Dear Souls and Hearts Member,
We started our series with on July 22, 2024 with the reflection titled Your Vision, Mission and Values; this first piece gave a broad overview of writing personal statements. Our last reflection from August 12, 2024 titled Writing Your Personal Vision Statement as a Catholic focused in on the first element, your personal vision, with a 16-minute experiential exercise titled Writing your vision statement with your parts to help your innermost self and your parts process through your initial work, explore any words that came up about your vision, and address any blocks or difficulties in your efforts.
It’s important to know that there is not a particular order in which you “must” write a vision statement vs. a value statement. It is helpful to have a draft of both of those before writing a mission statement, as your mission statement is focused on your vision statement and bounded by your values statement.
In this reflection, we are going to focus on personal values. Values. As you know, I’m a stickler for proper definitions, so let’s define our terms.
What are “values”?
Some Catholic thinkers and writers express concern about the modern usage of the word “values” in moral discourse because of the lack of any objective moral valence or weight to the word (see, for example, Iain T. Benson’s article Values and Virtues: A Modern Confusion). Benson and other Catholic thinkers are guarding against a creeping sense of moral relativism and modern attempts to create a subjective, personal reality that can undermine the pursuit of objective goods in virtues, undermine the moral order. And I agree with that goal.
But that worthy objective does not mean we should discard the word “values” – only that we should use it appropriately. Dr. Edward Sri gives a clear distinction between the two concepts in his six-minute video Value vs. Virtue.
The clearest definition I have found for the word “value” is from Fr. John Hardon, in his Catholic Dictionary, where he anticipates objections to it use in Catholic circles:
“That which makes a thing desirable or considered worthwhile. Value stresses the subjective and relative aspect of the good over the objective and absolute character. It means not so much the inherent excellence of an object as how it stands in one’s personal estimation; not so much its built-in perfection as its comparative place in that scale of things called the hierarchy of values. The term value commends itself to subjectivist and relativist moral philosophies, in preference to the common good. Nevertheless, it is also acceptable to Christians provided it includes the notion of an objective moral standard.”
As I noted in the first reflection in this series: “Your values are your treasures. They are whatever is “precious” to you – as Gollum valued the ring. They are what motivate and move you…”
What different parts of you might cherish may not be good for you or for other people. What parts of you might prize above all else might not actually be virtuous, leading you to the good.
And just to review, in our spiral learning, how can we describe parts? Parts feel like separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God.
And, in addition, each part of us that is not fully integrated has a separate set of values, based on its experiences, how that part makes sense of its experiences, its role in our system, and the burdens it may bear. Thus, parts can clash around values they hold, leading to internal conflicts, as St. Paul lamented in Romans 7:15 “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
For example, one part of a college coed might greatly value her autonomy and independence, never wanting to be “tied down” in a relationship; another part of her might crave physical closeness, and may be willing to cross physical boundaries for the perceived good of being held and feeling wanted by an attractive man. As these parts vary in their influence over the coed, she is likely to present in different ways to men she is attracted to.
Objective moral standards and the common good are captured in the contrasting noun virtue: again, we have clarity in the dictionary definition of “virtue” from Fr. Hardon, who explained it as:
“A good habit that enables a person to act according to right reason enlightened by faith. Also called an operative good habit, it makes its possessor a good person and his or her actions also good.”
So we see that what is valued might be morally good, neutral, or evil – but what is virtuous is always good, and draws the possessor of that virtue toward the good.
Now we are getting into some different classifications of values – don’t worry, if you don’t understand all the nuances the first time around.
Manifest vs. latent values
I want to make a distinction between two types of values that is very rarely discussed, especially in Catholic circles: manifest values vs. latent values. Your manifest values are the obvious values, the values that are on the surface, that are clear to yourself. Your latent values are deeper, often hidden values, which can unconsciously influence your behavior.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say the mother of a family has a part who strongly desires to work up to having $20,000 in a savings account and begins to work single-mindedly toward that goal. She values, at a manifest level, having $20,000 in reserve.
But if you explored why that savings was so important to that protector part of her, you might find that it’s not really about the money – rather, at a deeper, latent level it is an exile who desperately needs a sense of security, safety, or protection in a dangerous and unpredictable world. The money is a means to that deeper end. What her exile is seeking is a way to meet a deep integrity need for survival.
