Putting Exploration Front & Center in Values Work
Values clarification is a process that our clients must actually experiment with.
A few words about working with values.
Okay, so picture this, you’re working with a client and they’re talking about the kind of person they want to be in life and as they are describing these qualities of action your own mind starts chirping at you. . .
“Is this really a value?”
“Are these just imposed values from society?”
“I think these are goals, not values.”
Has that ever happened to you? Well, judging by the frequency of the questions on every ACT related forum about what values are and what they aren’t, how to differentiate between “values” and “goals”, it may well have.
But there’s a trick at play here.
The first thing to understand is that words will never (ever, ever, ever) capture someone’s values. Values are not on cards that can be sorted, they aren’t in lists that people can search through, they aren’t in the descriptions we use to talk about the vibrancy of life.
Values are in the glint in one’s eye, in the energy of a movement, in hands dipped in earth, and feet hitting pavement.
And since values are not words, and can’t ever be adequately represented by words, then it really doesn’t matter what the words are that are used to describe them. So we don’t need to spend even one second teaching “Oh, no, actually values are this.”
Any time we are wrestling with these questions (words) in our heads about whether or not clients “get what values are” we ourselves are fused to a concept, and there is now distance between us and our client in the room.
Go back to hands, feet, and voice.
The three most powerful tools clients have at their disposal are their hands, feet, and voice. These are the tools that we must help them harness when we are working with values.
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: You will often see the hexaflex with shortened or condensed labels for the six-core processes. Experiential Acceptance becomes Acceptance. Cognitive Defusion becomes Defusion.
And Values Clarification almost always becomes Values. That is a big difference.
If we are targeting that process we are best doing it through a process of clarification and exploration through our hands, feet, and voice.
When a client talks about some value they might have, rather than trying to define the concept of values more clearly, we should be encouraging them to go out and see how it feels to engage in that thing. If it’s an “imposed value” from society it’ll feel very different than a freely chosen value, especially over the long-term.
Key Tip
Clarification via exploration will always trump clarification via explanation.
Respectfully Submitted,
Jacob Martinez // Through The ACT Matrix