Clashing Values

Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally published on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, September 2014)

In the almost 40 years I have been in practice, I can’t count the number of times I have worked with someone who has a value system that is different than mine.  A number of weeks ago I wrote about how our differences still offer opportunities to foster deeper connections.  In that post, I talked about differences in aspects of our identities and experiences that may, in reality, create emotional and present moment experiences that are more similar than different.  And while I still believe that to be 100% true, I began to think about the times I have worked with an individual or family whose visible and invisible identities may be similar, but whose values have fundamentally conflicted with mine.

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