Helping our patients explore what’s “behind the curtain of their life’s stage” through exploring their values and beliefs

In CBT and ACT, we help our patients explore their values and beliefs.

Values and beliefs are very powerful things. It dictates how we think, feel, act, and often in unconscious ways. It’s inherent in our personalities, and acquired throughout our childhood, upbringing, Hollywood, media, and life experiences including traumas and triumphs.

How we think, feel, and act are the stuff we see in front of the stage. This is the “playing space” for folks who are more orientated towards the external locus of control, although there is a degree of inner locus of control with thinking and feeling.

Values and beliefs are all the stuff going on deep behind the stage. This is where beliefs around competency, shame, perfectionism, punitive, self worth, scarcity, abundance, defectiveness etc. reside. This is the real “playing space” for folks who are orientated towards the inner locus of control.

The question is, which space do we or our patients tend to play in?

Which space do we or our patients neglect or have a blind spot towards?

Which space do we or our patients need more attention towards?