Free Anxiety Coping Worksheets
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Looking for free anxiety worksheets to use with your clients?
You’re in the right place. We’ve got several anxiety worksheet PDFs, including a coping skills for anxiety PDF, that can be used in session with clients or given to clients to fill out on their own.
Anxiety coping worksheets can help you teach and explore therapeutic approaches with clients.
Anxiety can show up in a multitude of ways, and it’s associated with a variety of sources and diagnoses.
Consequently, therapists need a diverse set of tools and skills to help clients address and cope with challenges and stressors. Every therapist’s toolkit will benefit from a set of resources designed to address anxiety in their clients. We’ve simplified this for you with downloadable anxiety worksheets, found below.
The goals of these anxiety coping worksheets include increasing your client’s awareness of their own anxiety experience, identifying their triggers, improving their confidence in managing their anxiety, and helping establish new behavioral, emotional, and cognitive patterns in their lives.
Expectations of anxiety worksheets
The way in which providers explain anxiety coping worksheets to clients is important and sets the tone for how these visual handouts will be used.
First, be sure to instill appropriate expectations of the benefits and limits of each particular anxiety worksheet PDF.
Anxiety self-help worksheets can be helpful tools—increasing insight for clients and even becoming catalysts for change.
They can provide the translation of therapeutic theory into practical reality for your client’s lives.
As a mental health clinician, it’s important to be confident in the worksheets that one selects and uses with clients.
At the same time, keep in mind that worksheets are not magic solutions. They are unlikely to radically change the life of a client after one use.
Anxiety coping worksheets are best viewed as supportive tools in the often subtle process of client change.
Worksheets are facilitators of learning, self-awareness, and change that can be used in conjunction with appropriate therapeutic modalities.
Anxiety worksheet PDFs
There are free anxiety worksheets linked within this article for clinicians’ use.
These anxiety worksheet PDFs are focused on various approaches to treating anxiety.
They can be used when introducing new concepts to clients, but can also be used on an ongoing basis to reinforce healthy client patterns.
Below are explanations of each worksheet and how to effectively use them with clients.
Anxiety worksheet #1: The whole picture of anxiety
This worksheet is designed to help clients understand the various ways anxiety manifests itself in their lives.
This is an anxiety worksheet for kids, teens, and adults.
It is best to use it during a moment of anxiety, or soon after that moment.
This anxiety coping worksheet prompts the client to do the following:
- Name their anxiety with specific language.
- Identify where they feel the anxiety in their body.
- Identify a thought that is feeding their anxiety.
- Rate the intensity level of their anxiety.
- Identify any associated behaviors.
- Notice the effects of their anxiety.
These six prompts can help the client increase their self-awareness and identify what triggers their anxiety, and in turn, manage their anxiety more effectively.
Naming the experience of anxiety with specific language helps the client connect the emotional and rational parts of their brain, which helps them to facilitate better emotional regulation.
Having clients gain awareness and insight into their own cognitive and behavioral experiences and patterns of anxiety is foundational to rehabituating their reactions to anxiety.
As anxiety is often a somatic experience, it is also essential to help clients connect with the associated physical experiences in their body when anxious.
Rating the intensity of the anxiety is important because it helps the client acknowledge the ever-changing nature of their emotions, and may instill hope for change during moments of heightened anxiety.
The second side of the worksheet helps clients take their awareness and turn it into supportive actions.
On the second side of this anxiety worksheet PDF, the client is prompted to:
- Identify an alternative thought that can help reduce the intensity of anxiety.
- Think of some activities that can calm their body and nervous system.
- Brainstorm some anxiety-reducing behaviors they can implement.
After attempting these self-identified anxiety-reducing strategies, they are prompted to:
- Reassess the intensity of their anxiety.
- Notice the effects of their efforts.
This reflection helps the client to gain insight into what works for them. Additionally, the reward of their efforts being effective can reinforce new patterns for the client.
Anxiety worksheet #2: Anxiety in control
This anxiety coping worksheet can also be used as an anxiety worksheet for teens or adults.
It is best used for clients whose anxiety is fueled by control issues.
Anxiety can be prompted when clients repeatedly try to control people, places, and situations that they can’t. Conversely, anxiety can also be triggered when clients avoid taking appropriate control of things that are within their realm of influence or responsibility.
This worksheet asks the client to identify a specific situation, and then separate the specific components of that situation which are within or outside of their control.
Once they’ve identified this separation, they are prompted to develop acceptance based statements for the things they have acknowledged that they cannot control.
Finally, they are prompted to pick one of the things they can control, and to list out a few actionable steps.
The last step empowers clients to exercise agency over aspects of their lives within their control and help them make a change.
Anxiety worksheet #3: What ifs
This anxiety worksheet PDF is intended for adults, but could also be used with teens—given the simple layout.
“What ifs” can be major orchestrators of anxiety and panic.
While it is normal to plan for the future or contemplate possible outcomes, anxiety producing “what ifs” have a strong negative bias and can throw clients into loops of rumination and over-thinking.
The main problem is that negative possible outcomes become the primary focus, while other—less negative—possibilities fade into the background.
This worksheet helps clients to identify the negative thoughts they may be fixating on, and how their anxiety causes them to dwell on negative predictions.
The other columns of the worksheet help clients to balance their thinking by also brainstorming moderate “what ifs” and positive “what ifs.”
When clients start to consider and imagine a balanced picture of possibilities in a given situation, this can greatly reduce their anxiety.
Anxiety worksheet #4: Social anxiety
This anxiety coping worksheet is intended for use with adult clients, and is best utilized soon after a social interaction.
Social interactions can be riddled with anxiety for many people.
The source of the anxiety often relates to a client’s attempt at mind-reading, or negatively predicting how certain interactions will play out.
Fear of judgment, embarrassment, or interactions going poorly can lead to high levels of anxiety and avoidance behaviors.
In many instances, the reality of a social interaction does not go as badly as a client initially predicts or perceives.
This anxiety coping worksheet helps clients to gain awareness of their social predictions and the level of anxiety they produce.
The client is then prompted to reflect on what actually happened during the interaction and their level of anxiety—both during and after the event.
Finally, the client is prompted to compare their initial predictions to the reality of what happened in order to develop more objective insights and conclusions.
When they are later tempted to worry about upcoming social interactions, they can use these learnings from the coping skills for anxiety PDFs to temper their anxious thoughts.
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