Developing BPD: Part II – Other People

The current nine criteria, in no particular order, are as follows:

1. Unclear and/or unstable shifting self-image/identity.
2. Unstable interpersonal relationships; marked by patterns of alternating between idolization and devaluation of others.
3. Mood swings that can elevate to feelings of euphoria rather than happiness and despair rather than sadness.
4. Chronic impulsive and self-destructive behaviours (not including suicidal tendencies or self-harm as indicated as its own criterion) including, but not limited to: spending, sex, reckless driving or stunts, binge eating.
5. Intense fear of rejection and/or abandonment, whether real or perceived.
6. Recurrent or patterns of self-harm, suicidal ideation and suicidal tendencies.
7. Explosive anger.
8. Feelings of emptiness.
9. Loss of touch with reality; patterns of dissociation.

The second criterion: Unstable interpersonal relationships; marked by patterns of alternating between idolization and devaluation of others.

This one is a lot to unpack because our experience with relationships start from the moment we are born, throughout infancy into childhood and puberty, and everything we learn about ourselves and others during this time will be the foundation of all our relationships from there onward.

Even if that foundation is built on shaky ground.

Our mothers, or caregivers, interact and engage with us, starts from the moment we are born. But what kind of interactions are they? Do they hold us? Do they snuggle us? Are they affectionate around us? Are they affectionate to us? Are they detached from us? Why are they detached from us? Do they not want to be attached to us? Are they struggling with post-partum depression, or perhaps another disorder or illness, making connection and attachment challenging?

There are countless factors that would come into play whether our mothers and fathers, or caregivers, would not connect or attach with us as newborns.

And if they aren’t attached, does that detachment and disconnection continue? For how long? Do they ever attach or connect with us? Or is the lack of connection only further perpetuated?

What about our fathers? Are they in the picture? Do they hold us? Do they snuggle us? Are they affectionate around us? Are they affectionate to us?

As we move through the stages of infancy, what happens? Are we having our needs met? What do we experience? Are we comforted? Are we neglected? Are we abused? Are we shown care and affection? Are we deprived of care and affection?

As we move from infancy, we learn of our own awareness and then the awareness of others.

When we cry, how are we treated? Do our parents comfort us? Do they come to our cribs with a smiling, engaging face? Do they frown at us? Do they come to us withdrawn and frowning or angry? Are they upset with us for crying and needing something?

If the typical response we receive when we cry, regardless of what we are crying for, is not one of engagement, care and affection, we learn pretty quickly that our experience is not going to be a positive one.

As infants, of course, we won’t be able to regulate this right away. But we will learn. We will learn how long to cry for, when to cry, and if we cry at all. Even when our needs are dire, for food or shelter, we will quickly learn when to ask for that need to be met. Whether we cry for our food, cry to be changed, cry to be held, and it will be as we grow out of infancy that we start to manage how we handle having our needs met, or not.

As we become aware of a person, typically our parents, outside of ourselves, is when we start to learn affect regulation, and mirroring what our parents are doing, or not doing.

If as toddlers, our parents still come to us in our crib or bed, and they come to us withdrawn, or upset, or mean, or they don’t come at all, we aren’t just learning anymore. Now we are reinforcing. We’re adapting, in whatever way is safest, to ignore our needs, suppress them, deny them.

And so the foundation is laid. The pattern is set.

Our own engagement with others and in response to ourselves is outlined in doing what is safest. We are now adapted to simply survive. It’s mostly a gradual process, until the day we just get it. We don’t know how we got it, we don’t understand what we are doing, we just know we need to somehow survive, and we will do that in whatever way keeps us safe until the next day.

And what of our environment? How are things around us? What happens around us? Is it an environment of care and kindness? Or are we surrounded by fighting and yelling? Are we surrounded by light or are we surrounded by dark?

Do we see our parents interact with each other kindly? Do we have any siblings? How are they treated by our parents? Are our siblings treated kindly? If other family members or friends come around, how do our parents behave then? Are they kind to anyone?

