Countering Anxiety Thought Log Worksheet
GinaMarie Guarino, LMHC
Worksheet updated on July 20th, 2021
It is not uncommon for a client to feel like a victim of their own anxiety. Anxiety is a difficult feeling to live with, and it is often chronic for people who seek counseling.
Anxiety brings ruminating negative thoughts that can have a major impact on a client’s ability to get through their day. When a client is suffering from anxiety it is important for them to learn how to challenge their negative thoughts to ease symptoms.
About This Worksheet
This is the Countering Anxiety Thought Log worksheet. This worksheet uses skills and practices from cognitive behavioral therapies to help clients practice skills to challenge their anxious thoughts.
This worksheet helps a client identify patterns of anxious thinking. It helps clients learn how to minimize the stress that comes from their own anxiety.
Instructions
It is important for a client to review the process of this worksheet with a mental health professional before practicing it on their own. This worksheet provides a brief overview of the importance of countering anxious, negative and obsessive thoughts to manage anxiety.
The client is asked to complete the chart whenever they have an anxious thought. The worksheet walks through asks 5 questions:
- What is the anxious thought?
- What triggered the anxious thought?
- What makes the anxious thought a valid thought to have?
- What evidence do you have about the situation that challenges and invalidates the anxious thought?
- What are you going to remind yourself when you have this anxious thought again?
In working through this process the client learns how to use an objective perspective of a situation to work through their own anxiety. It removes the anxious lens that causes anxiety for the client. This helps them understand the situation from a healthy perspective.
