For Psychologists
Clinical perspectives on how each value presents in therapeutic settings.
Filter by value
Achievement
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Values clarification work helps the client examine whether their goals align with what they actually care about or are driven by compensatory schemas. The distinction between values and goals is particularly therapeutic for clients who have confused the two.
Achievement
Existential Therapy
Directly addresses the meaning crisis that often underlies achievement addiction. Engaging with questions of mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness provides a framework that cannot be solved through more accomplishment.
Achievement
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
Targets the self-criticism and conditional self-worth that drive relentless striving. Building the self-compassion system provides an alternative source of emotional regulation that does not depend on achievement.
Courage
Somatic Experiencing
Addresses the underlying nervous system dysregulation that drives compulsive action. Teaching the client to track arousal and tolerate activation without immediately converting it to action provides a fundamentally new experience of their own physiology.
Courage
Psychodynamic Therapy
The long-term relational frame requires the courage of showing up consistently rather than episodically. Exploring the developmental roots of their counter-phobic stance can reveal the fear underneath the bravery.
Courage
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Distress tolerance skills are particularly relevant for clients who act to escape distress. The dialectical framework validates their capacity for bold action while building the complementary skill of toleration.
Growth
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
The parts framework offers a way to work with the inner critic that drives compulsive growth and the exile that carries the belief in inherent defectiveness. It also validates multiplicity while working toward integration, matching these clients' developmental orientation.
Growth
Gestalt Therapy
The emphasis on present-moment awareness and direct experience counters the tendency toward intellectual processing. Experiments and embodied exercises bypass the client's well-developed narrative defenses and create contact with immediate experience.
Growth
Relational Psychoanalysis
The extended relational frame provides an opportunity for these clients to be known over time, including their imperfections and stagnation, without the relationship being contingent on continued growth. The therapist's acceptance becomes the therapeutic agent.
Meaning
Existential Therapy
Provides a framework that honors the client's concerns as legitimate philosophical and psychological territory. Working within the four givens of existence (death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness) offers structure for the client's existential exploration without reducing it.
Meaning
Logotherapy
Frankl's approach directly addresses the will to meaning and provides practical frameworks for finding purpose through creative, experiential, and attitudinal values. It meets the client where they are while offering direction.
Meaning
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
The values clarification component helps ground abstract meaning-seeking in concrete behavioral commitment. Cognitive defusion techniques address the client's fusion with existential thoughts that have become paralyzing.