Coping Skills Worksheets PDF: 6 Sheets for Adults and Teens

These coping skills worksheets are written for your client and built for you, the therapist who assigns them. There are six, each a short list with lines to fill in: a personal coping skills inventory, a healthy vs unhealthy coping sort, a coping plan for a stress the client knows is coming, a coping card for a wallet or phone, a weekly practice log, and a shorter version for teens. Before them is a coping skills list of 56 skills, grouped by what each one does. Print this page or save it as a PDF from your browser, and fill in the first sheet together in session.

After the worksheets comes the part for you: what the research says about coping (problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, approach and avoidance, and why fitting the skill to the situation matters more than any one skill), how to assign and review the sheets, which one to use when, a worked example, how to adapt them for teens, clients who don't read easily and telehealth, when coping skills aren't enough, and how to note the work in a progress note.

About this page. The worksheets are our own wording and layout, built on the coping research cited at the end. For specific skills, such as grounding or DBT distress tolerance, this page links to our worksheets on those skills instead of repeating them.

Every client in this article is invented. Any resemblance to a real person is a coincidence.

How to print this page or save it as a PDF

The lines are for a pen. A client who would rather type can copy the bold headings into a note on their phone and answer there.

Six coping skills worksheets for adults and teens

Before you start

Coping is whatever you do to get through stress: what you think, say and do when life asks more of you than feels manageable. Everyone already copes somehow. Some habits help. Some help for an hour and cost you later. Most people lean on the same few, whether or not they still work.

These worksheets help you see what you do now, sort what helps from what costs you, plan ahead for a stress you know is coming, keep a short reminder with you, and track what works. Fill in the first one with your therapist. There are no right answers, and nobody is grading you.

A coping skills list, by what each skill does

Circle any you already use. Put a star next to any you'd like to try. Different stresses need different kinds of coping, so aim to have at least one from most groups.

Group 1: Work on the problem. For the parts of a stress you can change.

Group 2: Calm my body.

Group 3: Move my attention, on purpose. For a break, with a time limit.

Group 4: Look at it another way.

Group 5: Reach out to someone.

Group 6: Make room for what I can't change.

Group 7: Look after the basics.

My picks

Worksheet 1: My coping skills inventory

Write what you really do when stress builds, not what you think you should do. Everyone has habits that help and habits that cost them later. This sheet is for noticing, not judging.

Part A: What I usually do

Part B: A closer look at three habits

Pick three habits from Part A that you use often.

Habit 1

Habit 2

Habit 3

Part C: What has helped before

Part D: My mix

Look back at the coping skills list. Next to each group, write how often you use it: often, sometimes or rarely.

Worksheet 2: Healthy or unhealthy? Sorting my coping habits

Most habits aren't healthy or unhealthy in themselves. A walk can be a good break, or a way to avoid a talk you need to have. A glass of wine can be a small pleasure, or the only way you know to switch off. What matters is what a habit does for you and what it costs you. Ask four questions about each one:

Next to each habit you use, write H if it helps and costs little, D if it depends on how much or when, and C if it costs more than it gives. Skip the ones you don't do.

What I'll do with this

If a habit is hurting you. If any of your ways of coping include hurting yourself, or you've had thoughts of ending your life, please tell your therapist. In the US you can call or text 988 at any time to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Worksheet 3: My coping plan for a stress I know is coming

Some stress you can see coming: a hard conversation, a family visit, a deadline, a medical appointment, an anniversary. Planning while you're calm makes it easier to cope in the moment. Start by splitting the situation into the part you can change and the part you can't.

The situation

My early warning signs

The part I can change

The part I can't change

My if-then plan

What might get in the way

After it's over

Worksheet 4: My coping card

Stress makes it harder to remember what helps. A coping card is a short reminder you write now, while you're calm, and read when you need it. Fill it in, then cut it out and keep it in your wallet, or take a photo of it for your phone.

Front of the card

Back of the card

Where to keep it. Somewhere you'll see it when you need it: your wallet, by your bed, at your desk, or in a note on your phone. Anyone near you can see a phone's lock screen, so keep the photo in an album or a notes app if you'd rather it stayed private.

Worksheet 5: My week of coping practice

A skill gets easier the more you use it, and easiest when you've practiced it on small stresses first. Each day, write down one stressful moment and what you tried. Rate your stress before and after, from 0 (none) to 10 (the most you can imagine). A skill that takes you from 7 to 5 is working.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

My week in review

Worksheet 6: My coping toolkit (for teens)

Everybody gets stressed: by school, friends, family, money, the news, or things that are hard to explain. Coping skills are what you do to get through it. Some work fast. Some help for a while and make things worse later. This sheet helps you figure out what works for you.

