What if your core values are really your dominant parts?

If your coach training was anything like mine, you probably learned methods to help clients identify their core values, and use them to navigate their lives. I was trained that we each have a few core values which are so important to us that we feel a sense of integrity and authenticity when we honor them, and a kind of moral distress when we are unable to do so.

Over the past few years, there’s been a gradual shift in how I think about the premise and practice of working with core values. As the framework of Inner Team Dialogue has begun to assume a more central role in how I work with clients, I’ve come to see the traditional approach to identifying and leveraging core values as constricting rather than liberating.

Through a parts lens, a core value is what one of your parts believes is most important.

For example, your Artist part will have a core value around creativity. Your Pusher part will value achievement. Your Rational part will value clarity and objectivity.

Naming achievement as a core value is like saying, “There is nothing more important than what I achieve.” In parts terms, that’s affirming that your Pusher is right. You’re singling out this achievement-focused part of you, and declaring that it’s a north star to steer by.

Not coincidentally, the feeling of rightness that comes when you honor a core value is exactly the experience of operating from a dominant Insider part. When an Insider is running your Inner Team, it’s perspective on the world feels true, self-evident and necessary. The part wants you to believe that any deviation from its rules and priorities is an act of self-betrayal. The feeling of moral distress when you don’t honor a core value is the Insider warning you that you’re in danger.

When coaching clients align their behavior and choices with their core values, what they’re really doing is doubling down on their existing identity. A more liberating path is to expand your understanding of who you are beyond your existing identity.

For example, if you profess a core value of achievement and align your behavior accordingly, what happens to the parts of you which don’t see achievement as particularly important? They get overlooked, ignored, marginalized, perhaps even judged as negative, or called a saboteur. In the language of Inner Team Dialogue, any part of you which you perceive as interfering with your core value of achievement is going to become an Outsider.

Why does this matter? Because you are more than three or four dominant parts, and their associated values. Valuing achievement does not require that you shut down parts

for whom kindness, spiritual connection or playful mischief are core values. But when you double down on a core value, you’re essentially crowding out these other parts of who you are.

Your dominant Insider parts – and the core values they hold - produce many of your greatest strength. But excluding Outsider parts carries a significant cost.

Not only do you lose connection with the Outsider’s potential gifts, you’re creating a fertile ground for the Inner Critic. If you behave in a way that contradicts what your core value/Insider demands, your Critic will use this as ammunition for an attack. For example, if you value achievement, but you spend a weekend napping and watching Netflix, your Inner Critic is going to use it as evidence of your worthlessness. Your seemingly positive core value of achievement just became a stick to beat yourself with.

What if, instead of privileging certain parts of yourself above others, you could stay open to the possibility that you’re more than your Insiders, your most dominant parts?

What if you could respond with curiosity rather than self-judgment when you behave in a way that contradicts those parts’ values?

What if you opened yourself to experimenting with an unfamiliar part of yourself?

Imagine you could explore - with delight - the part of you which wants you to sink into the couch for a weekend, rather than judging and ruthlessly suppressing it, and shaming yourself for the impulse?

The core values model – in which you’re animated by three or four deeply held values – comes from a Monomind assumption that “I am this, and not that.” What ITD offers is a perspective that celebrates our multiplicity, that doesn’t need to reduce it: “I am this, and that.”  The multiple-mind perspective at the center of all forms of parts work is an invitation to experience the widest range of who you are, contradictions, complexity and all.  And with inner diversity comes behavioral range, adaptability, and the feeling of being at choice about who you are and how you show up in the world.