Mental health exercises
Free mental health exercises and worksheets from the work we do in session — CBT, ACT, schema therapy, somatic tools, and couples therapy.
Practical exercise for mental health you can fill out on your phone or laptop, print, or email to yourself. Nothing you type is sent to us or stored anywhere but your own device.
Mental health tips
Begin with the Trigger Log — it makes the pattern visible, and most of the others build on what it shows you. If you're working on a relationship, start with The Timeout Contract.
These are the same worksheets we hand to clients between sessions. They work on their own, and they work better alongside therapy — a worksheet can show you the pattern, but changing it is usually something you do with another person.
Exercise for mental health is not only a gym routine. Training attention, naming emotion, and choosing a next action are brain exercises. This library is brain training for emotional health — closer to what we use in therapy than to brain exercise games. If you want the best exercises for brain health, start with the Trigger Log or a somatic worksheet.
Patterns that formed early and still run the show — what they are, where they came from, and what you do when they fire.
Surrender, avoidance, overcompensation — the three things people do when a schema fires, with a checklist for each and all 18 schemas broken down.
Find which coping style you lean on →The five core emotional needs every child has, which ones went unmet for you, and the specific schemas that grow out of each one.
Rate the five needs 0–10 →Slow down the moment between something happening and you reacting to it: trigger, thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges, schema, behavior, outcome.
Log one triggering moment →Take one reaction and hold it against your values. If it lined up, name which ones. If it didn't, work out what you'd do instead.
Check one behavior against your values →Two of the most well-evidenced exercises in cognitive behavioral therapy, built so the numbers do the convincing.
Plan small activities, then rate mood before and after plus mastery and pleasure. Shows you which activities actually lift your mood, in your own data.
Plan a week and rate it →Test an anxious prediction instead of arguing with it. Rate the belief, run the experiment without your safety behaviors, then rate it again.
Test one prediction →Structures for the conversations that keep going in circles. Two people, one worksheet.
For anyone stuck on whether to stay or go. Track your own consistency with your values first, then your partner's — so you can tell the two apart.
Track a week →Each of you writes an ideal and an intolerable apart, then you brainstorm the middle together with one rule: nobody can say no.
Work through one disagreement →A word either of you can say at a 70, an agreed return time, and the work you do while apart — regulate, then come back with a specific request.
Write your contract →Printable Nonviolent Communication worksheets for relationships — observation, feeling, need, request, plus feelings, needs, and values lists.
Open the NVC worksheets →Notice the hook, see which road you're on, and move toward what matters — even when the feeling is still there.
Every hard moment is a fork. Name what hooked you, sort toward vs away moves, and pick one toward move you could actually do with the discomfort still there.
Map one choice point →Rate four life areas for how much they matter vs how consistently you've lived them. The gap is the map — not a verdict.
Rate the four areas →Catch a thought word for word, run a defusion technique, and rate believability vs how much it still pushes you around.
Practice with one thought →List what you've tried against a feeling, score short-term relief vs lasting result, then look at what the struggle itself has cost.
Tally what the fight has cost →Map your window, stay with sensation in small doses, and find the two grounding moves that actually work for your body.
Map hyper, window, and hypo in your own words, catch the earliest warning sign, and write a regulation plan for a bad day.
Map your three zones →Locate a sensation, describe it like an object, stay with it for a short dose, and re-rate the intensity.
Track one sensation →Build a body resource first, then swing between it and activation in ten-to-twenty-second doses, always finishing on the resource.
Build a resource, then swing →Test twelve grounding techniques with before/after ratings until you know which two are actually yours.
Find your two techniques →Also from home
If you need to settle before you write, guided audio is a quieter form of brain training. Nothing to sign up for.
A worksheet can show you the moment. Free quizzes can name the pattern underneath.
From home
Comprehensive, integrative experiences that weave binaural stimulation, EMDR-informed elements, and neuroplasticity-oriented practice into unique sensory exercises you can do anytime.
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15-minute experience
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25-minute experience
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30-minute experience
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30-minute experience
The best exercises for mental health are most useful when someone helps you make sense of what comes up in them. We offer individual therapy, couples therapy, and group therapy in San Francisco and online throughout California.
A note on privacy and scope. The fillable exercises run entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is transmitted to Bay Area CBT Center, and nothing is stored on our servers — your answers save to your own device so you can come back to them, and every interactive exercise has a Clear all button. These are educational tools, not therapy, assessment, or diagnosis. If you're in crisis or having thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988, or go to your nearest emergency room.