Category · Mind & Cognition
Anxiety tells a story. These tools don't argue with the story — they change your relationship to it. Defusion loosens the grip. Reframing adds evidence. Catastrophe scaling shrinks the imagined impact. Each tool is a small piece of cognitive behavioural therapy, ACT or compassion-focused therapy, packaged so you can use it today.
ACT's core move: change from "I am anxious" to "I notice I'm having the thought that I am anxious." Standard defusion worksheets just ask you to repeat the thought. This one rewrites it four ways, scores believability before/after, and surfaces the cognitive distortion behind it.
Most CBT worry worksheets have a single "evidence against" column. That doesn't match how worry actually works — worry works because the brain can generate more evidence for a fear than against it in seconds. This matrix forces balanced evidence and adds an "alternative explanation" column that targets the rumination loop.
Anxiety collapses two variables into one: how bad and how likely. The collapse is the problem. Plotting them on a 10×10 grid makes them separable — and reveals that most fears are catastrophic if they happen but unlikely. The opposite of anxiety is rarely "relaxation"; it's "accurate prediction".
Padesky's classic 7-column CBT thought record, with two of our additions: a body sensation column (so you can correlate thought and interoception) and an action urge column (so the loop doesn't just dissolve into abstraction). Print or screenshot — this is a worksheet, not a quiz.
| Situation | Thought | Emotion (0–100) | Body | Distortion | Balanced thought | New emotion / urge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dan Siegel's model: between hyperarousal (panic, anger, racing) and hypoarousal (shutdown, numb, foggy) sits the window of tolerance where you can think, feel and act. The check below uses nine body/thought indicators to estimate which zone you're in today and prescribes the lightest tool that brings you back.
Porges's polyvagal theory in three states: ventral vagal (safe & social), sympathetic (mobilising), dorsal vagal (shutdown). This short quiz maps you to one of the three, with a regulation path that respects that state. Regulation from dorsal looks nothing like regulation from sympathetic.
Adapted from Neff & Germer's "Self-Compassion Break". Answer five short prompts; the tool assembles a complete letter addressed to yourself, from yourself. Most online generators copy a fixed template; this one recombines based on which emotion you name and what you say you needed that you didn't get.
No. They translate pieces of evidence-based therapy into self-guided tools. If you're in active treatment, share the worksheets with your therapist — many will recognise the formats and integrate them.
Because it interrupts the automatic grip. That's the job. Sing-song repetition especially feels mechanical on purpose — you're using novelty to break the thought's spell.
You don't need to label it precisely. The action — rephrasing, balancing evidence, identifying alternative explanations — works regardless of which name you put on the pattern. The distortion selector is shorthand, not a quiz.