The Frequencies Within: Answering the Call of Our Core Values
Struggling with your mental health can feel like wading through a cacophony of noise. Like lying awake at 3am, eyes staring into the dark, feeling waves of fear and pain drown out any chance of sleep. You might wonder how you’ll feel when you wake, whether your body will comply with you getting out of bed. You could mull over missteps from the latest social interactions that make you cringe and want to hide your head under the pillow. Or, you might feel paralyzed by the inexorable passage of time, with difficult choices making you wonder, “Is this a life I’ll be proud of some day?”
You’re not alone in those moments. We all have episodes of poor mental health, often from biopsychosocial factors including the stress of living in a chaotic, modern world. On a daily basis, obligations and choice points demand our attention. And balancing our most important relationships in ways that feel kind but also boundaried? That’s always a challenge. We want to love others and not hurt anyone, find meaningful work that ignites our passions, and see ourselves actualize our full, unique potential.
Sometimes these longings will conflict. Sometimes we’re overwhelmed by them. Other times, we forget amidst the noise what inspired us to try in the first place. Mental health challenges like depression, anxiety, and adjusting to major life transitions can make it even harder to follow our inner compass on what feels aligned and important. Mental and emotional struggles can impact our actions in ways that feel like compromising on what we value most. Feeling lost from the inner critic noise can make us feel unable to try again, and social fears might make us shrink away from opportunities that could otherwise be deeply fulfilling.
It’s a noisy reality we live in, both inside and out, and the search for clarity is real. Thankfully, we have a powerful opportunity to strengthen our self-identity through values work. By discovering or returning to our core values, we can practice greater discernment. But this isn’t a one-off exercise or weekend intensive project; instead, answering the call of our core values requires making choices over time that amplify our true voice. This is the internal frequency that, once aligned, can make our lives truly sing.
Values Are Our True North
The inner compass that guides each of us is unique, but likely informed by family culture, societal norms, life experiences, and our relationship history. We all internalize outer voices, but often also battle the harsh voice of our own inner critic. Sometimes our choices take us off course precisely because these self-accusations have drowned out the reassuring voice of our compassionate, intuitive self. This is a byproduct of the illusory truth effect, which occurs when repeated information begins to feel more and more true, even when it’s objectively false. The effect shows up in political discourse where metaphorical shouting matches reveal pithy statements winning over quieter, nuanced thought processes. It’s also true for inner states like depression and anxiety when they weigh you down with intrusive self-doubts.
But our core values act like an antidote to this exact kind of distress, and offer us a reliable framework to use when we’ve lost our way. This isn’t self-help jargon. Rather, living in alignment with our deepest values is a path with no true end, where trusting in personal conviction helps us make sense of our existential questions, and expand our vision for what’s possible in our lifetime.
Unlike goals, which we can pursue and achieve at any moment, values are cardinal directions that we board our proverbial planes and fly toward, but with no finite destination in mind. This difference between goals and values is key for those of us who struggle with depression, fatigue, pain, or any other challenges that make it hard to meet tangible goals. Even when you can’t get out of bed due to fatigue, you can still be moving in a value-based direction. We’ll talk about that more later on.
Defining Values
Just as our lives are all unique, there is no standard definition of what a personal value has to be. For some they’re character qualities people aspire to, or relational ideas like love of family. Other values encompass tangible resources like financial prosperity. Whatever they may be, they serve as guides for making decisions both large and small. This is clearest when we weigh our options and come to a thoughtful decision about a choice before us.
But what we hold dear also runs deeper than conscious thought. It shows up in our gut reactions to ideas, people, or threats, and in our knee-jerk responses to unexpected situations. From a psychological perspective, this can be due to the influence of our unconscious mind. Depth psychologist Carl Jung believed that our deepest values, or organizing principles, stay largely consistent over time because they draw from the archetypal energies and patterns we were born with. These principles are intuitive guides for how we relate with others, and shape how we naturally show up in the world.
However, sometimes what we prioritize in life is affected by traumatic experience or relationship wounds. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud used the term repetition compulsion to describe the unconscious return to old relationship dynamics by re-enacting them with new people. This might show up in who we choose to date, or who we stay loyal to. For example, if safety and consistency were hard-won for you after years of instability and threats of abandonment, it might feel important to stay in a relationship that is familiar, albeit chaotic.
We can also be detoured by the social pressures around us, sometimes for years on end. Being chronically out of alignment can result in what nurse Bronnie Ware described in her 2012 book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. In it she compiled a list of top five life regrets that patients frequently shared. The regrets were: abiding by social expectations instead of honoring dreams and living true to themselves, prioritizing work over time with family and loved ones, suppressing feelings of resentment that led to bitterness, investing in career pursuits instead of meaningful friendships, and pretending to be happy while avoiding growth that might have increased happiness. In reading these regrets, do you feel anything stir inside you? Sometimes we witness the paths others have walked and will channel our reactions into how we want to navigate our own.
Rediscovering Our Values
Through life seasons, our values will naturally shift and be refined. You might have once known with confidence what mattered most to you, but time, life demands, and major transitions made things less clear. Exploring your current iteration of core values can feel like discovering personal qualities, or like reconnecting with an old friend who’s been maturing quietly. Because this can feel open-ended or overwhelming, structured guidance is useful. The Life Values Inventory and Values Bridge assessment are two excellent in-depth resources to try, that can prompt you to reflect and whittle down your top priorities.
