9+ Printable Anxiety Worksheets for Teens and Adults

Anxiety is a normal part of life and something most of us experience from time to time.

When worry, nervousness, or fear begin to dominate your days, it can feel overwhelming. Many people develop effective strategies to cope with occasional anxiety, but when anxiety starts interfering with daily life, seeking professional support is an important option. Therapy or counseling with a licensed provider is helpful, but there are also high-quality, evidence-informed self-help resources—workbooks, worksheets, and guided exercises—that can support you in building skills to manage anxiety.

This article gathers a selection of practical workbooks and CBT-based worksheets for teens, children, and adults—resources you can return to when you need structure, guidance, or a short exercise to reduce anxiety. If you struggle with persistent anxiety, occasional bouts of crippling fear, or anything in between, these tools can complement professional care or serve as accessible stand-alone practices.

7 Best Anxiety Workbooks

Workbooks are practical tools that combine psychoeducation, exercises, examples, and worksheets to help you understand and cope with anxiety. Different workbooks emphasize different approaches—CBT, relaxation, exposure, acceptance-based strategies, and skill-building—so you can choose what fits you best. Below are seven well-regarded workbooks for anxiety, suitable for a range of age groups and needs.

1. Help for Anxious People: Literacy and Life Skills – Angela Ramsay

This clear, accessible workbook provides basic education about anxiety, practical strategies, and short exercises to practice. Ramsay (2003) defines anxiety as “a feeling of fear, dread, or uneasiness” and explains that anxiety is normal in many everyday situations—tests, interviews, health scares, traffic incidents, and job loss, for example. While occasional anxiety can be adaptive, some people experience persistent worry or high anxiety linked to conditions such as phobias, panic attacks, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), OCD, or depression.

The workbook includes skill-building activities, such as progressive relaxation and guided imagery. One example, Relaxation Exercise 2, guides the reader through a calming visualization and breathing sequence designed to be practiced regularly to reduce baseline tension and build resilience.

Relaxation Exercise (summary)

1. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and allow yourself a moment of stillness.
2. Breathe slowly and repeat a calming phrase such as “I am peace.”
3. Use gentle imagery—mountains, beaches, or gardens—to deepen relaxation.
4. Imagine a cleansing waterfall or waves wiping away intrusive thoughts.
5. Gradually return, feeling refreshed and carrying a bit of calm into your day.

Ramsay also offers visualization techniques to reduce specific fears—shrinking an imagined phobic object until it disappears, for instance. These exercises are intended to be practiced repeatedly for best results.

2. The Feeling Good Handbook – David Burns

David Burns’ workbook companion to his classic work on cognitive therapy presents practical CBT tools, cognitive distortion lists, and worksheets for managing anxiety and mood problems. The book teaches the link between thoughts and feelings and provides exercises to identify and challenge unhelpful thinking patterns.

Example worksheet: Anxiety and Fear

Burns prompts readers to recall an anxiety-provoking situation, identify negative automatic thoughts, and then label cognitive distortions (e.g., fortune-telling, mind reading, magnification). The book also includes the Burns Anxiety Inventory—a 33-item checklist that rates anxious feelings, anxious thoughts, and physical symptoms to gauge the severity of anxiety and track progress over time.

3. Anxiety & Phobia Workbook – Edmund J. Bourne

Edmund Bourne’s workbook is a comprehensive, user-friendly guide for a wide range of anxiety problems: generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, and OCD. It mixes psychoeducation with practical tools such as relaxation training, cognitive restructuring, gradual exposure, lifestyle considerations, and panic management techniques. The workbook is suitable for individual use or as an adjunct to therapy.

4. The Anxiety Toolkit – Alice Boyes

Alice Boyes’ book presents evidence-based, actionable tips and exercises for reducing anxiety in everyday life. It’s written in a readable style and focuses on strategies to fine-tune thinking and behavior so anxiety becomes more manageable rather than overwhelming.

5. The Anxiety and Worry Workbook – David A. Clark & Aaron T. Beck

Written by CBT experts, this workbook provides structured CBT interventions for worry and generalized anxiety. It includes practical worksheets, exposure planning, and cognitive techniques designed to produce measurable improvement in daily functioning.

