You can find various CBT handouts and worksheets here to enhance therapy or for your own use or interest.
If you would like to access online versions of the CBT worksheets that I use, you can find them at my sister site Online CBT Resources. These include tools to plan a therapy agenda, set goals, plan the focus of treatment, weigh up the pros and cons of change using a decision balance, track your mood, track a specific symptom, monitor feelings, learn chain analysis, schedule activities, plan an exposure hierarchy and complete a diary of exposure exercises, manage stress, increase mindfulness, complete a thought record, plan a behavioural experiment, develop a coping plan to prepare for challenging situations, record your therapy home practice, and make a blue print for relapse prevention.
Please remember that these resources are no substitute for a professional opinion or advice from a suitably qualified and experienced mental health professional. The resources and information supplied here are intended to support good practice, not to replace it. In no event will Bristol CBT be liable for any loss or damage arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website.
Unless otherwise stated, these resources are all © Andrew Grimmer
Handouts and worksheets
The following is a section of handouts I use in my practice that CBT clients and CBT therapists might find useful. Click on the image to open the pdf in a new window.
Behavioural interventions and planning
Achievement, pleasure, connection: a daily diary to record an example of an activity that provided a sense of achievement, pleasure, and connection.
Action plan: a worksheet to create an action plan for a single activity.
Activity schedule: This version of an activity schedule asks you to record five activities per day and score how much they contribute to a sense of achievement, pleasure, or connectedness.
Behavioural activation worksheet: This is my version of Bilsker & Pattison’s behavioural activation focused on four areas: personally rewarding activities, self-care, small tasks, and involvement with family and friends.
Problem-solving worksheet: This is a worksheet to help you to do structured problem-solving.
Goal-setting and values
Life goals: A worksheet to help you think about your life goals for 12 different ares of your life.
One step at a time: a way to describe your goals in small steps and the forces that help and that hold you back.
Progress chart: a spiderweb diagram to help you keep track of your progress in different ares of your life.
Values list: A checklist of values people commonly endorse that they say are important to them and how they live their life.
Interpersonal effectiveness, assertiveness, and communication
Being effective Venn diagram: A diagram to show the importance of keeping your wants in balance with your relationship priorities and self-esteem (adapted from DBT’s interpersonal effectiveness skills).
Communication skills: This is a version of David Burns’ listening and self-expression communication skills from the The Feeling Good Handbook.
Personal bill of rights: This is a list of potential “rights” that you have that you might need to remind yourself of when you are practising being assertive.
Rights and responsibilities worksheet: A way to evaluatee your rights and responsibilities in a situation when you are not sure whether to be assertive.
Risk and relapse management
Blueprint for change: This is a simple relapse management tool focusing on answering six questions to help consolidate your recovery.
Blueprint for change (long): This is the extended version of the Blueprint for change that includes life goals.
Building a personal model of resilience: This is a version of Christine Padesky and Kathleen Mooney’s model of building resilience.
Coping and safety plan: This is a worksheet to help you think about times you might feel at risk of hurting yourself. Please be aware that it was designed for use in Bristol. UK and that some of the phone numbers or contact details may get out of date.
Thought challenging
Fair and realistic thinking: This is a worksheet to help you practise Socratic Questioning and to gather evidence as to the accuracy of your assumptions.
Functional analysis: This is a worksheet to help you track the situations, thoughts and feelings that set you up for a difficult experience and the consequences of how you then acted based on what you thought was happening.
Identifying positive qualities: This is a worksheet to help you focus on some exceptions to negative beliefs about yourself that can fuel low self-esteem.
Anxiety
Action plan reflections: This handout invites you to reflect on a behavioural experiment.
Coping with feared situations: This is a worksheet to help you prepare for going into situations you are concerned about. It is my version of Christine Padesky’s PR plan.
Distance from home: A way of identifying places that feel more or less safe when challenging agoraphobia and panic.
Inhibitory learning theory worksheet: an anxiety-beating plan using inhibitory learning theory to plan a mix of exposure activities.
The seven thoughts of confident people: A list of seven assumptions that confident people generally make about themselves and the world. A useful tool for working with anxious parents of anxious children.
Worry log: A worry log to help you specify what exactly you are concerned about by asking you what you are worrying about, what gives you cause to worry, and what you specific prediction would be if that worry were to come true.
Worry questions: A set of structured questions to go through when you find yourself worrying to specify how likely the concern is, what would be so awful, how you would cope, and who you could turn to for help.
Worry tree: A structured way to ask yourself whether there is anything you can realistically do to tackle a concern that is bothering you.
Stress and coping
Resource bowl: This is a worksheet to evaluate your personal and situational resources and the things that drain your resources – it can be used along with the stress bucket.
Stress bucket: A visual representation of the effect of stress and how it is being managed.
Stress bridge: A visual representation of stress and its impact relative to personal resilience and resources.
Diaries and self-monitoring
Drinking diary: a diary to monitor daily alcohol consumption.
Habit reversal diary: A diary to keep track of body-focused repetitive behaviour such as compulsive hair-pulling (trichotillomania) and skin picking (skin excoriation) when practising Habit Reversal Training.
Home practice diary: A diary to record your CBT home practice and self-help activities.
OCD record of obsessions and compulsions: This is a diary to help you monitor and describe obsessive thoughts and compulsions.
Relaxation diary: This is a worksheet to help you schedule relaxation exercises for anxiety and rate them for effectiveness.
Rumination diary: A record of the times when you find yourself ruminating and how you have directed your attention away from rumination using the “2-minute rule”.
Sleep diary: A diary to record your sleep pattern, along with instructions on how to use it – adapted from Edinger and Carney’s “Overcoming Insomnia – A CBT Approach”.
Thought diary: A way to record and challenge your negative automatic thoughts, with instructions.
Compassion
Three emotional systems: An adaptation of Paul Gilbert’s representation of the soothing, drive, and threat-based emotional systems and the role of compassion in tackling dysregulated emotion and shame.
Anger
Understanding anger: A tool to help you to understand anger and aggression.
Long-term health conditions (LTCs)
Ways of responding to my LTC: A typology of more or less helpful ways a person with an LTC might behave and their consequences.
I hope to add more of these resources in time. Please feel free to get in touch if you would like more information
Andrew Grimmer