It’s very helpful to discover our latent values, the hidden values that parts hold outside our conscious awareness, because often they are oriented toward meeting legitimate needs we have – attachment needs, integrity needs, and other kinds of needs, including spiritual needs. Understanding your latent values – especially when they are reified or elevated to becoming ends in themselves – can point you toward better appreciation of your parts’ underlying, legitimate needs. If those needs can be met for your parts, it makes it so much easier to detach from manifest values that are maladaptive or sinful in favor of healthy, virtuous values.
A clear example of latent values is found in many Catholic men’s use of masturbation and pornography, as I explored in Episode 51 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, titled The Top 10 Reasons Why Catholic Men Masturbate. In that episode, I review the top ten latent values that drive masturbation in men, exploring not just the surface level, but the deeper, legitimate goods men are seeking at the unconscious level.
As Scottish author Bruce Marshall’s protagonist priest said in the 1945 novel “The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, “I still prefer to believe that sex is a substitute for religion and that the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.” [Side note: this quote is often misattributed to G.K. Chesterton.] I discuss the latent values parts are seeking in maladaptive and sinful impulses in my 100-minute workshop titled Working with Parts Who Want Porn.
In summary, manifest values often are the means that parts are seeking toward the latent value, which is often an end. Trouble enters in when we allow our parts to elevate a means (the manifest value) beyond its objective value and make it an end – that’s what happens when we get attached to lesser goods at the expense of greater goods.
Actual values vs. aspirational values
One more distinction to be made is between actual values – those things I actually hold dear – and aspirational values – those things I would like to cherish, but may not yet, at least not fully.
Actual values are those manifest and latent values that I treasure right now, at this point in my life, which may be good, neutral, or bad.
Aspirational values are the values that my innermost self would like to have, but may not yet possess across part. For serious Catholic, aspirational values are often virtues — but they could also be other things, such as a bigger house for a growing family.
The woman who seeks $20,000 in savings as a manifest, actual value, may also have parts that are conflicted about her valuing that money; these parts of her may seek to embrace a form of evangelical poverty and yearn to become “holy enough” to live in trustful confidence in God’s Providence without that safety net of financial reserves. That is a manifest, aspirational value – it’s not a value she possesses fully yet, and it’s clearly in her conscious awareness.
But there is another combination – the latent, aspirational value. If the unconscious reason parts of her seek evangelical poverty is to earn God’s approval and love, then it is a latent (deeper and not in awareness), aspirational value, one that is not yet possessed in a felt way (at least by those parts that desire it). According to Fr. Smith in Marshall’s 1945 novel, the man knocking at the brothel door has a latent aspirational value to connect with God, and doesn’t know it.
The table below shows the four possible kinds of values
What is a values statement?
As I described in the first reflection in this series, a personal values statement is “…a delineation of a small set of three to seven core, vital, and unchanging principles that define who your best self is – and that guide you toward who you want to be by clearly naming what you most cherish.”
Manifest aspirational values are like the light of a lantern – they illuminate the means we are using in our mission and goals as we seek to make our vision a reality. As such, our values, provided they are good and virtuous, serve as guardrails to keep us on track.
When you are not well-integrated (and few people are) each part of you focuses on different values — like different wavelengths of light, different colors of light coming from their individual lanterns. When we discover the good intentions that drive the values, this light from all the parts’ value “lanterns” can be brought together, integrated, making pure white light. Why? Because parts are very rarely driven by malice. The are seeking good ends for us, but often with impulses toward maladaptive and sinful means. If we can see the unmet needs and the good desires that parts have for us, we can find much better, healthier, and morally sound means to have those needs met.
In the next reflection, I will go through a step-by-step process for writing a values statement. But before we do that, there is an important preliminary task. Identifying your actual values at the present time.
Identifying your actual values
Our values, both the manifest and the latent, impact everything we do. Elvis Presley is quoted as saying “Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ’em all over everything you do.”
Part of the function of the general examination of conscience within Catholic tradition is to reveal to us what we cherish. What are we seeking? What are actual values? Because as our Lord told us, in Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” He’s discussing our values, our whatever is our “precious” to us.
If we know our actual, manifest values, we can then begin to go deeper into exploring our latent actual values. This can be a very humbling experience – to see the disorder in our desires deep inside of us. Those values are unconscious for a reason – often it’s because they can be very threatening to our sense of well-being. We often hold values that are not good for us or for others.
I can think of five ways to help identify your actual values, five questions to help clarify what they are.
