In contrast to a goal, which is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, values are aspirational traits that you’d like to embody. Your values signify your life process, the journey that you pursue during your time here on earth. Your values are not something that you can complete or check off. They are not a place where you arrive. The underlying philosophy of a person who attempts to clarify and pursue his or her values includes recognizing ongoing learning and development as a good way to live life.

Values and goals are related. If you understand these concepts, you can use your values to inform your goals, aligning your goal-directed behavior with your personal life philosophy.

Here are a few examples:

Goal: Complete each homework assignment in x class and turn it in on-time

Values: Ongoing learning and skill acquisition

Goal: Research and purchase a gift for my partner’s birthday one week prior to birthday celebration

Value: Being a loving, thoughtful partner

Many anxious people become too bewildered by their anxiety to be able to clarify and pursue their values.

If your fear of your thoughts, feelings, or sensations drives your behavior, you’ll likely be unable to see what you care about and how you’d like to act. You can’t trust yourself if you can always be potentially knocked off course by anxious thoughts, feelings, or sensations.

One of the ways of thinking that creates, maintains, and intensifies anxiety is perfectionism, or all-or-nothing thinking. This underlying habit of mind can be especially problematic, because it not only contributes to anxiety and depression, but it also prevents the anxious or depressed person from seeing the effective way out of such states.

A person stuck in their perfectionistic way of thinking might think, I’ll stop being anxious by making sure that I’m always a loving person. This is a misunderstanding of values-driven behavior that is still approached from a perfectionistic point of view.

Also, no matter how anxious you feel, you can get a hint at what you value by the content of your anxiety. Oftentimes, people value the opposite of what they fear. For instance, someone with the fear of harming themselves or others often love life and deeply value their relationships with others.

Approaching values this way does not offer the meaning and purpose that makes values-driven living so rewarding. It becomes another chance for self-criticism and judgment that will increase suffering. As you start trying to live by your values, try to let the vague principles guide your goal-directed behavior, rather than making them rigid and prescriptive.

Anxiety, OCD, and mood symptoms can take what you value and turn it against you.

Take the example of harm OCD. The person with harm OCD may drive down the street, have the thought, what if I hit someone?, feel anxious, and have the urge to go back and check. The same person might text with a friend and think, what if I offended her?, get anxious, and have the desire to get reassurance about the state of the relationship.

If this person checked in with her values, she might say, I care about being kind, loyal, conscientious, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. Using these values, her OCD would say, anytime you have the thought that you might hurt someone in some way, you should check to make sure you didn’t. Better to be safe than sorry.

This logic – that if you think it, it is or could be true – is called thought-action fusion and it is one of the main thinking patterns that maintains OCD and other anxiety disorders. In this example, the person is clear about her values, but her OCD has taken them and used them against her.

That said, knowing your values can be one of your best defenses against anxiety, OCD, and depression.

If you know that you care deeply about relationships, you can expect that your anxiety and mood disorder are going to go after your relationships. If you tend towards worry, you might worry about what you said or did, why someone else said or did something, if your loved ones will be safe traveling, and other catastrophic possibilities that could occur in everyday life. If you experience OCD, you might replay certain scenarios or possible scenarios and seek to alleviate your anxiety through checking or reassurance. If you have a biological vulnerability making you prone to depression, you’ll start to think no one cares about you when your symptoms are triggered. Either way, when you notice anxious thoughts and the desire to alleviate or neutralize your anxiety in some way, you can think,

I’m anxious or depressed about this, because I care deeply about relationships. I want to be a person that can manage the uncertainties in my relationships without avoidances. If I tolerate my anxiety now, it will dissipate over time.

If you care deeply about being a good person, you can expect that your anxiety, OCD, and depression will go after any possibility that you’ve done something wrong. Your anxiety or mood-based thinking will differ depending on what your definition is of a good person, whether it focuses on being a good friend, partner, parent, or person in general. If you tend to get stuck on whether or not you are good enough, try defining what good enough would mean in the context of what you are self-critical or anxious about. Your self-talk could be something like,

I’m anxious and depressed because I care deeply about being this type of person well. My perfectionistic mind will continue to tell me ways in which I could be living out my values better. The best thing I can do is get in touch with the feelings behind my self-criticism and allow myself to experience those feelings, rather than managing them with anxiety-driven behaviors or self-criticism.

You are not your disorder. Untreated or unmanaged anxiety, OCD, and mood disorders can make you act in ways that are not consistent with your values. Your symptoms show up differently based on your biological vulnerabilities and your social conditioning.

If you primarily suffer from generalized anxiety, your worry may drive you to check on and get reassurance from your loved ones, to avoid things you would enjoy, or you might feel exhausted from all of your over-thinking and tension. Social anxiety and panic disorder especially drives people to avoid activities, places, and people that they would enjoy if not for their anxiety. You might not treat people the way you’d like to when you feel really anxious.

Anxiety and depression make you irritable. In the presence of irritability you may be short with or snap at your loved ones or isolate and withdraw.

None of these behaviors are consistent with your values. You can spend so much time identifying what you value and even setting goals. It’s really frustrating when your symptoms overwhelm you and you are again acting in ways that are inconsistent with your values.

Try to have compassion on the part of you that is suffering. You can only change if you imagine you can change. You have to identify what you value and articulate who you are trying to be to start to inch towards that ideal person. Your growth will not be linear. You won’t be able to set your values and your goals and then immediately become that person.

It’s important to learn strategies for managing your symptoms and have a plan for when you have a setback. And, it’s especially important to plan for self-compassion when that setback actually occurs. The hardest time to use your new skills is in the moment that you actually have symptoms. If you have relief from your symptoms and you are practicing skills, you have some sense of your new options. Changing your behavior when you are very sensitized, very stuck, very depression is very hard.

Many people beat themselves up at the point where they’ve identified what they value and can see that they aren’t living by it. Your disorder is making you distant from your values. You have to challenge it to become who you want to be. And, you have to have compassion on how hard it is to live with thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, and behavioral urges that are very painful to you.