Avoidance and safety behaviours
Notice what you avoid, escape, check, control or seek reassurance about, including strategies that are easy to miss because they happen in your head.
Free CBT guides and worksheets
Approaching avoidance and uncertainty
Avoidance can reduce distress in the short term while making the feared situation harder to approach next time. These guides cover safety behaviours, graded exposure and ways to respond to worry or rumination.
Guides and worksheets included
Each topic includes a short guide and a companion worksheet you can complete on screen or print.
Graded exposure
Build a step-by-step plan for approaching a feared situation or sensation while reducing the responses that keep the fear cycle going.
Worry and rumination
Distinguish useful problem-solving from repetitive thinking and choose a different response when more thinking is not producing new information.
Using the worksheets
Choose a worksheet that relates to something you want to understand or practise. You can use it to prepare for therapy or work on an idea between appointments, and you can leave questions for discussion with your psychologist.
- 01Plan exposure collaboratively if the fear is intense, complex or linked with significant risk.
- 02Choose steps that are challenging enough for learning but realistic enough to repeat.
- 03Measure what you learned, not whether anxiety disappeared.
- 04Do not use these worksheets to approach genuinely unsafe situations.
Free fillable PDF
Download the complete set
The PDF contains the illustrated guides and matching fillable worksheets. Typed information remains in your own copy of the file and is not sent to or stored by Axis.
A general resource, not individual clinical advice
These worksheets do not replace assessment or personalised care. They may not suit every person, problem or stage of therapy. If a worksheet increases distress or feels unhelpful, pause and discuss that reaction with a suitably qualified health professional.
Individual support
Individual psychological therapy
If you would like help with a concern raised by these resources, read about therapy for adults or contact Axis with a brief enquiry.