What stresses me out

How I can tell I'm getting stressed

What I usually do now

My calm-down moves. Circle the ones that work for you, and add your own.

My fix-it moves. For problems I can do something about.

My people

Watch out for these. Things that feel good now but make things worse later, like staying up all night, skipping school, snapping at people, vaping, or scrolling for hours.

My go-to plan

If you ever feel unsafe, or think about hurting yourself, tell an adult you trust, or call or text 988.

End of the worksheets.

What coping is: Lazarus and Folkman's model

Most coping skills worksheets skip the theory. A few minutes of it changes how you use them.

Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman's Stress, Appraisal, and Coping (1984) is still the starting point. In their model, stress isn't a property of an event. It comes from how a person appraises it: what's at stake (harm already done, a threat, or a challenge), and whether they have what it takes to deal with it. Coping is what the person then does: the changing thoughts and actions they use to manage demands they judge to be taxing or beyond their resources. Folkman and Moskowitz's later review keeps the same core: coping is "the thoughts and behaviors used to manage the internal and external demands of situations that are appraised as stressful."

Three ideas from the model shape these worksheets:

Problem-focused vs emotion-focused coping

Lazarus and Folkman sorted coping by its goal:

Neither is better in general. The goodness-of-fit idea holds that problem-focused coping suits the parts of a situation a person can change, and emotion-focused coping suits the parts they can't. Folkman (1984) argued that control is more complicated than "feeling in control helps": believing an event is controllable doesn't always reduce stress, and believing it isn't doesn't always raise it. Park, Folkman and Bostrom (2001) followed caregivers and men with HIV for two years and found support for the fit idea for problem-focused coping and, to a lesser extent, for emotion-focused coping. When a person's fit changed over time, their mood changed with it, while differences in fit between people weren't linked to mood. That suggests teaching clients to ask the control question each time, rather than looking for their "coping style".

Most real stressors have both parts. A layoff has parts a person can work on (the budget, the job search) and parts they can't (the decision itself). That split is the backbone of Worksheet 3: it asks what can change and what can't before the client chooses what to do.

Approach and avoidance coping

A second classic split is by direction. Roth and Cohen (1986) described approach coping, which moves toward the stressor (gathering information, taking action, talking about it), and avoidance coping, which moves away from it (distraction, denial, withdrawal, numbing). They argued that each has benefits and costs. Avoidance can lower distress in the short term and buy time. As a long-term habit, it leaves problems unsolved and, in anxiety, keeps fear going.

Hofmann and Hay (2018) push back on the idea that avoidance is always the problem. They conclude that behavior that counts as avoidance coping "can be adaptive, especially in the short-term, if a situation is perceived as uncontrollable," and that whether it helps depends on its function. Taking a twenty-minute break from an argument is not the same as never having the conversation. That's why Worksheet 2 has a "depends" mark, and why it asks whether a habit helps the client deal with the problem or only puts it off.

What newer research adds

The two splits are useful for teaching and blunt for research. Five findings shape how these worksheets are built.

Specific strategies matter more than the broad label. Compas and colleagues (2017) pooled 212 studies of 80,850 children and adolescents. Problem solving, emotional expression and modulating emotion (grouped as primary control coping), and reappraisal, acceptance and distraction (secondary control coping) were linked to fewer internalizing symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, and fewer externalizing symptoms, such as aggression and rule-breaking. Disengagement coping (avoidance, denial, wishful thinking) and emotional suppression were linked to more. The broad problem-focused category had only small links with symptoms, and emotion-focused coping none that were significant. Most of the studies were cross-sectional, so these are associations, not proof that a skill causes change.

There are hundreds of ways to cope. Skinner and colleagues (2003) reviewed 100 coping measures, compiled about 400 ways of coping, and recommended that researchers stop using problem- vs emotion-focused, approach vs avoidance, and cognitive vs behavioral as top-level categories, because so many strategies do more than one thing. They proposed families of coping grouped by what each does, and identified 13 candidates. The seven groups on the coping skills list above are a client-friendly version of the same idea.

In adults, the situation changes what works. Penley, Tomaka and Wiebe (2002) pooled studies of adults outside clinical settings. Problem-focused coping was linked to better health outcomes, while avoidance, wishful thinking and several other strategies, including seeking social support, were linked to worse ones. The type of stressor, how controllable it was and how long it lasted changed many of these links.

