Values Clarification

 

Values are basically one's sense of right and wrong, and tend to influence your attitude and behaviour. So where do our values come from? Are they influenced by our culture, religion, friends or society? I think it’s a combination of all four.

 Most of our values are engrained from early childhood into adolescence. Firstly from our parents and family who teach us what is acceptable and what is not. By adolescence we start getting influenced by our friends and other elements in our lives. Negative behaviours may be encouraged, and the values engrained by the parents may be challenged. Culture and religion plays a major role as well. Our roles in society and acceptable behaviours are defined mostly by the cultural and religious norms instilled by our parents. But again societal norms gained from school or friends  challenge these cultural and religious norms.

Personally, majority of my values come from my mother and they are very ingrained in religion. Now that I am married, I see myself behaving and responding to situations in a very similar manner to her, and I  can see myself instilling the same values into my children. Again these values are very religious and cultural, although society as a whole is moving away from this and we are embracing other values. For example, culturally and religiously it is not important for me as a women to gain secular education and work. But, the changing norms of society have influenced my family, and they now see the importance of me gaining a good education. However, this has not changed the most basic cultural and religious values. I still see marriage and having a family as very important and for this reason I got married at a young age while continuing my studies.

My values also  played a huge role in choosing my career choice. Money is so important to many youth , and I admit I had an inner struggle myself. Choose Pharmacy and earn a big salary for something I don’t enjoy, or do OT where the salary is not so good but the personal satisfaction is great. Ultimately I chose what I thought I would enjoy the most. This was ultimately because my value of being of value to society over rode my value for money. I truly believe, from an Islamic perspective, that no matter what work I do, I will still earn what God has written in my fate. Which means I need not put money as prerogative. I also believe that helping people as an OT, and making a change in their lives, earns me great reward, something which we all religiously want to aspire to. So even something ordinary like choosing a career had massive influences from my religious beliefs. 

So how will my values impact on my professionalism as an OT? Although we think ourselves as open minded, believe it or not, we automatically react to others according to our values. We are so quick to judge and put people into boxes, without realizing the context which they come from. As a OT class we had a growth exercise requiring us to analyse our views on homosexuality and abortion. I am strongly opposed to both due to religious reasons, but even religion allows for us to be empathetic towards others, and see them from their context. For example, I wouldn’t choose abortion myself, but I can understand that someone else may not have the caring family, the strong values or the economic  advantage I have, and therefore may land themselves in a situation requiring an abortion. Therefore by putting ourselves in the patients position and not judging them for their actions, we can separate ourselves and be unbiased in treatment.

Although the purpose of the exercise we did as a class was to make us see how our  values may bias our thoughts towards our patients, I think my values are what will make me empathize and view my patients without bias. My values have taught me never to judge someone, because you don’t know if you would behave the same way if you were in their situation. Only God knows the status of every person, and by judging someone you think you are superior to them, when instead you may be far worse.

As a therapist never think you are superior to your patients. I have realized that as much as we want the patient to progress for them, we also want them to progress for us. Why? Because their progress it makes us feel better, it boosts our self esteem and it adds meaning to our lives. Its ironic, because our occupation helps us achieve the very thing we as OT's strive to achieve in our patients...