Practice Healthy Differentiation: Skill 1: Articulate the core values by which you make major decisions

When you have a strong sense of healthy differentiation, you can access a new sense of both autonomy and intimacy in your relationships. When you are not afraid of losing yourself in or being controlled by another, you can allow yourself to feel deeply connected while standing strong in your own sense of self.

With healthy differentiation, your relationships transform from something you are beholden to into something that supports you in new adventures of discovery and learning in the world.

There are many ways to cultivate a sense of healthy differentiation. One important way is being able to stand clearly in the values that guide your life. When you are grounded in your values, you can make effective decisions for yourself and engage in effective collaboration with others. Healthy differentiation also involves learning to tolerate disharmony, self-soothe, offer compassion, and set boundaries.

It’s about celebrating and honoring differences and embracing your own uniqueness in the world. To differentiate is to decide upon the boundaries of self and create a sense of identity. Developmentally, babies are in the process of doing this when they grasp concepts like “my hand, my foot,” etc. Teenagers often differentiate by distancing from their parents and trying on social identities like the hippie, the jock, etc. Adults often differentiate and create identity relative to a career or role in society. 

At a more subtle level, from a place of healthy differentiation you can speak up even when you know others won't agree with you. You can respect another’s view, even when it is very different from your own. You can trust yourself to maintain a sense of self and self-care, even when you relax deeply into intimacy with another. You are able to manage the reactivity or discomfort that comes from either risking greater intimacy or potential separation. This last point shows up, perhaps, most often in romantic relationships. 

Differentiation could be described as being authentically who you are in the presence of who they are. If you are someone who thinks you are more connected to yourself and happier when you are not in a significant relationship, you may have developed your individuality, but likely have difficulty with differentiation.

Skill 1: Articulate the core values by which you make major decisions

There are many ways to cultivate healthy differentiation. One important way is to stand clearly in the values that guide your life; being able to state them explicitly for yourself and for others is an important part of this process. You can begin to articulate your guiding values by examining major life decisions. What needs were most important to you when you made these decisions? 

Practice

1. Take a moment and write down 2-4 major life decisions.

2. Look at the list of universal needs and identify 1-3 needs that stand out as important parts of how you made those decisions.  

3. For each decision, identify the strategies that did fulfill these needs. Take a moment to take that in and celebrate.

4. Is there something you would do differently now to live more fully in alignment with these needs for future major decisions?