Fit beats a long list. Cheng, Lau and Chan (2014) meta-analyzed coping flexibility across 58,946 participants and found a small to moderate link with better adjustment (r = .23). The link was moderate when flexibility meant a good fit between strategy and situation, or a person's sense that they could cope with change, and small when it meant simply having a broad repertoire. More skills help less than knowing which one to use when.

Trying not to think a thought can backfire. In Wegner and colleagues' (1987) "white bear" experiments, people told not to think about something thought about it more afterward. People given a specific thing to think about instead were less preoccupied later. That's why the list says "move my attention, on purpose" with a set focus and time limit, and has no "stop the thought" item.

Five principles behind these worksheets

How to assign coping skills worksheets

Some clients hear "homework" and think of school. "Practice" or "trying it out" lands better for many adults.

How to review the worksheets next session

If you want a standard measure of coping style alongside the sheets, the Brief COPE (Carver 1997) is a short form of the COPE inventory with two items per scale. Check its terms before you use it.

Which worksheet to use when

A worked example: one invented client's coping plan

Rosa, 38, is an invented client who works in a hospital billing office. For a year, the quarterly review with her manager has meant three bad nights beforehand, and she called in sick before the last two. On Worksheet 2 she marked calling in sick and staying up late before reviews as C. Her Worksheet 3, started two weeks before the next review and finished the day after it:

Her coping card read: "When I notice my chest tighten: breathe out slowly, look at my notes, text my sister at lunch. Reminder: one meeting, not my whole job."

What the plan does: preparation is problem-focused coping for the part Rosa controls, and paced breathing with a coping statement is emotion-focused coping for the part she doesn't. Going to the meeting at all is approach coping, after two rounds of avoidance. "She's going to fire me" is a thought to take into a thought record next.

Adapting the worksheets for teens

Worksheet 6 is a shorter version for clients of about 12 to 17, and older teens often do well with the adult sheets.

For starting conversations with a teen who says "I don't know", see our therapy questions for teens.

Adapting the worksheets for clients who don't read easily

Many adults hide difficulty with reading, so offer these options to everyone, not only to clients you suspect need them. "Some people like to fill this in themselves, and some like to talk it through while I write" gives everyone a way in.

Using the worksheets in telehealth

Our telehealth consent form covers what to agree with clients before video sessions start.

When coping skills aren't enough

Coping worksheets support treatment. They don't replace treatment of a disorder, and some answers on them call for more than a new skill.

How to note coping skills work in a progress note

"Discussed coping skills" tells a reviewer almost nothing. A useful note names the worksheet, ties it to a treatment goal and records what the client did.

An example in DAP format for Rosa, the session after her review:

A treatment plan objective this note supports: "Within 8 weeks, client will use a written coping plan before 3 of 4 identified work stressors and attend them rather than calling in sick, with self-rated stress 2 or more points below her prediction." Our treatment plan template shows how to build goals and objectives around a skill.

Phrases you can adapt:

The same content fits other formats. In a BIRP note, what you did goes in Intervention and the ratings go in Response. The DAP notes examples show where each piece of a session goes, and the progress notes cheat sheet lists clinical words for interventions and client response.

How to describe this work on your practice website

People looking for a therapist rarely search for "coping skills". They search for help with stress that won't let up, with drinking to switch off, or with dreading the week ahead. Plain words on your practice website help the right clients recognize themselves. A starting point for the section where you describe how you work:

Name the therapy you use (CBT, DBT-informed skills, ACT) only if you're trained in it.

How this works in TranqBay

TranqBay is practice software for therapists in private practice: a practice website, online booking, video sessions and session notes in one place. Here's where these worksheets fit.

At practice.tranqbay.health you can browse the practice website designs and sample sites, see where you'd describe skills-based work, and look at the booking page a new client would use.

Frequently asked questions about coping skills worksheets

Before your next session

Pick one client whose stress keeps outrunning their coping. Go through the coping skills list and Part A of the inventory together, choose one stressor that's coming up, and build a Worksheet 3 plan for it. Send them home with a coping card, and look at it first next time.

If you're building a practice around skills-based work, see how TranqBay works for private practice: you can browse the practice website designs, including sample sites for a trauma therapist and a child and family therapist, and see the booking page your clients would use to book the session where you review their plan. If you're deciding whether to join, this page explains how joining TranqBay works.

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