinicians Who Use This Resource Also Use
References And Further Reading
- Bailey, R., Ciarrochi, J., & Hayes, L. L. (2014). The thriving adolescent: Using acceptance and commitment therapy and positive psychology to help teens manage emotions, achieve goals, and build connection. New Harbinger Publications.
- Ciarrochi, J., Blackledge, J. T., & Heaven, P. (2006, July). Initial validation of the social values survey and personal values questionnaire. Paper presented at the Second World Conference on ACT, RFT, and Contextual Behavioral Science, London, England.
- Harris, R. (2022). The happiness trap: How to stop struggling and start living. Shambhala Publications.
- Hayes, S. C. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life: The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications.
- Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.06.006
- Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2016). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Kashdan, T. B., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 865–878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.001
- LeJeune, J., & Luoma, J. B. (2019). Values in therapy: A clinician’s guide to helping clients explore values, increase psychological flexibility, and live a more meaningful life. New Harbinger Publications.
- Luoma, J. B., Hayes, S. C., & Walser, R. D. (2007). Learning ACT: An acceptance & commitment therapy skills-training manual for therapists. New Harbinger Publications.
- Miller, W. R., C’de Baca, J., Matthews, D. B., & Wilbourne, P. L. (2001). Personal values card sort. University of New Mexico.
- Oliver, J., Hill, J., & Morris, E. (2015). Activate your life: Using acceptance and mindfulness to build a life that is rich, fulfilling and fun. Robinson.
- Wilson, K. G. (2005, July). Eroding the illusion of separation: The interplay of core ACT processes in group training. Paper presented at the ACT/RFT Summer Institute II, LaSalle University, Philadelphia, PA.
- Wilson, K. G., & DuFrene, T. (2009). Mindfulness for two: An acceptance and commitment therapy approach to mindfulness in psychotherapy. New Harbinger Publications.
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