Worksheets and Templates

Anxiety and depression can make a week feel empty, unproductive, or indistinguishable from the one before it. The Activity Diary helps you record what you did across the week and rate each activity for pleasure and mastery.

Use it to identify:

• activities that provide enjoyment or comfort;
• tasks that create a sense of accomplishment;
• periods in which mood and energy tend to fall;
• activities that cost more or offer more than expected; and
• one small change worth testing during the following week.

This is not a productivity scorecard. Activities are rated against your current capacity, not against what you used to do or what someone else can manage.

Includes: instructions, an hourly weekly diary, pleasure and mastery ratings, and a weekly review.

Some tasks remain stuck because they are being imagined at full size. This worksheet helps you define an observable goal and divide it into smaller steps, arranged from least to most difficult.

Use it when you are:

• avoiding a task because it feels too large;
• returning to an activity after anxiety, depression, illness, or interruption;
• practising gradual exposure;
• having difficulty knowing where to begin; or
• repeatedly attempting a step that may need to be made smaller.

The worksheet includes a practice log so you can compare how difficult each step feels before and after completing it. The aim is not a single heroic attempt. It is repeatable progress at a pace your body can tolerate.

Includes: instructions, a seven-step planning staircase, difficulty ratings, and a practice log.

Low mood often removes motivation before it removes the need for activity. Behavioural activation begins by reversing that sequence: choosing and scheduling an activity before waiting to feel ready.

This preparation worksheet helps you:

• identify activities that once felt enjoyable or satisfying;
• distinguish pleasure from mastery;
• compare predicted effort with actual effort;
• test whether low mood is accurately forecasting an experience; and
• create balanced lists of activities to schedule.

The goal is not to fill your calendar or force yourself to be productive. It is to choose small activities that provide information about what affects your mood, energy, and sense of agency.

Includes: mastery and pleasure mapping, an activity-rating scale, a prediction experiment, and scheduling lists.

Automatic thoughts often arrive too quickly to examine. A thought record helps you identify the thought carrying the most emotional charge, compare it with the available evidence, and develop an alternative interpretation that accounts for the full situation.

Use it when:

• a situation produces a strong emotional response;
• you notice yourself avoiding, checking, withdrawing, or reacting quickly;
• a familiar conclusion about yourself or another person appears;
• you want to distinguish feelings from interpretations; or
• you need to determine whether the thought or the situation requires action.

The aim is accurate thinking, not compulsory positive thinking. Sometimes the evidence supports the original thought. When it does, the worksheet can help you consider what the situation costs, what you want to do, and who else may need to know.

Includes: instructions, a worked example, an evidence-based thought record, and space to revisit feelings after reflection.

A conventional pros-and-cons list often misses the parts of a decision where ambivalence actually lives: the advantages of staying the same and the disadvantages of making the change.

This four-part worksheet helps you consider:

• the advantages of changing;
• the disadvantages of changing;
• the advantages of not changing; and
• the disadvantages of not changing.

You can then identify which considerations carry the most weight and distinguish what is within your control from what depends on money, safety, housing, immigration status, family, institutions, or other people.

The worksheet does not make the decision for you. It helps you see the decision more completely.

Includes: instructions, a worked example, a four-part decision grid, weighting prompts, and reflection questions.

A thought record asks whether the evidence supports your conclusion. This worksheet begins from the possibility that it does. The relationship may not be working. The environment may be unsafe or unsustainable. The problem may require action rather than reinterpretation.

The worksheet guides you through:

• describing the situation in observable terms;
• identifying feelings and thoughts;
• defining one problem at a time;
• setting a specific and achievable goal;
• generating possible responses before evaluating them;
• comparing the strongest options;
• choosing an action; and
• reviewing what happened.

The process does not assign responsibility for structural conditions or another person’s conduct to you. It focuses on what may be available to you within the situation, including seeking support, making a complaint, reducing exposure, leaving, or bringing someone else into the process.

Includes: instructions, a worked example, a complete problem-solving sequence, an action plan, and an outcome review.

Housing choices are often shaped by deadlines, limited availability, financial constraints, discrimination, and decisions made by landlords, programs, or institutions. This worksheet helps separate the part of the situation you can act on from the conditions requiring advocacy, support, or action by someone with greater authority.