As soon as toddlers are able to learn of other people and an outside environment they are able to learn when to ask to have their needs met. Of course, they are unable to meet their own needs, and still need their parents to survive. And if that experience is that your needs don’t matter or can cause pain from violence and abuse or will result in a spectrum of abandonment from neglect, a toddler will learn faster than you think, to quickly shut down, ignore and dismiss their needs.

They will wait, hungry, soiled, cold, crying, and alone, forming a firm belief that they are a burden. They don’t matter. Their needs don’t matter. Their needs will not be met. Their needs may result in pain and injury. And yet, they still have needs.

So what is a toddler to do?

So far, they have learned that the relationship with their parents is a dysregulated, conditional, painful relationship. With or without violence it is already painful.

If mommy is in a good mood… If daddy had a bad day…

It really doesn’t take much for a young toddler brain to learn. And when this is their whole experience, all day, every day. It sets the tone for how they’re going to have difficult relationships with everyone they know.

How can they do any different when they don’t know any different? How can you have a kind, caring, affectionate relationship if you have no idea what that looks like? Or that it’s even an option?

What are we learning? Do we see our parents handle their own emotions? And how do they handle them? Do they become withdrawn? Do they become violent?

And then what of our emotions? How do they handle those? Do they ignore our emotions? Or shut them down? Do they show us that what we are feeling doesn’t matter, that our experience doesn’t matter?

What we learn here, at a very tender age, is how to handle, or not, our emotions. How to handle, or not, other people and their emotions. If we are shown that other people’s emotions are too much, too hard, or that they don’t matter, that is what we learn. And in turn, it is how we start to treat others as well.

If we see volatile, abusive, dysregulated relationships, including our own, then that is what we learn. And that is what we do. We may not become volatile or abusive ourselves because if our true nature is not to be violent or abusive then we still try to counter what we learn with who we really are, and we will try to find that balance to handle things. But because what we learn was dysregulation, we will most likely, at least, have that.

How do we learn to cope? How do we learn to show affection, or not? How do we learn to be kind, or not? How do we learn how to talk to other people, how to treat other people?

Any relationship that stems from our infancy and developing years will have an impact on us and in turn how we relate to everyone else after that, including ourselves.

Taking into account other aspects of BPD, i.e. unstable identity, unstable dysregulated emotions… etc, how can one be in a relationship if they don’t even know who they are? And I don’t just mean romantic relationships. It could be any relationship, but if you don’t know who you are how do you interact with another?

How do you treat them? How do you want them to treat you? How do you behave?

When you aren’t sure how you’re feeling, or those feelings seem to run the gamut, how do you interact with other people? What if they say something that upsets you? What if they do something harmful? What if they don’t?

You have no idea who you are and your emotions being all over the place is not helping at all. And your experience, so far, has taught you that other people are no help when it comes to regulating emotions.

Relationships are transactional and complex. Relationships require giving and taking. They require commitment and dedication. And you aren’t even sure you have that. How do you give what you don’t have? How do you take what you aren’t sure you need? How do you be there for someone else when you don’t know how? No one has been there for you before, so how are you to know what to do? What not to do?

If they offer you something, how do you take it? How do you accept concern or compassion or kindness when you’ve never seen it before let alone been offered it?

And if your emotions are all over the place, how can you talk to someone else? What if they are in a good mood, and you are not? Have you been taught how to ask for help? No. Have you been taught how to let them know you’re unhappy or in a bad mood? No.

And odds are what you were taught was not to tell anyone anything, especially about how you’re feeling.

If they are in a bad mood, and you are not, how do you handle that? You’ve never given support before, how do you do it? You’ve offered support before, but it was rejected, dismissed, ignored, mocked, you don’t want that again. You have nothing to give then.

How do you explain to another that your emotions are all over the place, you don’t even understand it yourself. You see others and they are happy for a happy reason, but your experience is different. You don’t just feel happy, you feel elated. It doesn’t match the others…

You see others sad for a sad reason, but your experience is different. You don’t just feel sad, you feel despair. It doesn’t match the others. It doesn’t match the others at all.

