Values Clarification: PDF Worksheet, Tools and Exercises

When you introduce values work verbally, patients often nod and then name a goal ("I want to travel more"), an outcome state ("I want to feel happy"), or something their family handed them. The distinction between a value, a goal, and a feeling collapses in conversation. This values clarification fiche PDF gives you a visual structure to hold that distinction in place, so the concept sticks beyond the session itself.

Why Values Clarification Resists Oral Explanation

The core clinical difficulty is conceptual, not motivational. Most patients have never been asked to distinguish between a direction and a destination. Within ACT, the values/goals/feelings triad is foundational, yet spoken explanation rarely survives the week. The patient who leaves having understood the difference between "being a present parent" (a value) and "dinner with the kids on Tuesday" (a goal) may return the following session using both terms interchangeably.

A second layer of difficulty is the "should" value: beliefs about what a good person is supposed to prioritize, absorbed from family or cultural context, which patients present as genuine personal commitments. Without a concrete tool to help them interrogate their list, this confusion remains invisible, and treatment targets drift accordingly. The Exploring Values fiche for ACT practice addresses the same territory; this worksheet goes further by adding a ranking and gap-scoring structure that surfaces what patients actually privilege, not what they report valuing.

Inside the Fiche: A Visual Support for Every Stage of the Work

The fiche PDF is organized around six sequential panels, each targeting a distinct moment of the psychoeducation.

The first panel presents the value / goal / feeling distinction in a three-column layout. Each column carries the same four dimensions (what, time, control, example), so patients can compare at a glance rather than hold three verbal definitions in working memory. The lived example "Being a present parent" versus "Dinner with kids Tuesday" makes the distinction concrete without requiring interpretation.

The second panel provides a starter pool of 24 values (love, creativity, freedom, loyalty, stability, and so on), with space to add personal items. Patients circle the ten that "pull you the hardest", a deliberate phrasing that bypasses cognitive override.

The three-move exercise that follows is the operational heart of the fiche. Step 1: pick 10. Step 2: rank them 1 to 10. Step 3: score 0 to 10 for current enactment. As the fiche puts it, "forcing trade-offs reveals what you actually privilege". The ranking step, in particular, is what the Choice Point worksheet for ACT and the ACT Hexaflex rely on implicitly but rarely make this explicit as a scored exercise.

The gap analysis panel then does the clinical heavy lifting: a top value ranked first but scoring a 3 on current enactment produces a gap of 7. The fiche names this clearly: "The biggest gaps point to where life has drifted. Not guilt, just information." That single reframe, visible on the page, saves considerable session time in managing the shame response.

A panel on three traps (the "should" value, clashing values such as freedom vs. family, and outcome-dependent values) gives you a structured way to probe the list before committing to treatment targets. Finally, a "To discuss in session" section at the bottom carries three explicit prompts for you to debrief with the patient, including how to handle a top value scoring 3 or below and how to name a values tension rather than suppress one side of it.

> Key point: This fiche is a visual support that facilitates explanation in session. It is not a self-administered questionnaire. You walk through the panels with the patient, use the gap scores as a springboard for collaborative formulation, and leave the sheet with them as a compass for between-session reflection.

When and How to Propose the Fiche

Timing. This worksheet fits naturally in the early-to-mid phase of an ACT-informed treatment, once alliance is established and the patient has some tolerance for self-reflection. It is also highly useful in depression work, where behavioral activation stalls because the patient cannot identify activities that feel genuinely worth doing; the Valued Domains worksheet for ACT and the Personal Values Clarification exercise make good companions at that stage. For couples work, the Couple Misalignment and Values exercise extends the same framework to relational compatibility.

Profiles. Patients presenting with existential drift, chronic overwork, or a pattern of living for others' approval (see approval-seeking schemas) often have no accessible language for their own priorities. The fiche gives that language fast. For patients with marked perfectionism or unrelenting standards, the "should" value trap panel is where you will want to linger.

How to introduce it. A neutral framing works best: "Before we focus on what's causing problems, I'd like us to spend a few minutes mapping what actually matters to you. There's a sheet I use that makes this easier to see." You then work through the panels together, pausing at the ranking step and at any gap of 5 or more.

Debrief. The "To discuss in session" prompts at the base of the fiche guide the debrief for you. After the session, pair the fiche with the Values Cultivation exercise or the My Future Inventory exercise to close the gap between insight and committed action. For patients building longer-term direction, Setting Life Goals and the Psychological Flexibility worksheet extend the work naturally.

The fiche does not replace the collaborative case formulation; it makes the values conversation visible, structured, and reproducible across sessions.