Unmasked: How Looking Into Pain Can Help You Discover a Value in Disguise
What was something that bothered you today?
Maybe it is something that is ongoing and bothers you often. Or, maybe it was a one-off event, but it still got under your skin. Regardless of what bothered you, it bothered you for a reason.
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being “I felt a whiff of annoyance” and 10 being “It ruined everything!” how much does this certain thing bother you?
It’s okay if it bothered you more than you would like to admit. That is good!
We can always tell something important has appeared when something bothers us.
When something bothers us, it usually indicates that a value is being brought up, challenged, or tampered with. That is because as much as values help us find joy and meaning, values can also help us find pain and difficulty. If something weren’t a value, we wouldn’t care. So, the fact that you care is a good thing. It may not feel great now, but in one way or another, it will pay off differently.
For example: I once had a client tell me that they experience pretty tough panic attacks before an exam, regardless of the course and how hard they studied. If they were taking an exam, that fear, tingling in her legs, and dizziness would kick in. No matter how often she would tell herself “not to worry” because it was just a test or she studied hard, that panic attack would seep in. Why?
The risk of failing an exam threatened her value of success.
In fact, the risk of failing an exam was so scary, and the thought of failing was so uncomfortable that the client’s nervous system was triggered to the same degree as it might be triggered by seeing a bear in the woods. She may logically know that she was in the safety of her classroom and there were no bears near her school, but at that moment, her body was sent into a threat response, and her body prepared for such a response.
When we finally stopped to consider what failure meant and how it conflicted with what mattered to her, we saw that failing the exam wasn’t the problem, but not getting an A was. That part of her that valued success saw A’s as the only road to success, and when it saw a potential roadblock, her fear response kicked in, regardless of whether it was helpful. That is why we then looked at her value of success and anxiety from a different perspective.
Soon, the thoughts of:
“I’m going to fail.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I’m stupid.”
“I’m a failure.”
This could then be translated into:
“I am afraid of failure.”
“I am frustrated with myself for feeling like I don’t know anything.”
“I am calling myself stupid because my frustration comes out as anger at myself.”
“I am telling myself that I am a failure because if I fail this test, I’m not who I want to be.”
Then, that narrative of her embodying her fear of failure and traveling in the opposite direction of where she wanted to be going sparked a panic attack. In that attack, that narrative took the power of her truth, and she became hooked on her fears of the future, reasons for failure, mental rules about what failure meant, and judgments about herself.
As a result, she created hurtful self-labels that created a barrier between her and her value of success.
That is why, when we look underneath our pain and find what we truly value, we can change our dialogue with ourselves to use values-based language. By changing our language, we can change how we relate to our thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams. Then, we can act in a way that promotes a values-based life.
This language change can look like:
“I am afraid I will fail because I value success.”
“I don’t know everything, but I do know that I value knowledge and what I do know.”
“I have high standards for myself because I believe in my abilities.”
“I can succeed because I have succeeded before.”
In this example, the language change is not designed to make the fear of failure disappear. It aims to change our relationship with the concept of failure and our fear of it. We fear the opposite of what we value because we associate opposites with threats.
When we unravel that fear to see why we are afraid of it, we can see that we are afraid because we care. That fear is there to motivate, keep us invested, serve as a driving force, and promote our goal. It is just appearing in a way that is causing us to move further away from our value.
We cannot always control the outcome, but we can control what we do to get ourselves to one. We cannot control the presence of fear because it is there for a reason. We can solely control our relationship with fear and how it interacts with our relationship with our value.
That is when we thank the fear for trying to protect us and acknowledge the concept of failure. Then, we can focus on the value of success to determine how we can move closer to our value of success alongside our fear and the risk of failure.
So, if you think back to what bothered you today, see how you can change your relationship with the experience if you were to ask instead: What did you care about today?
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Written by: Sophie Koch, LGPC
Sophie is a LifeSpring therapist who offers online and in-person counseling services to adolescents and adults (15 and up) to offer help with depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, trauma, and mood disorders.
Photo Credit: Adeniji Abdullahi A and SHVETS production on Pexels
Date of download: 6/6/24