Does that mean there is something wrong with you?

Why are your emotions so different than the others? Why are you never in alignment with other people? There must be something wrong with you then. There has to be. You’re the only one who is all over the place.

You were never taught regulation. You were never taught correlation. You were never taught interaction. Your experience was like your emotions, all over the place.

Your “education” was all over the place, why shouldn’t your emotions be too? At least that’s consistent, if nothing else. It was consistently chaotic. Your relationships? Chaotic. Your emotions? Also chaotic. Makes sense if you think about it.

What else could your relationships do? If you don’t know how to interact with people without being dysregulated, chaotic, uncertain, even abusive or violent, what else can your relationships be, if not the same?

Of course, once you have a child, parents don’t get a chance to pause and sort out their own stuff, if they even want to that is, or start over. They don’t get an opportunity to heal their hurts. There is no break for healing yourself and pausing raising a child. The child is here now and growing and learning and the parent is going to have to try and work it out as best as they can.

Changing interpersonal interactions is tough as hell. Seriously. Even if you want to make those kind of changes in the first place, it is NOT easy. I know, because I’ve been working on it for a few years now.

Realizing that everyone behaves based on their own identities, traumatized or not, is not always easy to realize let alone interact with; not falling into old patterns of not listening, not responding, slamming doors, yelling insults, and shutting down is tough. Just not knowing how to interact can lead to further detachment, disconnection, and solitude.

Relationships are just too hard. They come with so many caveats, and most of them you don’t know or understand. And without even trying you perpetuate your own disconnection.

But it’s not a lost cause. YOU are not a lost cause. Not being taught what you needed in order to have (relatively) stable relationships with yourself and others is a learned experience that can be re-taught and re-learned.

The pathways are well-worn to be sure but that does not mean that new pathways can’t be created. Because they can. It does take work, you are up against a well-ingrained history so it won’t happen overnight. It will take practice. A LOT of practice. At re-wiring and re-learning that which should have been taught to you before.

Learning how to talk to people, how to handle your own emotions, how to handle other people and their emotions is VERY hard work.

The first step is realizing that this isn’t your fault. You are NOT broken. You were never broken. You were misinformed. GREATLY MISINFORMED. You were supposed to be taught differently, and you weren’t. That isn’t your fault.

It might be easy to blame your parents, since they were responsible for teaching you, and if that’s where you are, then that’s where you are. I blamed my own mother for many, many years. I am only now coming to a place of understanding that she had her own trauma, and that’s why she taught me what she did.

Unfortunately I can’t change what happened then, I can change what happens now though. So blame or not, it’s up to me now.

DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) has been instrumental in helping me better manage my emotions, and in turn how I deal with other people. I am still working on the Interpersonal Skills but the emotional regulation has at least given me a running start.

DBT has helped me find less destructive ways of interacting with other people. It has given me a pause. A pause before I act. Thinking before I speak. Taking into account where I am coming from, as well as where the other person might be coming from.

Having an awareness of what my words can do has helped me move from reacting to responding. Taking that pause has made a world of difference because you can’t unsay something you have said. You can’t unhear what you’ve heard. You can’t unknow what you know now.

You can apologize of course but sometimes words can hurt even with apologies. Some things stay with you.

I don’t want to hurt someone I care about. I don’t want to say something that I can’t take back. I know how it feels to be insulted. I know how it feels to have words pierce your heart like a knife. I know how it feels to know something you never wanted to know. And I don’t want to do that to others. Not anymore.

I am still learning how to become more aware of what I say and what I do, and it took me a looooooong time to get to this point.

My hope is that my interpersonal skills will improve the more I learn and re-learn.

Developing BPD: Part I – Who Am I?

The first criterion: Unclear and/or unstable shifting self-image/identity

Children are natural explorers. They are constantly asking questions, being curious, and wanting to know everything about everything. It’s how they learn, about their world, about themselves, and about others around them. How else can a child learn anything about anything without doing some exploring and asking some questions?

