Coping Strategies Toolkit: Your Personal Resource Menu

This worksheet helps you build a personalised menu of coping strategies that you can draw on when facing difficult emotions, stressful situations, or moments of crisis. Having a pre-prepared list of strategies is essential, because generating new ideas during a crisis is extremely difficult — your brain is in survival mode and defaults to habitual responses, which may include the very behaviours you are trying to change.

Organise your coping strategies across four domains. Physical strategies: activities that help regulate your body, such as breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, going for a walk, splashing cold water on your face, holding ice cubes, doing jumping jacks, or stretching. Cognitive strategies: techniques that help manage unhelpful thinking, such as thought records, worry postponement, challenging cognitive distortions, reframing, or writing a compassionate letter to yourself.

Emotional strategies: activities that help you process or shift your emotional state, such as listening to music, journaling, talking to someone, creative expression (drawing, painting, poetry), watching something comforting, or allowing yourself to cry. Social strategies: ways of connecting with others for support, such as calling a friend, attending a group, spending time with a pet, visiting a safe and familiar place, or volunteering.

For each strategy on your list, rate how helpful it is on a scale of one to ten, and note any barriers to using it (for example, "I can only go for a walk during daylight hours" or "I need to be at home to do progressive muscle relaxation"). This creates a realistic, practical toolkit that you can draw on in any situation. Keep your coping toolkit accessible — on your phone, in your wallet, or in your safety plan — and review it regularly with your therapist.