Use it to:

• describe the immediate housing situation and deadline;
• identify the specific problem in front of you;
• clarify what information you still need;
• establish realistic goals;
• generate and compare possible actions;
• identify who will do what and by when; and
• reassess the situation when new information appears.

This worksheet cannot make an inadequate housing option safe or create options that do not exist. It can help you make the decision using clearer information and preserve a record of how it was reached.

Includes: instructions, a worked housing example, structured problem solving, an action plan, and a follow-up review.

Housing decisions can involve dozens of competing considerations. This worksheet helps you identify your requirements, preferences, priorities, and possible trade-offs before attending viewings or comparing specific options.

It covers:

• safety and security;
• location and neighbourhood;
• accessibility and apartment features;
• cost and financial considerations;
• building policies and maintenance;
• transportation and essential services;
• family, community, and social needs; and
• requirements shaped by disability, identity, safety, or discrimination.

A requirement is different from a preference. An elevator required for mobility, proximity to essential care, or a neighbourhood where you can move safely should not be weighed against conveniences as though they were interchangeable.

Includes: a 37-item criteria inventory, space for additional requirements, a top-five priority exercise, and a trade-off map.

A life chart places periods of depression, elevation, and relative stability on a shared timeline. It then adds major events, relationships, losses, moves, work changes, substance use, medication, therapy, and hospital care.

Use it to explore:

• what tends to happen before a mood episode;
• how long episodes have lasted;
• whether particular disruptions appear repeatedly;
• what changed after treatment began;
• how substance use and mood shifts overlap; and
• what was different during longer periods of stability.

The chart identifies sequences and questions; it does not establish causation. Dates may be approximate, especially when mapping earlier periods.

Completing a life chart can bring difficult periods together on one page. Consider doing it with support and planning what you will do afterward.

Includes: instructions, a worked example, short- and long-term timelines, a mood scale, and a trigger-pattern review.

General descriptions of mania and depression may be difficult to recognize in daily life. This worksheet helps you describe how mood, sleep, energy, concentration, creativity, social activity, self-perception, restlessness, and sensitivity to noise change during elevated, depressed, and stable periods.

Begin by describing your usual baseline. Specific observations, such as hours slept, money spent, messages sent, or changes in social activity, are often easier to recognize than broad labels.

Use the worksheet to:

• establish what “well” or relatively stable looks like for you;
• translate symptoms into your own words;
• identify the areas that change earliest;
• invite observations from someone who knows your patterns; and
• decide who should notice and respond to particular changes.

Recording valued experiences such as creativity, confidence, or sociability does not mean agreeing to give them up. It helps distinguish a good period from the beginning of a change that may carry costs.

Includes: instructions, a worked example, a personalized comparison table, early-warning questions, and a support-person plan.

A mood rating records what happened. A mood plan identifies what you have agreed to do when the rating reaches a particular level.

This worksheet helps you:

• define your own mood scale;
• establish a practical response for different levels;
• record one rating each day;
• identify direction and change across several weeks;
• notice whether planned actions were carried out; and
• revise actions that repeatedly prove unrealistic.

The response attached to each level should be specific enough to use when energy, judgment, or concentration has changed. Plans for more severe elevated or depressed states should be developed in advance with appropriate clinical and personal support.

Includes: instructions, an example with preplanned actions, a weekly tracker, review questions, and a plan-revision table.

Thoughts associated with elevated mood may feel exciting, unusually clear, urgent, or unquestionably correct. They may involve a major idea, an impulsive decision, or an expectation that something important is about to happen.

This adapted thought record asks:

• What is the thought asking you to do?
• What would acting now commit you to?
• What does your recent history show?
• Which limits are being treated as though they do not apply?
• Could the idea remain valid without requiring immediate action?
• What plan would protect sleep, money, relationships, safety, and future choice?

The aim is not to prove that an idea is bad. It is to evaluate its urgency, timing, scale, and likely consequences. The final step is to make a concrete plan and share it with someone who knows you.

This worksheet works best when completed before acting. It should not be relied on as the only safeguard when judgment, sleep, spending, driving, safety, or contact with reality has already changed substantially.

Includes: common thinking patterns during elevation, examples, a worked thought record, an evidence review, and a concrete action plan.