GAD WORRY — THOUGHT RECORD SHEET
Understand your worries. Find a calmer, more balanced perspective.
Generalised anxiety can make worry feel almost continuous.
Your mind may move from work to health, relationships, money, family, mistakes, appointments and the future — often through a stream of “what if?” questions.
Worry can feel as though it is helping you prepare.
But when it becomes repetitive, it can leave you feeling more exhausted and less certain.
The GAD Worry Thought Record Sheet is designed to help you slow a worry down, understand what is happening and choose a more helpful response.
Inside the full guide you will find:
• an explanation of persistent GAD worry
• practical versus hypothetical worry
• a full printable GAD worry thought record
• worry triggers and “what if?” thoughts
• emotion and physical-anxiety prompts
• belief ratings
• possibility versus probability exercises
• evidence and alternative-outcome questions
• a balanced-thought exercise
• prompts for reassurance seeking and overthinking
• worry-maintaining behaviours
• practical problem-solving prompts
• guidance for responding to hypothetical worry
• a Quick GAD Worry Record
• a personal message from me
One of the most useful distinctions is whether a worry is practical or hypothetical.
A practical worry may need a plan.
A hypothetical worry often asks you to solve an uncertain future before it has happened.
And that is something no amount of thinking can guarantee.
The aim is not to promise yourself that nothing difficult will ever happen.
It is to recognise that possibility is not the same as probability, make a reasonable plan where action is needed, and learn to return to the present when worry is asking for impossible certainty.
One uncertain thought does not need a perfect answer.
Space to Breathe Therapy
