Values and Relationships
Once we’ve distinguished context from what can be changed, we move on to clarifying values. Some clients are clear about their values; in such cases, what makes burnout so difficult is their awareness of disconnection from them. But Jack had little understanding of what was important to him beyond work.
Identifying values can be as simple as asking a broad question about what is important to a client, or narrower questions about different domains of their life. Jack identified his wife as being important to him, as his “rock”. The therapist asked what was important to him about his relationship with her, not what was important to him about her.
