Resources
Worksheets, guides and measures
I wrote these worksheets for this site, and they are free to print and use. Each has its own page showing the sheet in full and how I use it. The PDFs are tagged for screen readers, need no sign-up and are not tracked. The published questionnaires are further down, linked to their official sources.
Interactive
Free tools
Two tools that run on this page and keep nothing you type.
Draw your own OCD loop
Write the four parts of the pattern in your own words and the page draws them as a loop, with the compulsion and the relief that keeps it going.
Plan a first step at home
For parents. Choose the hardest part of the day, tick what happens in your family, and get a supportive statement and one small first step, based on the SPACE approach.
Exposure and response prevention
For exposure work
Built around what exposure teaches, including that you can handle the anxiety and the doubt, not around waiting for the anxiety to fall.
Exposure planner
One sheet per exposure, recording what you expect, what happened and what you learned, including about handling the anxiety and the doubt.
Exposure menu
A working list of situations and the compulsions attached to them, designed to be varied rather than climbed in order.
Between-session practice log
One line a day, because most of the change happens between appointments and this makes the pattern visible.
Finding the safety behaviours
Questions that surface the small things you do to feel safer (called safety behaviours) that keep the doubt alive, and a plan for dropping one.
CBT records
For CBT
The standard records in plain English, with space to write instead of boxes to tick.
Thought record
Situation, thought, feeling and what you did next, which is usually the column where the problem is kept going.
Behavioural experiment
Stating a belief precisely enough that the result could contradict it, then finding out.
Activity and avoidance log
A week at a glance, including what you turned down, which shows how much of your life the anxiety is taking up.
Staying well plan
Written at the end of treatment: early warning signs, and what to do about them.
For parents
For parents and carers
A sheet each for the changes a family makes around a child’s anxiety, repeated requests for reassurance, and school.
Family accommodation tracker
A record of the changes the household makes around the anxiety (called family accommodation), kept so that we can choose what to change first.
When they ask again
How to answer reassurance seeking without supplying the answer, and what to expect in the first week of changing it.
Information for school
A short summary you can fill in and hand to a teacher, kept to one page for busy staff.
Graded return to school planner
The steps, who is involved, and the two details that decide whether the plan holds.
Guides
For clinicians, and for anyone who wants the reasoning
The framework behind the worksheets, in my words, with the papers cited and not reproduced.
Setting up exposures that work
A practical guide to how exposure builds new learning (researchers call this inhibitory learning), including dropping the things you do to feel safer, varying the practice, and why the anxiety coming down is not the target.
Questionnaires
The measures I use, and where to find them
I track treatment with standard published measures, because a measure without published norms and validation tells you very little. They belong to the people who developed them, and several state that posting them on a website is not permitted, so none are hosted here. Official free sources are linked below and open in a new tab.
| Measure | What it is for | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Y-BOCS and CY-BOCS Goodman and colleagues | The standard severity measures for OCD, adult and child. What I use to track OCD treatment. | ocdscales.com. Free for non-commercial paper use once you have the authors’ permission. Not distributable. |
| DOCS Abramowitz and colleagues | Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. Covers the four symptom dimensions, useful where the theme matters. | jabramowitz.com, the author’s own site |
| FASA Lebowitz and colleagues | Family Accommodation Scale for anxiety, parent and child versions. The measure behind the accommodation work with families. | spacetreatment.net, the developer’s site |
| RCADS Chorpita and Spence | Anxiety and low mood in children aged 8 to 18, with parent and child versions and UK-usable norms. | rcads.ucla.edu, free to end users and the only authorised source |
| SCAS Spence | Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale, including a preschool version. Child, parent and brief forms. | scaswebsite.com, free for individual practitioners and researchers |
| LSAS and SPIN Liebowitz; Connor and colleagues, Duke | Social anxiety severity in adults. Used in session where social anxiety is the problem being treated. | Copyright held by the authors; not reproduced here. I use them in treatment rather than distribute them. |
If you are a UK clinician looking for measures
The CORC directory of outcome measures is the most useful starting point, listing what each measure covers, its age range and its licensing position.
If you are trying to work out whether to seek help
A questionnaire will not settle that, and a score worked out alone is easy to misread in either direction. A conversation on the free call is quicker and more accurate.
If you are here because of a child’s phone or gaming, the page on screen time, gaming and phones explains when screen use is part of a problem I treat and when parents can manage it at home.
These worksheets are information, not treatment or a diagnosis, and are written to be used alongside work with a clinician. Other clinicians are welcome to print and use them with their own clients, unchanged and with the footer left on. They are not for sale.
Free 20-minute call
Not sure whether this is the right fit?
Start with a free 20-minute call. We talk through what is going on, I answer any questions you have, and I tell you whether I think I can help. If I cannot, I will try to point you to someone who can. The call is free and there is no obligation to book.
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