Not Knowing Your Values Keeps You Anxious!
Knowing your values and boundaries can significantly decrease your anxiety.
What are our values? So often, culture tells us through unspoken norms, nonverbal signals, and messages we get from a culture of what we should value. Being influenced happens subtly through most media, news, any popularized media sources. And most clients find themselves swimming in a the of things you ought to value. However, the worry gets overwhelming when we try to fit all these autopilot values into our life. What is it that sets your soul on fire?
Sometimes there is a voice, intuition, or gut feeling that something is off. In her book "The Soul of Money," Lynne Twist describes a cultural myth of being a consumer and spending money as patriotic. She used the example of 9/11 when George W. Bush instructed the American people to keep shopping to boost the economy and distract themselves. The overhead culture tries to keep us in the loop—it consists of making us want to do things that we do not need. We often find ourselves on a hamster wheel, whether externally making more money or internally pushing ourselves to create more, saying yes to something we did not want, and climbing the career ladder. These are fine and dandy if your values truly align with these goals. And that’s why so many of us feel a certain knowing and distant voice telling us some things are not quite right.
We ignore, distract, and try to push that voice or feeling/knowing down. Moving away from hurt is a human experience. We all do this to a certain extent. There’s no shame here. However, a cycle happens when we don’t listen to this little voice. The process looks like we keep doing what we’re doing; we get really depressed or very severely anxious, or relationship status sufferers. We go on medication. We do everything outside of the best possible, but the real issue is inside. Our body starts to feel worse, and we might struggle with an illness or sickness that forces us to stop. Culture doesn’t teach us to connect to ourselves, that is something that we have to learn throughout our life, and you’re not alone. A lot of women struggle with this.
Values cannot exist with boundaries. Boundaries are what is OK and what’s not OK. For many years I was a people pleaser. I would go to high lengths emotionally to please other people. In a culture that teaches women to be people-pleasers and helpers, this becomes a natural state that women can fall into, almost like a persona or a suit. We were to find a meaningful connection in our modern culture. And what happens is that we lose connection to our soul and who we are underneath all of the personas, the defenses, the façade to be put on to cope. If we are people-pleasing, we don’t know where our boundaries start, and others end.
Having firm boundaries around your values allows you to have the time, space, and energy to do what you feel is right and what feeds you and your family. Boundaries are hard. It is not a skill that I have seen freely excepted, celebrated, or encouraged. Boundaries mean you mean business, and you’re protecting what is precious and vital and valuable to you. That could be your time, energy, spending around certain people who don’t fulfill you all celebrate your genius with you, or family members who crack you down criticize you. Boundaries are putting an end and a stop to activities and people who drain your energy. Boundaries are rigid, so many of us struggle with them because we want to maintain our connection. After all, we are wired for connection and want to set a limit and a boundary.
Sincerely,
