Printable worksheets

Both are US Letter, black and white, and designed to be filled in by hand during a session and taken home. The experiment record puts the plan on one side and the review on the other, so the client comes back with both halves on one sheet. The ladder has room for eight rungs, a goal at the top, and a column to tick each repetition.

Free to print and copy for clinical and educational use. Please keep the attribution line at the foot of the page. A one page guide to the seven steps is also available to hand to clients.

Notes on using the record

Agree the experiment in session. Most of the value is in steps 1 to 4, and those are the ones clients find hardest alone. Getting the prediction observable and naming the safety behaviors together tends to be the bulk of the work; the experiment itself is often short.

Do the first version together where you can. Experiments that deliberately produce the feared outcome, such as saying something dull on purpose or letting a hand shake while holding a cup, are usually best done with you present and repeated alone afterwards (Bennett-Levy et al., 2004).

Rate the prediction, not the anxiety. The form asks for belief in the prediction before and after. Distress ratings are there for ladder rungs and for beliefs that are about anxiety itself, and are otherwise best left blank, since self-monitoring is one of the processes under test (Wells and Papageorgiou, 1998).

Spend the review on the general lesson. "It went fine" is where most records stop. The form prompts three directions: what the outcome says about the belief, about how other people react, and about the client's capacity to cope. The one-line "line to keep" at the end is meant to be reread, not filed.

Keep the next step close. A follow-up should not be much harder than the one just done. Repeating the same experiment in close succession, with small variations, produces more durable learning than a single large step (Craske et al., 2014).

How the app fits alongside therapy

The app is a self-guided version of the same worksheet. It is not a treatment, and its terms say so plainly to the user. What it can do for a client who is already seeing you is carry the plan out of the room, remind them when the experiment is due, keep a record of what happened, and bring it back.

Three features are built for that handoff.

• Session summary. One page per belief: the belief rating over time, each experiment in order with the result and the re-rating, the client's own learning statement in quotes, what is planned next, and their notes. The client chooses the period, for example since the last summary, and shares it as a PDF from the app. Nothing reaches us; it goes wherever the client sends it.
• Full export. Every worksheet in full, as a printable PDF, for a client who wants to bring the whole record.
• The step ladder. Rungs rated for expected distress, each one plannable as an experiment, with a history under each rung of expected and actual distress on every repetition and a prompt to move up once a rung has been done twice.

The app's Learn section carries the same nine articles that are on this site, in English and Spanish, each with its references. Some clinicians assign one before a session.

What the app does not do

It does not screen, assess, or diagnose, and it makes no attempt to detect risk. It does not send you anything or notify you of anything; the client remains the only person with access to their record unless they share it. It does not store data on any server of ours. It will not stop a client from planning an experiment you would advise against, though the terms and the planning screen both say to defer to their clinician. For clients whose beliefs concern trauma, medical risk, or self-harm, the articles direct them to work with a professional rather than alone, and the on-screen guidance repeats it.

Sources

The worksheets follow the format in the Oxford Guide (Bennett-Levy et al., 2004; Rouf et al., 2004) and the seven steps in Warnock-Parkes et al. (2025). The ladder follows the Centre for Clinical Interventions' stepladder modules, with Wolpe's 0 to 100 distress scale. The research page lists every reference used across the site.

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Questions from clinicians are welcome at hello@behavioralexperiment.com. Everyday Insight LLC does not provide clinical services and cannot advise on individual clients.