Thought record worksheet

Psychology Tools says thought records make negative automatic thoughts visible, help you identify problems with your thinking and can help you make changes to it.

A self-help workbook hosted by an NHS trust describes cognitive restructuring as a way to challenge unhelpful thoughts when you feel low or anxious: you identify the thought, gather evidence about how accurate it is, and use that evidence to develop a more realistic and helpful thought.

On the sheet below, one thought that feels like the whole truth becomes seven boxes: the scene, the feeling, the thought, two lists side by side, a sentence of your own that takes both lists into account, and a second rating.

The workbook suggests recording the situation, the thought, the emotion and how intense it was as soon as you can, so you can say accurately how much you believed the thought at the time. If the thought comes as a question, such as “What if…?”, it suggests answering it, to see what you are predicting will cause you distress.

1. Situation. When and where it was, who was around, what had just happened. Keep it to what a bystander could have seen.
2. Feelings. Psychology Tools suggests describing each emotion in one word, such as angry or sad, rating its strength from 0 to 100%, and noting the thoughts or images you had just before the change in how you felt.
3. Automatic thought. The words or picture that went through your head. If several came, pick the one that carries the strongest feeling.
4. Evidence for, then evidence against. The workbook suggests putting the thought on trial, as in a court case: gather the evidence that backs it up and the evidence against it, and include only facts, not your own opinions or feelings.
5. Balanced thought. The aim is not to disprove the original thought but to take all the evidence into account. One way to write the new thought is to join a sentence summing up the evidence for and one summing up the evidence against with “and” or “but”.
6. Feelings afterwards. Then picture the situation again with the new thought in place of the old one, and consider how it might change the intensity of the emotion. The workbook says the distress may only drop slightly at first, and that with practice unpleasant emotions lessen and become more manageable.

This is a made-up example, written for this page; it is not anyone’s real record. It shows how short each box can be.

Notice what the balanced thought keeps: not being asked and the two quiet weeks still sting, and it says so. What changes is that the thought now has to fit the birthday invitation and my own silence as well.

The thought check is for a thought that keeps circling and needs sorting before you choose a next step. A thought record is for one moment when your mood dropped: it keeps the feeling and its rating next to the thought, so you can see whether weighing the evidence moved the number.