Coping Skills Worksheets for Adults

Therapists use a variety of tools—including worksheets—to facilitate client healing. The coping skills worksheets for adults provided in this article can help to foster healthy behavioral and emotional processes. 

Regardless of their reason for attending therapy, most clients are looking for helpful ways to solve their problems. They’re in search of skills they can use to cope with daily stressors and overcome past failures. 

With that in mind, these free printable coping skills worksheets for adults are helpful resources you can use with your clients.

Coping skills are an essential focus of treatment plans. We teach clients coping skills in session and encourage them to practice them outside of sessions.

These coping skills worksheets for adults are designed to help your clients navigate intense emotional reactions and reduce triggers. 

Overview of coping skills

A coping skill is any activity or behavior that is used to relieve tension. 

Coping skills fall into two main categories:healthy and unhealthy. 

Healthy coping skills benefit our entire being and don’t cause harm to us or others. Examples include self-care activities, such as painting a picture, running, taking a bath, walking a dog, or reading. 

Unhealthy coping skills are behaviors and activities which seem to relieve tension in the moment, but have harmful consequences. Self-injury, for example, releases emotional tension while simultaneously damaging the body. Excessive drinking, while seemingly enjoyable in the moment, results in impaired decision-making and can lead to illness.

Encouraging and developing clients’ ability to identify and practice healthy coping skills is a core goal of counseling. 

During sessions, we help our clients assess what coping skills are truly working for them and which are not. 

We collaborate with clients to develop a coping skills storehouse, by providing them with coping skills exercises and coping skills worksheets for adults, which they can use on their own, as needed.

Adult coping skills worksheets and exercises  

Many adult clients have been using the same coping skills for years—whether they serve them or not. 

Clients may be applying healthy coping skills already, but not consistently or with enough intent to gain significant benefits. They may be using unhealthy coping skills without understanding the consequences, or even knowing about better options.

We can teach coping skills to our adult clients in every session. These coping skills worksheets for adults can be used structurally to open or close the session, or spontaneously in response to a client’s needs during the session. 

My favorite coping skill exercises to use with adult clients are included in SimplePractice’s free printable coping skills worksheets for adults and described below. 

1. Thought stopping and replacement

In this exercise, you will explain to your client how our thoughts are strongly linked to our emotions and actions. 

Ask your client to read through a list of common negative thoughts, and select the ones they frequently encounter. 

Then, process the effect those thoughts have on your client’s attitude and behavior.

Discuss more helpful thought replacements, and encourage your client to think of a bright red stop sign popping up in their minds every time the negative thought appears, so they can replace it with the positive one. 

For example, the critical thought “I must be perfect” can be discarded for the more useful “I can try my best.”

This is a great coping skills exercise for people with anxiety.

2. Finger-tracing deep breathing

Ask your client to hold one hand in front of them, with their palm facing you. 

Direct them to place their opposite pointer finger at the base of that hand, and trace up and down each of their fingers in sync with their breath. Guide them in tracing up their thumb as they breathe in through their nose, then tracing down their thumb as they breathe out through their mouth, and so on. 

After they’ve traced their entire hand, ask them to repeat the activity in the opposite direction. 

Ask your client if they notice any changes to their stress level. Then, provide examples of how they could use this coping skill in their daily life, such as while they are sitting in traffic or listening to a tense phone call.

3. Emotion scaling

Explain to your client how regular self-assessments can protect them from emotional outbursts. If we recognize elevated or rising stress levels early in our day, we can proactively use healthy coping skills to lower our stress. 

Provide your client with a pen and paper, and ask them to draw a scale from 0 to 10. 

Describe #0 as the “sweet spot,” where everything is calm and pleasant. Tell your client to write next to #0 what they’re doing or picturing when they experience no stress. Next, refer to #10 as the “crisis mode,” where panic or overwhelm is dominant.

Ask your client to explain what situations would fit into this category, and to write them down next to #10. Guide your client through the remaining numbers, helping them to identify their escalation of stress. 

After they finish, ask them to identify what stress level they’re currently at and why. If the stress level is above #0, offer other coping skills to use during your session to help them lower their stress level.

4. Favorite thoughts

Explain to your client that dwelling on negative thoughts typically results in us feeling angry, sad, or afraid. To counteract these thoughts, we can bring pleasant ones to our minds instead. 

Tell your client to relax in their seat as you ask them five questions about their favorite things. Urge them to think about every possible element of their favorite thing as they answer your questions, like the colors, smells, and sensations involved. 

Be creative with your questions and let your client share as much as they choose. Ask questions like:

• What’s your favorite snack? 
• What’s your favorite season? 
• What’s your favorite place to visit? 
• What’s your favorite outfit? 
• What’s your favorite room in your house? 

Afterwards, ask your client if they can recognize any new emotions which arose during the activity. If they report increased satisfaction or calmness, encourage them to use this coping skill whenever they experience negative thoughts.

5. Three-three-six deep breathing

Describe to your client how stress often impacts our breathing cadence. When we feel emotionally tense, our breathing becomes imbalanced. We can use deep breathing exercises during these times to regain control.

Hold one hand up in front of your client so they can see you count on your fingers as you model three-three-six deep breathing. Breathe in through your nose for three seconds, hold your breath for three seconds, then breathe out through your mouth for six seconds. 

Lead your client in several rounds of this breathing, noting if there are any physical changes in their stature (i.e., their shoulders drop down or face relaxes). 

Brainstorm situations together in which they can use this deep breathing exercise, and discuss modifications to better meet their needs, such as lengthening the count to four-four-eight or five-five-ten.

SimplePractice’s free printable coping skills worksheets for adults

SimplePractice offers a variety of coping skills worksheets for adults. These worksheets focus on different populations and presenting problems. 

An overview of coping skills is given, along with suggestions for how to select the most useful worksheets for your clients. Specific directions are provided to help you implement them with your client.

The coping skills handout for adults can be used within sessions or given to clients to use outside of sessions.

They can serve as a guide for your session, allowing you time to review and practice the coping skills with your client. They can also be assigned as homework, giving your client more time to reflect on and implement the skills involved.

These worksheets can also be re-used throughout treatment.

Some worksheets, such as those which ask clients to identify and rate current life stressors, can be used as assessment tools to help us gauge clients’ progress. 

For example, we can compare a client’s original report of family, work, and financial stressors to their more current report of mild work stressors using the worksheets. This comparison is useful in making updates to treatment plans and helping our clients build self-awareness.

Summary

Coping skills are instrumental in counseling work. Our clients need an explanation of healthy coping skills in order to better overcome their problems. 

Through collaboration, we can help our clients develop a personalized cache of coping skills that they can practice on their own. By using developed resources, such as those available on SimplePractice, we can better equip our clients with the coping skills they need.

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