Values worksheets help clients articulate what matters to them and then examine how closely their daily behavior tracks with it. Drawn largely from acceptance and commitment therapy and motivational interviewing, these tools are useful when clients are stuck, ambivalent, or symptom-focused without a clear direction for change. For clinicians, values work gives treatment planning an anchor that belongs to the client rather than to the diagnosis.

Key Takeaways

• Values clarification is a core process in acceptance and commitment therapy, which has substantial randomized trial support across anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, and it also underpins the evocation phase of motivational interviewing.

• The clinical work is in the discrepancy between stated values and actual behavior, not in the list itself. A worksheet that stops at naming values rarely changes anything.

• Values-based goals give you treatment plan objectives clients are more likely to sustain, and they offer a clear frame for revisiting direction when symptom-focused goals stall.

What Values Work Is and Isn't

Values in this context are chosen directions for how someone wants to live, not outcomes to achieve. Being a supportive partner is a value, and it can be acted on today and tomorrow indefinitely. Getting married is a goal, which can be completed or missed.

Keeping that distinction clear matters clinically. When clients treat values as goals, they set themselves up for another achievement metric to fail at, which is often the same pattern driving their distress.

Values also aren't moral rules or obligations. If a client's list reads entirely as duties, that's usually worth exploring, since values adopted from external pressure tend not to sustain behavior change.

Where Values Worksheets Fit in Treatment

These tools are most useful at specific points rather than as a routine intake exercise.

• Early in treatment when goals are vague or entirely symptom-focused, such as "stop feeling anxious."

• With ambivalent clients, where values discrepancy is the mechanism motivational interviewing relies on. Our list of motivational interviewing questions pairs well here.

• When avoidance has narrowed a client's life and behavioral activation needs a direction. See our guide to behavioral activation for the broader framework.

• At transition points such as career change, loss, or the end of a long-standing role.

• When treatment plateaus and symptom reduction alone stops motivating engagement.

They're a poorer fit during acute crisis, active psychosis, or severe depression with significant cognitive slowing, where stabilization comes first.

Structuring the Worksheet

Most effective values worksheets move through three stages. First, identification across life domains such as family, intimate relationships, work, health, community, and personal growth. Second, rating current importance alongside current consistency, which surfaces the gaps. Third, translating one gap into a specific, small, near-term action.

The third stage is where clinical value lives. A client who identifies connection as important, rates their consistency low, and commits to one specific contact this week has something workable. A client who leaves with a list of ten values has an interesting document.

Card sort formats work well for clients who struggle with open-ended prompts, and they reduce the social desirability pull of writing values from scratch.

Working With the Discrepancy

When a client names a value and then describes behavior that contradicts it, resist the urge to point it out directly. Discrepancy is more persuasive when the client articulates it, which is the core mechanic behind evocative questioning.

Ask what gets in the way instead. The barriers clients name, whether that's fear, exhaustion, unwelcome emotion, or practical constraint, are usually the actual treatment targets, and they often connect directly to the presenting problem.

Watch for shame. Clients with strong self-criticism can turn a values exercise into evidence of personal failure, so normalize the gap explicitly. Nobody lives in full alignment with their values, and the point is direction rather than a score.

Translating Values Into Treatment Plan Goals

Values-based objectives are usually more durable than symptom-only objectives because the client has a reason to pursue them beyond feeling less bad. The structure that works is a stated value, a behavioral objective connected to it, and a measurable indicator.

For example, a client who values being present as a parent might commit to one uninterrupted activity with their child twice weekly, tracked on a simple log. That objective is observable, tied to something the client cares about, and defensible in documentation. Our guide to examples of therapy goals covers additional phrasing options.

Documenting Values-Based Work

Values work can read as vague in a chart if you record it loosely. Document the specific domain examined, the discrepancy the client identified, the committed action, and how you'll measure follow through. That specificity is what connects the session to the treatment plan.

Capturing it consistently is another matter when you're seeing clients back to back. Berries is an AI scribe built specifically for mental health professionals, and it produces structured clinical notes in your own documentation style within seconds of ending a session, including intervention, client response, and updated plan. You can try it with your first 20 sessions free, no credit card required, and paste the notes into any EMR. Our therapy progress notes template offers a structure for tying values-based objectives into your standard note format.

Clinical Considerations

• Cultural context shapes how values are expressed. Clients from collectivist backgrounds may frame values relationally rather than individually, and that framing is legitimate rather than enmeshed. Our guide to broaching in counseling is useful preparation for these conversations.

• Adolescents are still forming values, so treat the exercise as exploration rather than commitment, and expect shifts.

• Clients in controlling or unsafe relationships may name values that reflect a partner's expectations. Assess before working with the content at face value.

• Avoid inserting your own values, including implicitly through which domains the worksheet lists or which answers you respond to warmly.

• Where readiness for change is low, sequence values work with an assessment of stage. Our overview of the six stages of change can help you calibrate.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between a values worksheet and a goals worksheet?

Values describe an ongoing direction and can't be completed, while goals are specific outcomes that can be achieved or missed. Most clinical work pairs them, using values to set direction and goals to make the next step concrete.

What if a client can't identify any values?

That's common in severe depression, in clients with extensive trauma histories, and in people who've spent years accommodating others. Try card sorts, ask what they admired in someone else, or ask what they cared about before symptoms narrowed their life, and consider stabilizing first.

Is this only for ACT practitioners?

No. Values clarification appears in motivational interviewing, existential approaches, solution-focused work, and integrative practice. Our guide to solution focused brief therapy questions shows an adjacent way of eliciting preferred futures.

How often should values be revisited?

Every few months in longer-term work, and at any transition point. Stated values shift as circumstances change, and a values list from intake can quietly stop describing the client in front of you.

Can values work be done in groups?

Yes, and group formats often normalize the discrepancy piece effectively. Keep the specific content voluntary to share, since values disclosure can be more personal than clients anticipate.