- What do you spend your free time on?
- What do you spend your disposable income on?
- What do you daydream about? [Check out my reflections here and here to help you understand your parts’ needs and their daydreams.]
- If you asked an honest person who knows you well what you most valued, what would that person say?
- What do you pray for in your petitions to God?
Let me share an example from my life. As I’ve mentioned many time, I grew up in Wisconsin. Packer country. And in 1998, I was married, the father of my newborn daughter Grace, and doing my residency year in Seattle, a strange place for a Wisconsin boy. I decided to write my first mission statement, and as part of that process, noticed disturbing discrepancies between what I said I stood for, lived for, and would die for, and what I was actually valuing.
I added up all the time I spent in the fall of 1998 on following the Green Bay Packers. An hour to drive to the Packer bar in Seattle, three hours for the game on Sunday, an hour drive back. Plus about 30 minutes per day on the fledgling Internet, reading the latest Packer news. I was in the know about how well the third-string tight end was recovering from his foot injury. More than eight hours per week on the Packers.
Then I added up all the time I spent in prayer during the course of a week. I counted up my time in private prayer, Sunday Mass, other devotions, and I even added about 30 seconds for prayers before meals, so let’s see, that’s 21 meals, about 10 more minutes per week… And I wasn’t getting anywhere near eight hours. I was forced to conclude that I manifestly valued the Packers more than God. I don’t remember praying much for the Packers, but, as I already mentioned, my prayer time was pretty limited.
I also had spent $200 on the first Packer stock offering, buying one share to become an owner of the Packers – that was a lot of money to me back then. I daydreamed about the Packers, imagining glorious scenarios and reliving memories of great victories. More of my fellow interns knew me as a Packer fan (because of my Packer windbreaker) than as a Catholic. It was clear that I was way overvaluing the Packers in my life at the manifest level.
At a deeper level there were latent needs that parts of me were maladaptively attempting to meet though valuing the Packers so highly – self-worth needs to be associated with a “winner,” needs to reconnect with my home, my roots, and my family, needs to feel alive and rejuvenated and connected with others.
On the evening of Friday, September 6, 2024, from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM, I will host a free Zoom workshop on values and identifying your values for my reflection readers. Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com with the word “Values” in the subject line, and I will send you the link. It won’t be so much about the actual writing of your values statement — I will offer another Zoom meeting later in September for that. But we will be getting ready. I hope to see many of you there.
You can also check out an 7-minute video I made for the core Souls and Hearts management team about our values at Souls and Hearts.
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Check out episode 146 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast released today, titled Restored: Personal Formation for Teen and Young Adult Children of Divorce, where Joey Pontarelli joins guest host Dr. Gerry Crete to share the impact of his parents’ divorce on him as a child, the ways that divorce rocked his world, and his journey of recovery. And that journey of recovery includes his founding of Restored, a ministry for teens and young adults whose parents’ marriages failed, giving them a place to share their stories, help for them to find healthy responses to an unhealthy family situation, to seek “integration, rather than amputation” of their internal experiences and to correct the lies beneath their fear, anger, and shame. Here are the video and audio versions.
If you resonate with the episode, give us a like on YouTube and subscribe to our channel, Interior Integration for Catholics or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts – that helps us get the word out to more people.
Formation for Catholic Formators
This is the last call for Catholic therapists, spiritual directors, Catholic coaches, seminarian formators, and any other faithful Catholic who accompanies others professionally on an individual basis to take advantage of a unique opportunity to work on your own human formation starting next month.
The Formation for Formators Community is now open, and we have a few more openings in our fall Foundations Experiential Groups or FEGs which will begin in September – this is an excellent opportunity to engage in your own human formation, informed by IFS and parts- and systems-thinking, all grounded in a Catholic anthropology, to remove the beams from your own eyes before examining the specks in the eyes of those you accompany.
To learn more about the FFF community and the FEGs, check out our landing page and fill out our interest survey on that page or contact Pam at office@soulsandhearts.com to see what openings remain in the schedule. This is an opportunity to bring parts work and systems thinking into your own human formation and personal development, for you to get to know your parts (and their values) better.
Pray for us…
Everything we do at Souls and Hearts is fueled by prayer and God’s grace. Please pray for us so that we may carry out what God intends for us to be and that we may value what He values.
Warm regards in Christ and His Mother,
Dr. Peter