And as children, that natural curiosity should be encouraged by our parents or caregivers. We are supposed to be encouraged to be ourselves and discover the world. And in the midst of that process of discovering, we also discover ourselves, and at least, the beginning of who we might be.

We learn a lot from our parents/caregivers, whether it’s good or bad. We learn how to respond to emotions and physical sensations by mirroring what others (usually our parents) did. We see how they respond when something goes wrong. We see how they respond when something goes right. We see how they respond when someone yells or is angry with them. We see how they respond when a crisis comes up. We see how they respond when someone offers affection, or how they give affection to others. We see how they respond when they take care of something. We see how they respond when they don’t take care of something. And we learn.

We learn A LOT.

And meshed into that learning, who we are starts to emerge. Sometimes who we are is aligned with what we are learning, and sometimes it isn’t. And if who we are is counter to what we are learning then what do we do? Confusion sets in, and we don’t know what to do next.

For example, let’s say we are a child walking down the street one day with our parent or caregiver, and we trip and fall and scrape our knee. We start to cry and get upset. We seek comfort and concern for our scare of falling down and the pain of scraping our knee.

But, what if what we get is, our parent or caregiver gets angry with us, and yells at us, calling us clumsy, or telling us that we should be more careful, or even calling us names like stupid? What if the comfort we seek is not there? What if the soothing we seek are instead insults and being dismissed?

And so we learn.

We learn that falling is not something that brings affection or kindness. We learn that falling means we will be yelled at and we will be called names. We learn that getting hurt does not result in care or affection or even kindness. We will not be cared for. We will not be comforted. We will not be helped.

And so we have learned.

And every time it happens, we learn.

Every time we are not soothed, we learn. Every time we are not comforted, we learn. Every time we are dismissed we learn. Every time we are insulted, we learn.

Like I said, we learn A LOT.

But then, the learning continues… because what about when we see another person fall? And our response to that person is different from what we’ve learned? Uh oh. Our response, from deep inside, feels different than what mommy’s was. We don’t want to yell at another. We don’t want to call the person who fell any insults or names. We want to help them. We want to comfort them. We want to ask if they are okay.

Can that be right?

As children we don’t have the capacity yet to know that this concerned person is really who we are. We don’t have the capacity to know that our feelings are valid and that how we respond is who we are. That we don’t have to be the way mommy and daddy are. That maybe their response is the one that is hurtful and harmful. We don’t know that they are just people, responding based on their own identity as well.

So we stop, and we wonder… am I wrong?

How we are feeling is counter to what we learned. And our parents or caregivers are the teachers, so they know more than we do, don’t they? Maybe who we are is wrong? If that’s not how mommy responds then I must be doing it wrong.

And when what we are taught – for any number of things in life – is counter to how we feel about it, then we start to question all of it. If mommy and daddy respond to this differently, or they handle that differently than how I feel to respond, then what do I do? I don’t know that I can be myself. I don’t even really know who myself is yet. I don’t know that my feelings matter. I don’t know that being different is okay. I don’t know that there is another way. I don’t know that there are many other ways than the one our parents have shown us. And it’s not like I can ask.

If, as children, we even had the capacity to ask, would we? What would we say? “Hey mom, I want to help this person who fell. That’s different than how you were responding, is that okay? Can I go ahead and be different than you are?”

As children, would we ever think to question the powers that be? I certainly wouldn’t have. And even if I had thought to question, there’s no way in hell I would have because that would probably get me slapped.

Another reason to keep quiet.

Maybe who I am is wrong? If mommy does it this way, or responds this way, and she knows everything, then I must be wrong.

And let’s say one day you did respond differently, and you helped someone who fell, what if your parent or caregiver responds negatively to that? They yell at you for offering help. You don’t know how to help. You’re too stupid to help. You’re too young to know anything. What is wrong with you? And so on…

Now what? We tried to follow our hearts and look where it got us? We tried to be ourselves and look where it got us? Look what it taught us.

