Abstract
Values influence our thought patterns, emotions, wishes, and needs. Although individuals may be fully aware of their value systems, these often lie more or less outside the area of full consciousness.
At least occasional awareness of one's priorities and set of values may be an effective means of self-regulation. Cognitive behavioral therapy is aimed at dealing with practical problems and goals in life through changes in cognitive processes, behavior, and emotional reactions.
Changes to some values naturally accompany changes to these processes. Life values also underlie motivation to achieve therapeutic changes.
For this reason, clarification of patients' life values is important to therapists as focusing on values aids in connecting therapeutic goals with important areas of life. In addition to a better understanding of patients' life stories and difficulties that have brought them to a psychotherapist, the identified value system may become a part of everyday CBT strategies such as time management, cognitive restructuring or accommodation of conditional assumptions.