What is a values clarification worksheet in therapy?

It is a structured clinical tool that helps a client name the direction they want behavior to serve. In ACT, values are ongoing directions, not goals, moods, or identity labels.

How is a values worksheet different from a goal worksheet?

A goal worksheet asks what the client wants to achieve. A values worksheet asks what quality the client wants behavior to embody, even when the outcome is uncertain or discomfort is present.

When do therapists use values clarification?

Values work often fits when avoidance, fusion, grief, anxiety, shame, or role strain has narrowed the client’s behavior. It works best after enough stabilization for the client to choose rather than comply.

Can values work increase shame?

Yes. Values language can sound like moral pressure when a client hears it as proof they are failing. Therapists can reduce that risk by making the next action small, chosen, and reviewable.

Can values prompts be used outside ACT?

Yes, with clarity. CBT, DBT, trauma-informed, and integrative therapists can use values prompts, but ACT uses values as part of psychological flexibility and committed action rather than as generic motivation work.

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Values Clarification Worksheet for Therapists

Dr. Hannah Lin · Modality Specialist · July 2, 2026 · 7 min read

Outline

Authored by Dr. Hannah Lin, counseling psychologist trained in CBT, ACT, and IFS, with over a decade of clinical practice across anxiety and complex trauma.

A values clarification worksheet helps when the therapist is not asking for a list of admirable words. The clinical question is narrower: what does this client want their behavior to stand for when anxiety, grief, shame, pain, or uncertainty is still present?

That distinction matters. In ACT, values are directions, not achievements. Confidence is not a value. Winning the argument is not a value. Showing up with honesty, repair, steadiness, care, or courage can be.

Therapists can use this resource for ACT-informed values work in individual therapy. It pairs the form with the clinical judgment around timing, shame, avoidance, and committed action. For the broader model, start with ACT therapy basics for therapists. For a full worksheet map across the six ACT processes, use the ACT therapy worksheets guide.

Educational content for therapists, not clinical or legal advice. Values work does not replace risk assessment, stabilization, crisis planning, or modality-specific training.

What a values clarification worksheet is doing

The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science describes ACT as a model that builds psychological flexibility through acceptance, mindfulness, commitment, and behavior-change processes. Values work sits inside that frame. It gives committed action a direction.

Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, and Lillis describe ACT as a process model, not a collection of scripts. That matters at the worksheet level. The form is useful only when it supports a psychological flexibility process the therapist can name.

In practice, values work usually answers four clinical questions:

Clinical question	Therapist listens for
What has avoidance narrowed?	Relationships, roles, work, care, health, repair, learning, or play.
What value is still present?	A quality of behavior the client wants to embody.
What gets in the way?	Fusion, fear, shame, grief, anger, pain, old rules, or safety behavior.
What action can be reviewed?	One small behavior before the next session.

A values list can start the conversation, but it rarely finishes it. Clients often circle care, honesty, family, or growth because those words sound correct. The therapist’s work starts when the client translates one of those words into a behavior that could happen on an ordinary Tuesday.

Separate values from goals

The most common values error is turning the page into goal setting. Goals are reachable. Values are directional. A client can finish a goal, but they do not finish being a steady parent, honest partner, respectful colleague, or caring friend.

That distinction changes the prompt.

Goals matter. ACT simply places them in service of a chosen direction. Without that anchor, the client may complete every task and still move away from the life they are trying to build.

Use domains without turning them into a checklist

Life domains help clients who freeze when asked, “What do you value?” Domains give the work a place to land: family, friendship, partnership, work, learning, health, spirituality, community, recreation, or care for the body.

The risk is that domains can become a performance review. A client with depression may see every domain as another failure. A client with trauma history may read values language as an instruction to override protection. A client with obsessive traits may try to complete the form perfectly.

I usually slow the page down to one domain.

That structure keeps the work behavioral without flattening it into productivity. The client is not proving they have values. They are testing whether behavior can move in a chosen direction while internal experience is still present.

Watch for shame, compliance, and abstraction

Values work can sound beautiful and land badly. A client who already feels they are failing as a parent may hear “What kind of parent do you want to be?” as accusation. A client who is skilled at pleasing clinicians may give the value they think the therapist wants.

When that happens, the next move is not a better values list. The next move is contact with what just happened in the room.

Three signs tell me to pause:

The client chooses a value that sounds impressive but has no behavioral texture.
The client becomes smaller, more apologetic, or more perfectionistic as the page goes on.
The action step becomes a disguised self-punishment.

A useful repair is to make the prompt smaller and kinder: “If this value mattered by five percent this week, what would someone else be able to see you do?” That question lowers moral pressure and brings the work back to observable behavior.

Link values to committed action

Values clarification without committed action can become insight that never touches behavior. Committed action without values can become homework compliance. ACT keeps the two connected.

A useful next action has four features:

It is small enough to attempt before the next session.
It names the value it serves.
It allows discomfort to be present.
It can be reviewed without shaming the client.

A client might choose “steadiness in parenting.” The action is not “be a better parent.” It is “sit on the floor for ten minutes after dinner while my child chooses the game, even if the thought ‘I am too tired’ is present.”

That action gives the next session something useful to review. The therapist can ask what the mind said, what the body did, what helped, what blocked, and whether the value still fits.

How to review the worksheet next session

The review is where the worksheet becomes clinical data. A completed page tells you less than the relationship between value, barrier, and attempted action.

Use four review questions:

What value did the client try to serve?
What private experience showed up before, during, or after the action?
What did the client do when that experience showed up?
What would make the next action more values-consistent and more workable?

If the client did not use the worksheet, treat that as data. The form may have been too abstract, too long, too shame-loaded, too private, or poorly timed. That answer can refine the formulation more than a neat worksheet ever could.

Documentation language

Your note can leave the full form out. It names the ACT process, the client response, and the follow-up plan.

That note names the intervention without overselling it. It also preserves the thread for next session.

Download the worksheet

The downloadable values clarification worksheet is a printable three-page PDF for clinical use. It includes a values-domain page, a values-versus-goals page, and a committed-action review page.

Download the values clarification worksheet (PDF)

Use the values clarification worksheet as a session companion, not a stand-alone assignment. Teach the distinction in the room, let the client choose one domain, and bring the action back into the next appointment.

Where Emosapien fits

Values work often scatters across the session: the client names a direction, defuses from a thought, chooses a small action, and leaves with a plan the therapist must remember next week. Emosapien keeps that thread connected. The Scribe Agent captures the intervention and client response, while the Engagement Agent can carry the chosen action into a brief between-session prompt.

The therapist still chooses the value, judges timing, and reviews the clinical meaning. Emosapien keeps the worksheet attached to the care relationship instead of letting it disappear into a folder.

References

Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: model, processes and outcomes. Behavior Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25.