Lesson: Don’t help other people. Don’t be kind. Don’t concern yourself with others. Don’t be compassionate. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t follow your heart. Your feelings don’t matter. What you did was wrong. Who you are is wrong… Pick one.

Children’s thinking is not that complex yet, so we will black and white the situation. We don’t know any different. We don’t know there are myriad reasons for why we respond differently than someone else does. Even if that someone else is mommy or daddy.

We don’t think “Oh, maybe, we are being taught wrong?” or “There’s no chance in hell my parents are wrong.” So I am wrong. I must be. There obviously is no other explanation.

Except when who we are is wrong, and we can’t help how we feel, but we aren’t them either. We aren’t mommy and we aren’t daddy. We don’t respond the way they do. We don’t want to. That’s not us.

If we aren’t them? And who we are is wrong? Then who are we?

Enter, unstable identity.

Sadly, it does not take much for a child to learn to internalize their world, and suppress the person they may become in an effort to match our parents or caregivers, and remain in the favour by being like them.

How can you even explore who you really are if right from the start you are taught to counter to that? We are naturally ourselves, whomever we may be. We’re just born the way we are. And what if what we are taught is opposite to that? What if we are taught not to question? What if we are taught not to explore? What if we are taught that how we feel about life so far is all wrong? What if we are taught that how we respond is wrong? Then how do we develop ourselves? How do we learn who we really are? How do we develop who we are? How do we even know who we are let alone develop it?

If we are not encouraged to be ourselves then how do we develop who our self is? If we are insulted or harmed when we are ourselves, then who should we be? What “me” can we be so that we don’t get insulted or harmed? Even if that “me” isn’t really me? And how do you develop something that isn’t in us to start with? How do you develop or nurture something that isn’t yours?

And if, like me, this is how it was from childhood, then developing our identity, whomever that may have been, has almost no chance.

But we need an identity. Everyone has an identity. We want one too. We need one too. It’s who we are. And so we search…

We will spend years searching. Trying on different ones. Not knowing which one of what, we are. Not knowing why this one feels right, but this one doesn’t. Not knowing how to develop it. Not trusting it. Not understanding it.

We will ache to know who we are, but how? We will feel the weight of our past and our trauma with everything we think, everything we feel, and everything we do. Is that who we are?

But then, even that doesn’t feel quite right.

An identity starts by being formed from our beliefs, our values, and then our thoughts and actions are governed from that. But we don’t know what our values are? We know what our parents values are, and they don’t totally mesh with how we feel.

Our thoughts are muddled to the point of believing that who we are is wrong because how we feel so far has differed from our parents, and we have no idea that that is actually okay. Except it’s not allowed let alone encouraged to be different than our parents so where does that leave us?

How do create an identity when we have no idea what our values are? How do we develop our identities when our thoughts and our actions have thus far been counter to how we feel?

It’s all false. It’s all projected. It’s all someone else’s.

When who we are has been suppressed, how do we find ourselves again?

For myself, I can only guess what kind of person I would have been had I been allowed to explore and trust who I was. I believe that there were always some inkling of who I was hanging around, otherwise why would certain things have felt right, and certain things didn’t.

But I wasn’t not given the chance to explore that. I wasn’t given the chance to develop whatever may have been there right from the start.

And that’s not to say that I can’t find an identity now. Because I can. Would it be the person I would have been? Who knows? Probably not. As unfortunate as it is that I wasn’t able to develop my own identity from the start, so too is that that identity is pretty much gone by now.

There will be slivers of her somewhere in there because I think some things have stayed with me despite being suppressed for many years. I think there are some values that I always had. And now, I will just have to find it, bring it back and give it some life.

If, like me, your own identity feels long lost and forgotten, it may be time for you to start creating your own identity now too. One good thing about developing an identity now is that you can be whomever you want to be.

If you want to be a kind, caring, compassionate person, there is still time to bring that to life. If you want to be curious and explorative, there’s time for that too. If you want to be more introverted then you can develop that too. It’s not quite a blank slate, but it’s as close as you’ll ever come to having one.

