Your disorder undermines values-based living

You are not your disorder. Untreated or unmanaged anxiety, OCD, and mood disorders can make you act in ways that are not consistent with your values. Your symptoms show up differently based on your biological vulnerabilities and your social conditioning.

If you primarily suffer from generalized anxiety, your worry may drive you to check on and get reassurance from your loved ones, to avoid things you would enjoy, or you might feel exhausted from all of your over-thinking and tension. Social anxiety and panic disorder especially drives people to avoid activities, places, and people that they would enjoy if not for their anxiety. You might not treat people the way you’d like to when you feel really anxious.

Anxiety and depression make you irritable. In the presence of irritability you may be short with or snap at your loved ones or isolate and withdraw.

None of these behaviors are consistent with your values. You can spend so much time identifying what you value and even setting goals. It’s really frustrating when your symptoms overwhelm you and you are again acting in ways that are inconsistent with your values.

Try to have compassion on the part of you that is suffering.

You can only change if you imagine you can change. You have to identify what you value and articulate who you are trying to be to start to inch towards that ideal person. Your growth will not be linear. You won’t be able to set your values and your goals and then immediately become that person.

It’s important to learn strategies for managing your symptoms and have a plan for when you have a setback. And, it’s especially important to plan for self-compassion when that setback actually occurs. The hardest time to use your new skills is in the moment that you actually have symptoms. If you have relief from your symptoms and you are practicing skills, you have some sense of your new options. Changing your behavior when you are very sensitized, very stuck, very depression is very hard.

Many people beat themselves up at the point where they’ve identified what they value and can see that they aren’t living by it. Your disorder is making you distant from your values. You have to challenge it to become who you want to be. And, you have to have compassion on how hard it is to live with thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, and behavioral urges that are very painful to you.