| In Uncertain Times, Values Show the Way |
The United States stands at a crossroads, with millions confronting a profound sense of uncertainty about the nation’s future. Divisive politics, unstable leadership, and eroding public trust cast long shadows. Economic strains—marked by soaring costs and widening inequality—further deepen the nation’s unease. Alarming expansions of executive power fuel concerns about civil liberties and democratic norms. Beneath these headlines, a deeper emotional current runs strong: anxiety, disorientation, hopelessness, and a pervasive feeling of impotence.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the current moment, hearing about the emotional impacts people are weathering, and wondering what I can offer from a psychological perspective. I’ve had many ideas, but I keep coming back to one: Values. In times of upheaval, maintaining a robust connection to core values is not only personally grounding but socially essential. History shows that in moments of radical change, it is our values—articulated, tested, shared, and reimagined—that offer a path forward. They help individuals reclaim a sense of agency and belonging, and they give communities a moral framework for assessing, challenging, and reconfiguring the systems around them.
Historically, values have served as the moral and cultural bedrock of civilizations, shaping laws, institutions, personal identity, and collective purpose. They orient our decisions, structure relationships, and give coherence to life. Underlying our beliefs about what is right and meaningful, values often operate in the background of our minds and society, mostly taken for granted. We know they are important, but rarely reflect on them. When discussed, they often appear as abstractions, failing to reflect their true weight.
Times of crisis and turmoil (revolutions, wars, political upheavals) bring the importance of values into the foreground as social norms crack and we face ruptures in meaning and shared purpose, compelling us to think deeply about who we are and what we stand for. During times of uncertainty, values become sources of resilience, moral clarity, and purpose. We also become aware of how conflicting values drive social polarization, and centering values can help us to heal those rifts. For individuals, values serve as an internal compass, guiding us as we navigate personal and social change. Times like these not only test the strength of our value systems, but often lead to their renewal, reminding us that values are not fixed, inherited frameworks, but living, psycho/social structures that exist in states of tension and respond to changing conditions. They are core to how culture adapts and evolves.
One value that guides my work and personal life, and one I feel is important to reflect on today, is human interconnectedness—the value of community. I deeply value the ways people are linked and connected to one another in myriad ways —physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We thrive as individuals and as a society when those connections are appreciated and understood as a means to address both the problems in individual lives and the greatest challenges we face as a species. At the core of this value is the belief that every life has meaning and that everyone has something to contribute to the web of connections. In relationships, groups, and society at large, our unique perspectives and contributions create something much greater than the sum of their individual parts. Interconnectedness inherently encompasses the values of empathy (our connecting superpower) and compassion for others’ experiences. We are separate and intertwined at the same time.
I really came to appreciate this value during another time of crisis, during the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco during the 1980’s and early 90’s. The reality of a deadly virus acquired through sharing the physical intimacy of sex made our physical connection undeniable. Severe illness and death also brought to light a primary need for connection and community in order to bear profound suffering, to grieve, and to heal. Yet, fears about the virus, along with the shame and blame toward those infected, caused much of society, including virtually all the nation’s leadership class, to turn away and fail to come to the aid and comfort of the sick and dying. A disturbing DIS-connection.
In San Francisco, however, the value of interconnectedness prevailed. I became part of a spontaneous social uprising where people united for a shared purpose and contributed in countless ways: nursing, research, activism, emotional support, advocacy, disease prevention, caregiving, memorializing, food preparation and delivery, visual arts, storytelling—the list goes on, largely fueled by volunteers. (I was an emotional support volunteer.) There was a place for everyone, and through our mutual efforts to fight the disease and its social conditions, we discovered our connection. It’s hard to imagine an experience like that not yielding a deep appreciation for human connection.
The values that emerged during those years not only changed how we think about disease and healthcare, but I believe also led to changes in how LGBT people were seen and, for the first time, accepted as valued members of society.
A second value that I feel strongly about, and feel is vital as we respond to the current moment, is the value of freedom. Again, this one has a long developmental arc. Certainly, starting with my parents, who instilled in me the value of the free pursuit of ideas and life experiences. They held up education that valued freedom of thought and expression, and admired leaders whose thoughts and actions were not bound by strict convention and who stood up to systems of oppression. Growing up gay, I experienced freedom’s opposite, oppression and social coercion, and admired those who fought for liberation. I also learned that freedom had to be balanced by social responsibility. Without that, freedom was aimless and could become destructive. Later, through my training in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and my clinical work, I came to appreciate the value of freedom even more fully.
Sigmund Freud came of age during a time of radical social transformation. Early 20th-century Vienna was a time when old moral conventions, social hierarchies, and gender roles were being questioned and dethroned. The café society that emerged during that time vigorously pursued the free exchange of ideas, a value that hadn’t been found in Europe for centuries. Freud based his early theory of mental life on his observations that the repression of thoughts and emotions due to social taboos led to physical and psychological symptoms. His “talking cure”, based on the concept of free association, alleviated those symptoms and set the course for a new method of healing– psychotherapy.
Social conditions are vastly different today, and patients suffer less from repression of desire, although internal conflict due to clashes among needs, wants, and social demands continues to drive emotional suffering and symptoms. Helping patients find new frameworks from which to view themselves and the world, to think more freely, and find creative solutions to their developmental challenges remains core to the practice of therapy.
Similarly, we rely on key freedoms to navigate social and political challenges. Freedom of thought, open exchange of ideas, exploration of new knowledge, and association for creative collaboration are more vital than ever. Democracy rests on freedom and the social responsibility of citizenship.
In uncertain times, when fear and fragmentation threaten clarity and cohesion, returning to core values grounds and inspires hope. For me, values like interconnectedness and freedom are not abstract—they are living forces shaping our relationships, responses to suffering, and visions for the future. They anchor me psychologically and socially. Reflecting on upheavals like the civil rights movement and the AIDS epidemic reminds us that values form through collective struggle. Now, reassessing and refining our values is a foundational, transformative act. Such acts shape not only who we are, but who we might become.