And it may be painful to discover who you really are now. It will surely take time and practice. Some thing will fit, and some things won’t. Some things will seem good, and some things won’t. Same as if you had learned your identity as a child. Not everything would have been sunshine and rainbows then either.

But finding your own identity is important, no matter who you turn out to be. You deserve to be yourself, no matter who that is. No matter how long you’ve been without an identity of your own, no matter what anyone tried to take from you, NOW is the time to take it back, and mould it to who you want to be.

You have always been entitled to your own identity. And even if it takes a while to find that person, you deserve to know.

Where I started was with Google. I had no idea what even made up an identity, let alone developing one. So I actually typed into Google search, “what makes up an identity?”

I had no idea there would be so many schools of thought on what makes an identity. The gist that I took from what I read is that an identity, to start, is based on your values. It is your values that dictate your behaviour and actions and a lot of times, your thoughts as well – since thought thought often becomes actions and behaviours.

For example, I value truth and honesty. Part of this stems from the lies and dishonesty that I grew up with. Honestly, I’m not sure how much I would value truth and honesty if it hadn’t been for my upbringing. So if you find some values stem from your own trauma, that’s okay too.

And because I value truth and honesty, it very much dictates a lot of how I act with myself and with others. It’s very important to me. And I learned that from going through a list of values.

Learning what some of my values are was not an easy undertaking. What are values that I believe in right now? I had no idea. Honestly. I read through the lists of values I found online and through DBT, and couldn’t relate to any of them.

Maybe I didn’t have any values? But that didn’t seem right either.

I had beliefs, like, I believed I was a failure. I believed I was nothing. I believed I was always wrong. I believed that no one cared about me and that that was a deserved place to be.

Last time I checked the list of values didn’t have failure on it. But I knew what I valued in others was honesty. Because of my trauma, I knew what I didn’t want anymore. I didn’t want lies and dishonesty. I didn’t want cruelty and insults. I didn’t want to be dismissed.

So I started there, with what I didn’t want. And the first thing I realized I valued was truth and honesty. That was a success for me because it meant I did have values. At least I had one value.

And if I had one value, I probably had others too, I just needed to uncover them as well.

I posted a list of values at the end of this post if you’re looking for some values of your own.

Take your time with this. Mark whatever feels right for you, and add any that might not be listed. Go over it in the daytime. Go over it at nighttime. Go over it on a weekday. Go over it on a weekend. Go over it when you feel good. Go over it when you feel unwell. Go over it again and again and again, and see what sticks.

Whatever feels like it works for you, then make a note of it. If it’s something you want to aspire to do or be, mark that off too. If something fits one day and it doesn’t fit the next day, then take it off. And even if it seems like nothing jumps out at you the first few times you read the list, that’s okay.

It will take some time and practice to peel back the layers of who you had to become to find who you really are.

This is a great place to start. Learn what you believe in. NOT what trauma has taught you. NOT what BPD tells you. NOT what ED might tell you. NOT what depression tells you. NOT what anxiety tells you.

That is NOT the real you. That is the you that developed from trauma and BPD, among other things. It is who you had to become to survive. As messed up as it is and was, it is NOT the real you.

The real you is underneath that. The real you IS there. We just need to bring it to the front again. We need to give it space to come out again. And we need to nourish it when it is there. Starting with your true values.

What do you believe in? What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of person do you feel attracted to non-romantically or romantically? When all the trauma and BPD are stripped away, what is it that you believe? What kind of morals do you want to have? What do you want your behaviour to be governed by?

Explore whatever you choose. Be curious. Try to explore why you chose the values you did. How can you nurture those values? How can you make those values a priority for you today?

If you’re having trouble getting started, or it seems like there is nothing good about you, maybe ask a trusted friend or loved one for help. Most of the time others see the good in us when we don’t. Ask them what they might choose for you and why.

