Print it for a CBT session, counselling appointment or home reflection when someone needs a simple way to separate feelings from thoughts. The sheet explains how thoughts and beliefs can affect mood, with practical prompts for spotting unhelpful thoughts, considering other viewpoints and building a more balanced, helpful thought.
This Improving How You Feel CBT depression information PDF is a clear psychoeducation handout for exploring the link between thoughts, beliefs and mood. It is designed for adults or older teenagers who are experiencing low mood, anxiety, distress or negative thinking, and for practitioners who want a straightforward worksheet to support discussion in a CBT, counselling or wellbeing session.
The “What Can I Do?” prompts guide readers to name the feeling they are having, identify the conclusion they may be drawing, and consider whether there are other possible explanations. By slowing the process down, the sheet helps make the difference between an emotion and a thought easier to understand. Examples show how the same event can lead to different emotional responses depending on the meaning attached to it, including a social situation at a party.
Use it as a printable CBT depression handout, a session discussion aid, a home learning task, or a reflective worksheet between appointments. It can help structure conversations about unhelpful thinking styles, negative automatic thoughts and more balanced ways of interpreting everyday situations. The layout is simple enough to use as a quick guide, while still giving enough detail to support practical work.
Produced by the Centre for Clinical Interventions, this downloadable PDF can be viewed on screen, printed for individual use, or added to a small set of mental health worksheets for CBT-informed support.