Also, a therapist trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can help you dig into values through ACT approaches like the hexaflex. You can learn to use mental flexibility to discover where values might be calling, practice cognitive defusion from reactive instincts, soothe yourself when faced with uncertainty, and allow mindful presence to flow out into committed, values-based action. You also learn to widen your tolerance for life’s innate uncertainty while taking empowered steps forward.
Another major focus of ACT therapy is owning the periods of experimentation. We usually need to take small, proactive steps in a new direction in order to see how it resonates with our mind, body, and spirit. While exploring new realities, we ask ourselves, “Do I want to be the kind of person who lives like this? How did it feel to put myself out there that way? What happened when I chose this priority over the other?” We can take stock, pivot, and learn how embodied alignment feels.
Some people source their strongest, most consistent values from religious or other rich traditions. These can shape how they make sense of suffering, and how they apply more abstract values in real time. The spiritual and philosophical frameworks people bring into values work are profound sources of meaning. However, in your own discovery process, what matters most is that your convictions are integrated and self-examined rather than inherited.
For an easy entryway into values work, you can try the eulogy exercise by Stephen Covey. It asks, “If you were writing your own eulogy to be given at your funeral, how would you like to be remembered? What kind of missions, goals, and values did you stand for that made your signature mark on the world? What qualities did others know you by, and what did you pour your energy into?” This exercise could be completed in 15-30 minutes, but can also inspire deeper reflection on your values through the past, present, and future.
A Return to Yourself
One precious gift of values-aligned living is how it helps us to see ourselves more clearly. Our values and identity intertwine. For those who struggle with their mental health, this can feel hopeful or disempowering in different seasons. Some of us have had our identities narrated for us–whether by a diagnosis, family members, or the mental health system itself. Returning to our personal values as we navigate daily life is a courageous act of self-authorship that pushes back against these imposed narratives.
It also feels good to return to a value you lost connection with. Sometimes it’s not about discovering new aspects of yourself, so much as recognizing old frequencies when they call you back. It can feel like hearing a piece of music you’d forgotten that you once loved. For example, if you’re feeling more energetic after a difficult period of mental health, and also more able to protect your boundaries, then hearing yourself express a firm no and have it be honored can awaken stronger, confident parts inside you.
This can even feel like the nostalgic joy that comes when we ask ourselves, “What did I love to do as a child?” For me it’s much like when I chose to start trusting my loving partner with a more childlike trust, and felt this choice blossom into greater mutual intimacy. Or like when I re-read a classic book I’d loved as a child, and realized I was living with the same depth of courage as its titular heroine. Remembering who we are is always a victory that depression or anxiety can render bittersweet, but still profoundly healing.
Even in the lowest moments, we can still return to ourselves in this way. If you’ve been blaming yourself for not being able to get out of bed from depression, know that not meeting your goals for chores, work, or self-care doesn’t mean that you’re drifting. Even when it’s difficult to hear, your compassionate inner self is reminding you of the truth: that we are not our illness, and we are not defined by its limitations. Rather, we’re defined by the quiet but fierce will to thrive that keeps us going, regardless of what authentic living looks like that day.
Living in The Imperfections
What of the many challenges that come with living a values-based life? What happens when values conflict and the bells are ringing urgently at us all at once? You might crave deep connections with others but also prefer solitude. You might value full honesty with loved ones, but also want to protect their feelings. If you’ve chosen one-on-one work over cultivating a wide radius of professional impact, you might look back one day and feel like one has become out of reach. There can be real costs to choosing one path over another. This is where holding hope and uncertainty with open hands becomes valuable, and a trained ACT therapist can help you navigate that process.
Sometimes our values will come with shadow sides. Particularly if past trauma colors our lens, there may be fears or grief locked up inside of instincts that feel like second nature. Unresolved trauma might have embedded certain coping mechanisms that were once critical for your survival, and the dangers continue to feel visceral. This is where an attuned, trauma-informed therapist can be of great support as you process these losses, and take time to reawaken parts of yourself that might have gone silent.
On a day-to-day basis, we will follow our inner compass imperfectly. But we can consistently check in with our intuition and use core values as a framework for decisions. When we succeed, it feels truly gratifying. In many ways this is because values-aligned action strengthens our sense of integrity, as we try our best to live in harmony with who we say that we are.
In my own depression journey, I’ve found the Values Bridge assessment particularly helpful as a mental life-raft. Going through its prompts and results helped me to remember things that I’d deeply valued, and to arrange them in order of priority. It also helped me recognize “dissonant” areas where mental health symptoms had led me out of alignment. This set me on a new, more conscious path. Slowly but surely, I started exercising again. I joined a faith community. I started quietly leaning into more vulnerability with loved ones, pushing away the echoes of the inner critic and trusting that this was a path to greater sense of belonging.
Those who cared about me could sense this renewal, and their encouragement made me realize something profound. When we act on our values, we start to see ourselves more and more clearly as people living a life of integrity. The feedback of others then further drives home the message that this is who we are, and who we are is deeply good. Over time, this compassionate mirroring can undo layers of mental and emotional wounds that we thought might never heal.
Rather than a grand transformation, values work compounds through self-reflective, faithful action. We learn to build habits and systems that keep us moving steadily along, and support progress that’s truly worth celebrating. This is how we can find our way through a noisy world, and the noise of our own minds: by holding on to what we’ve learned about ourselves, and leaning into this wisdom when doubt runs high or energy disappears. Answering the call of our core values is a return to our true selves, and taps into our deep capacity to endure and overcome.