For myself, I started perusing this list about two years ago, and I am still modifying it. Take your time. Give it space. Explore. Be curious. Do NOW the exploring you weren’t able to do as a child. Explore the world NOW. There is no timeline for this. You’ll find what you need when you need it.

It’s YOUR identity, do what YOU need to do.

Here’s a list (it’s pretty long) to get you started…

Acceptance: to be open to and accepting of myself, others, life, etc
Accomplishment
Acknowledgment
Adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences
Art
Assertiveness: to respectfully stand up for my rights and request what I want
Authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, real; to be true to myself
Authority
Autonomy
Balance
Belonging
Beauty: to appreciate, create, nurture, or cultivate beauty in myself, others, the environment, etc.
Caring: to be caring towards myself, others, the environment, etc.
Challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, improve
Change
Collaboration
Communication
Community
Compassion: to act with kindness towards those who are suffering
Competency
Connection: to engage fully in whatever I am doing, and be fully present with others
Contribution: to contribute, help, assist, or make a positive difference to myself or other
Conformity: to be respectful and obedient of rules and obligations
Cooperation: to be cooperative and collaborative with others
Courage: to be courageous or brave; to persist in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty
Creativity: to be creative or innovative
Culture
Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded and interested; to explore and discover
Directness
Determination
Decisiveness
Diversity
Elegance
Empowerment
Encouragement: to encourage and reward behaviour that I value in myself or others
Equality: to treat others as equal to myself, and vice versa
Excellence
Expertise
Fairness: to be fair to myself or others
Faith
Fame
Family
Flexibility: to adjust and adapt readily to changing circumstances
Focus
Forgiveness: to be forgiving towards myself or others
Freedom: to live freely; to choose how I live and behave, or help others do likewise
Friendship
Fun
Generosity: to be generous, sharing and giving, to myself or others
Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others and life
Growth
Happiness
Harmony
Honesty: to be honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and others
Humour: to see and appreciate the humorous side of life
Humility: to be humble or modest; to let my achievements speak for themselves
Independence: to be self-supportive, and choose my own way of doing things
Industry: to be industrious, hard-working, dedicated
Innovation
Intimacy: to open up, reveal, and share myself (as I choose) – emotionally or physically – in my close, personal relationships
Integrity
Justice: to uphold justice and fairness
Kindness: to be kind, compassionate, considerate, nurturing or caring towards myself or others
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Love: to act lovingly or affectionately towards myself or others
Loyalty
Mastery
Meaningful Work
Music
Nature
Nurturing
Open-mindedness: to think things through, see things from other’s point of view, and weigh evidence fairly
Optimism
Order: to be orderly and organized
Patience: to wait calmly for what I want
Participation
Partnership
Peace
Performance
Persistence: to continue resolutely, despite problems or difficulties
Pleasure
Power: to strongly influence or wield authority over others
Privacy
Prestige
Productivity
Quality
Reciprocity: to build relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking
Recognition
Relationships
Reliable
Respect: to be respectful towards myself or others; to be polite, considerate and show positive regard
Responsibility: to be responsible and accountable for my actions
Risk-taking
Safety: to secure, protect, or ensure safety of myself and others
Self-awareness: to be aware of my own thoughts, feelings and actions
Self-care: to look after my health and well-being, and get my needs met
Self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals
Self-development: to keep growing, advancing or improving in knowledge, skills, character, or life experience
Self-expression
Self-realization
Self-respect
Service
Sexuality: to explore or express my sexuality
Sincerity
Skillfulness: to continually practice and improve my skills, and apply myself fully when using them
Spirituality: to connect with things bigger than myself
Stability
Status
Success
Supportiveness: to be supportive, helpful, encouraging, and available to myself and others
Teamwork
Tradition
Trust:
Trustworthiness: to be trustworthy, to be loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable
Truth
Variety
Vitality
Wealth
Wisdom

Deep down inside, what is important to you? What do you want your life to stand for? What sort of qualities do you want to cultivate as a person? How do you want to be in your relationships with others?