Live by Your True Core Values

Hi. It's Tricia from Resolve. A personal goal I've set for myself as a therapist this year is to provide meaningful information a couple of times a month on topics that feel relevant and timely. This week, I've been thinking about values. The thoughts began with the conflict in Iraq and moved to something more personal. 

I have spent the past 10 years dedicating a lot of my time, energy, and resources to developing myself professionally, and I started wondering how my professional growth has impacted my personal values. Is there alignment or misalignment? And when they conflict, how do I address that misalignment with grace and self-compassion? Seeing it as an exciting opportunity to grow closer to the person I want to be overall. 

I'm sharing a couple of articles that got me to stop and think about values a little differently, helping create space for curiosity. The first is A Guide to Destructive Core Values, and boy, did it hit me right between the eyes when I took time to examine my values in practice and noticed a misalignment regarding how I spend my free time. The second article The Power in Operating From Core Values, Rather Than Threat-Based Values highlighted how quickly my values change when I'm under threat – real or perceived. I noticed that sometimes my threat-based values do cause me to act exactly as I want, but, and here's the kicker, only when the threat is real. Otherwise, when Amy The Amygdala (my nickname for the fight/flight/freeze response) takes over and convinces me that a perceived threat is a real threat, two things happen. First, my values shift from a growth mindset to a survival mindset that no longer aligns with the 52-year-old woman I am. Oh no, my values are now about protecting or providing for myself, the needs not met earlier in life. Suddenly, I'm five-year-old me, worried about bills, money, and something called "employment," and my actions shift into behaviors that connect with survival/threat-based values instead of my present-day values, which would allow me to address the situation/person while staying connected to what's important to me now. 

Want to begin exploring your values? Here’s a link to a values worksheet.