Values Exploration Across Nine Life Domains: PDF Worksheet, Tools and Exercises

Asking a patient "what matters to you?" in session rarely produces the clarity either of you needs. The answer is usually circular, socially groomed, or stuck at the level of goals rather than directions. This PDF worksheet was built precisely for that impasse: a structured visual support that lets you work through values clarification across nine life domains together, in session, without the conversation collapsing into vague aspiration.

Why Values Clarification Is Hard to Explain Verbally

The core conceptual snag is the value-vs-goal confusion. Patients consistently conflate the two, and oral explanation seldom resolves it. Saying "a value is a direction, not a destination" lands better with a concrete contrast in front of them than as a sentence they hear and forget.

A second obstacle is what the fiche names directly: borrowed values. Many patients articulate what parents, culture, or a partner expect rather than what genuinely guides them. Without a structured prompt to slow that down, the session stays at the surface. And a third trap, particularly relevant in avoidant or depressive presentations, is what the fiche calls avoidance disguised: rating a domain as irrelevant when actually the patient stopped letting themselves want anything from it. That distinction is almost impossible to surface through free conversation alone. You need a scaffold.

What the Fiche Contains: A Visual Tool for In-Session Explanation

The sheet is organised across five clearly separated panels, each serving a specific clinical function.

Panel 1 draws an explicit side-by-side contrast between a value (a verb-flavoured direction, never completed) and a goal (a noun, a future moment of success or failure). The example given: "Be the kind of partner who really listens" as a value, versus "Plan a real date night on Saturday" as the goal it serves. That single visual contrast does more work than most explanations.

Panel 2 lists the nine life domains: Family, Couple, Parenting, Friendships, Leisure, Work, Spirituality, Community, and Health, with a one-line description of each scope.

Panel 3 gives four structured questions to apply to each domain: importance rated 1-5 ("not how important it should be"), a realistic-good-day picture, the personal qualities to bring, and a time-and-effort audit. These are questions the clinician walks through with the patient, not a questionnaire left as homework before any psychoeducation has occurred.

Panel 4 is the clinical centrepiece: a gap diagram mapping importance against time invested. The fiche states plainly: "The juicy info lives where importance is high and time invested is low." That visual contrast, rendered as a chart, makes misalignment immediately legible for patients who would otherwise describe their dissatisfaction as diffuse or shameful.

Panel 5 names the five common traps (sounding good, borrowed values, feelings mistaken for values, avoidance disguised, and goals mislabelled as values), followed by three "to discuss in session" prompts tied to the moments where clinical dialogue is most productive.

> Key point: This fiche is a visual support that facilitates in-session explanation, not an autonomous questionnaire. The clinician uses it as a shared map, pointing to panels as the conversation unfolds, and leaves the patient with a concrete reference to carry forward.

When and How to Introduce It

This worksheet fits naturally from session two or three onward, once an initial case formulation is in place but before committing to a behavioural direction. It is especially well-suited to patients presenting with chronic dissatisfaction, depression with anhedonia, burnout, or existential drift, where the problem is not symptom severity but disconnection from meaningful action. It integrates easily into ACT-informed practice and pairs directly with the Choice Point for clarifying committed action.

A workable introduction: "I'd like us to look at this together. It maps nine areas of life and asks a simple question for each: how much does this matter to you, and how much of your time is actually going there? There are no right answers, and nobody else will grade this."

From there, you walk through the domains in session, note where the gap diagram lights up, and use the "to discuss in session" prompts to anchor the exchange. For patients who tend to seek approval or write what sounds acceptable, the trap panel is worth naming explicitly before you begin. The values cultivation exercise and the personal values clarification exercise make natural follow-ups for between-session work once the map is drawn. You can also articulate findings with life goals across eight domains or explore personal meaning and direction for patients who need a forward-looking frame.

For adolescents or patients with significant cognitive rigidity, the nine domains may be too many to cover in one session. Work through three or four areas with the most pronounced gaps, and return to the others. For patients where psychological flexibility is the central therapeutic target, the fiche bridges directly into defusion and acceptance work by making the valued direction explicit first.

The fiche does not replace the formulation. It sharpens it, giving both of you a shared vocabulary and a visual record of what the patient actually cares about.

Sources

• Wilson, K. G., Sandoz, E. K., Kitchens, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2010). The Valued Living Questionnaire: Defining and Measuring Valued Action within a Behavioral Framework. The Psychological Record.
• Harris, R. (2019). ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2nd ed.). New Harbinger Publications.
• Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change. Guilford Press.
• Barrett, K., O'Connor, M., & McHugh, L. A. (2019). Systematic Review of Values-Based Psychometric Tools Within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The Psychological Record.