Values work is amazing! It helped me a lot, and i think everyone should try it!
I was taught it through the context of ACT and DBT but you don't need to know anything about those to benefit from it.
Values work is essentially finding the things that you really care about, breaking them down into their essential parts, and integrating them to help you through difficult stuff (like conflict, or life changes)
For me, it's helped me a lot with social difficulties and conflict. If someone is being shitty to me, i can draw on my values to figure out how to act. I might decide to call them in and try and resolve the conflict, because i value nonviolent communication, or i might decide to completely step back because i value my emotional safety.
If I'm the one not being great, i can draw on my values to call MYSELF in before someone else does.
I wanted to share an exercise i developed for myself, drawing on other resources, that really helps me identify my values in a productive way (i'm not a doctor or a therapist):
Write down something you feel strongly about. It might be a feeling, or a person, an event, political ideology, etc. (eg. anti racism)
Underneath that, write words that reflect what this thing means to you. You might find a thesaurus useful here. (eg. accountability, tolerance, truthtelling, sitting with discomfort, diversity)
Sit with these words and circle whichever ones speak to you the most (as few or as many as you want).
Rewrite them as 'I am' or 'I value' statements, whichever feels the most true/grammatically correct. (I am tolerant, I value sitting with discomfort, I value accountability)
Repeat this for other concepts, and once you have a good amount of words/phrases, try visualising them in some way, like in a word cloud, or alphabetised list, for example. Just put them all in some place together so you can see them all easily.
Put it on your wall or some place you'll see it easily.
Refer to this when you're feeling intense, or lost, or just don't know how to handle something.
I use this a lot, and it genuinely helps, i have a lot more insight and clarity. Feel free to adjust the exercise to your needs and feel free to pass it on if it was useful for you.
There are also lots of lists you can find online of values to help with this task if you need a starting point :)