6. The Anxiety Workbook for Teens – Lisa M. Schab

Targeted to adolescents, this workbook helps teens recognize anxious thoughts, develop coping skills, and build a more positive self-image. It contains exercises tailored to teenage concerns and practical strategies for school, social life, and family interactions.

7. The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety – William J. Knaus & Jon Carlson

This step-by-step CBT program focuses on behavioral activation, values-based action, and confronting perfectionism and avoidance. The workbook offers a structured plan to identify triggers, practice exposure, and change unhelpful thinking patterns.

5 CBT Worksheets for Anxiety (+PDF)

If you want shorter, targeted exercises, worksheets can provide practical, immediate tools. Below are five commonly used CBT-based worksheets that address mindfulness, catastrophic thinking, anxious beliefs, panic, and childhood anxiety.

1. How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation

An anchor breathing or mindfulness breathing guide offers a simple, repeatable practice to bring attention back to the present moment. Focused breathing—observing inhale and exhale sensations, the rise and fall of the body—helps reduce rumination and reactivity. The worksheet explains how to notice wandering thoughts without judgment and gently return attention to the breath. Regular practice (10–15 minutes daily) strengthens awareness and emotional regulation.

2. Reverse the Rabbit Hole Worksheet

Anxiety often begins with two words: “what if…?” That question can trigger a spiral of worst-case scenarios. This worksheet asks you to record the negative “what if” scenarios in one column and deliberately list plausible positive or neutral alternatives in the other column. Practicing equal attention to positive outcomes helps rebalance thinking and reduce catastrophic bias.

3. Tackling Anxious Thoughts

This worksheet helps you trace anxious predictions back to the underlying beliefs that fuel them. You describe an anxiety-triggering situation, list the worst, best, and most likely outcomes, and then decide whether the worst outcome will still matter in a week, month, or year. The final step is to rewrite the anxious/irrational thought into a more objective, rational thought. This structured approach helps expose and weaken cognitive distortions.

4. Managing Panic

Intended to be used with or without a clinician, this worksheet helps identify panic symptoms and triggers, record thoughts and behaviors around attacks, and rate fear and discomfort. It asks you to review the last panic attack and note preceding thoughts, feelings, and actions, and whether your behavior has changed (for example, by avoiding places). This data helps shape a treatment plan and track changes over time.

5. When I’m Scared… (for children)

This child-friendly worksheet invites young people to describe what makes them afraid, what thoughts they have, and where they feel anxiety in their body (with a body map). It also prompts children to list one thing they could try next time they feel scared. These responses can open conversation with a parent, teacher, or therapist and guide gentle interventions.

How to Manage Social Anxiety: 3 Workbooks

Social anxiety arises in interpersonal contexts—meeting people, public speaking, or performing in groups—and often benefits from targeted strategies. The following workbooks focus specifically on shyness and social anxiety, offering exposure practices, cognitive restructuring, and communication skills.

10 Simple Solutions to Shyness – Martin M. Antony

This workbook provides practical steps for reducing shyness and social anxiety, including exercises like journaling about how shyness interferes with life and recording anxious thoughts before or after social situations. The book covers public speaking, coping with rejection, and confidence-building techniques.

Social Anxiety Group Participant Workbook

Originally designed for a facilitated group program, this workbook includes session-based materials on cognitive therapy, exposure, and social skills training. It contains monitoring forms for anxiety episodes, templates for exposure hierarchies, and guidance for tracking progress—useful for individuals working alone or alongside group treatment.

Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook – Martin M. Antony & Richard P. Swinson

This comprehensive program offers step-by-step techniques: self-evaluation, planning for change, gradual exposure to feared social situations, and skill development. The workbook is grounded in CBT principles and has been widely recommended for structured self-help or therapist-guided work.

A Take-Home Message

There are many effective self-help options for managing anxiety: workbooks that provide structured programs, short worksheets for momentary relief, and targeted resources for social anxiety or panic. These tools are most effective when practiced regularly and when paired with professional support if anxiety is severe or impairing. Use the exercises that resonate with you, track your progress, and consider combining workbook practice with guidance from a clinician for the best outcomes.

Have you tried any of these workbooks or worksheets? Which strategies helped you most? Sharing experiences can help others discover tools that work—consider discussing your experience with a trusted professional or peer group.