Challenging Beliefs Worksheet

Situation Thought(s) Emotion(s) Adaptive Response Outcome

Describe the event, Write thought(s), and List relevant emotions, 1. (optional) list thinking error. 1. Rerate beliefs.
thought or belief rate belief in each thought then rate (0-100%) 2. Use questions at the bottom to 2. Rerate emotions, new ones
leading to the below from 0-100% compose a response to thought. 3. What can/did you do?
unpleasant emotion(s). 3. Rate level of belief in parentheses.

-I’ll fail the test (70%) -Anxious (75%)
-Sitting in class while -I’ll mess up my entire -Sad (40%) 1. -Catastrophizing: I’m looking down
teacher is lecturing, college career (40%) the road at the worst possible
thinking about outcome, even though these
upcoming test. outcomes have never really
happened before. (90%)
-Magnification: I’m blowing this out of
proportion in that even if I got a bad
or failing grade, this is only one class,
and there are other ways to bring my
overall GPA up. (90%)
1. -I’ll fail the test (30%)
-I’ll mess up my entire college
career (10%)
2. - Anxious (30%)
- Sad (10%)
3. I can take my time studying,
asking for help when needed,
practicing relaxation exercises
and completing another form
when needed.

2. -Evidence for: there were a few

tests I’ve done bad on, but not fail.
-Evidence against: when I’ve felt
anxiety before, I’ve done at least okay
on tests; I’ve also studied a lot on this
test, even more than I have in the
past.

-If I failed, I could recover; it’s not the

end of the world, and I could always
take the class again or bring up my
grade through my future
assignments. (90%)
Questions to help compose an alternative response: 1) What is the evidence that the thought/belief is true? Not true? 2) Is there an alternative explanation? 3) What’s the
worst that could happen? Could I live through it? What’s the best that could happen? What’s the most realistic outcome? 4) What’s the effect of my believing the automatic
thought? What could be the effect of my changing my thinking? 5) What should I do about it? 6) If _________ (friend’s name) was in the situation and had this thought/belief,
what would I tell him/her?