Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet
Help your patient with PTSD examine their anxiety using the Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet.
Fact Checked by Ericka Pingol.
What are Trauma and PTSD?
Trauma is the intense psychological and emotional responses individuals may experience after enduring overwhelming, terrifying, distressing, or violating events. Some people have had to go through events such as car accidents, house fires, natural disasters, sexual assault, near-drowning incidents, or participating in traumatic wars. These events can leave deep emotional and psychological scars triggered by memories, sensory stimuli, or proximity to where the trauma occurred.
Such trauma can lead to developing , a mental health condition characterized by various anxiety-related symptoms. Individuals with PTSD may experience hypervigilance, hyperarousal, avoidance of certain places or activities, isolation from others or the world, sleep difficulties, an aversion to positive emotions, emotional outbursts, self-harming or suicidal thoughts and behaviors, depression, as well as feelings of despair, sadness, and loneliness.
Addressing and managing these symptoms is crucial in coping with PTSD and working through the trauma. However, this process is often easier said than done.
Printable Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet
Download this Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet to help your patients manage PTSD.
How to use the Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet:
Difficulties can be a challenge. Individuals must approach their healing process slowly, at a pace that suits their comfort level, especially when addressing their trauma. Worksheets can be an effective way to gradually guide them through this process.
In this particular guide, the focus is on addressing PTSD symptoms related to anxiety. The "Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet" allows individuals to step back and examine their anxieties. By doing so, they can become more aware of their responses to anxiety, whether those responses positively or negatively impact their relationships.
To complete this worksheet, individuals are encouraged to answer the following questions or prompts:
- First, describe the feeling or feelings of anxiety you remember. What were the situations that made you feel anxious?
- What did you do in those situations? What did you think about? How did you act?
- Did these feelings motivate you? If so, how?
- Are you able to notice if other people are anxious? If so, what do you do?
- How does your anxiety influence your relationships?
- OPTIONAL: Do you have coping strategies for your PTSD-related anxiety symptoms? It’s okay if you don’t as of now. We’ll work together to help you cope.
For mental healthcare professionals providing this worksheet, it is important to remind patients to provide as much detail as possible while completing it.
Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet Example:
The Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet was adapted from the original version created by Tijana Mandić for the book entitled The PTSD Workbook. The original worksheet is part of a much longer one that is segmented into different emotions that a person with PTSD might be experiencing, such as shame, guilt, anger, etc.
Our adaptation just takes the part revolving around anxiety. We just took the five questions and added a few more to some of them.
We also added a question asking patients if they happen to have coping strategies for their PTSD-related anxiety symptoms. This is marked as optional because it’s okay if patients have none. There’s even a message saying that it’s okay and that the therapist will work with them to develop strategies down the line.
We also added interactable comment boxes so patients can answer them with pens if they’re engaging with physical copies or using a keyboard if you issued a digital version.
Download this Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet Example:
When is it best to use the Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet?
If you're a mental healthcare professional reading this, it would be most effective to administer this worksheet during the early stages of your therapy or counseling program for PTSD. These initial stages offer valuable opportunities to learn more about your patients, particularly their emotional experiences when troubled by PTSD symptoms.
This worksheet is specifically designed for this stage, as its questions encourage patients to openly discuss and express their anxieties, thoughts and actions in response to those anxieties, and how these experiences have impacted their relationships. By gaining a deeper understanding of your patients and their PTSD symptoms, you, as a healthcare professional, can develop personalized therapy and counseling plans that cater to their unique needs.
For non-professionals reading this, feel free to use this worksheet anytime! Our template is available for free download, allowing you to utilize it whenever and wherever possible. The profound psychological and emotional distress caused by PTSD may sometimes leave you too overwhelmed to articulate your anxieties. This worksheet, however, can assist you in exploring your anxieties and expressing your thoughts and feelings about them.
Keep a copy of the worksheet in your bag or mobile device. Whenever you find the time and space to answer it, take a moment to reflect and see how examining and discussing your anxieties makes you feel.
What are the benefits of using the Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet?
This worksheet is free and easy to use.
The Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet is completely free and easy to use! All you need to do is print copies and have them ready in your office at the ready for any patients who have PTSD and PTSD-related anxiety. If you prefer going paperless, you can send your patients empty copies of the PDF file, especially if they prefer answering on a digital copy at home or some other place!
It can help therapists/counselors to understand their patients better.
As we mentioned, the Unpacking Your Anxiety PTSD Worksheet is best used during the early stages of a therapy/counseling program so therapists/counselors can learn more about their patients. Through this worksheet, these professionals will be able to understand what triggers their patients’ anxieties, learn how they act and think when they are anxious, and find out how their patients believe their anxieties have been affecting their relationships.
Their answers can help therapists/counselors ask follow-up questions that can help further explain their situation. The more information these professionals can get from patients, the better because they can determine how to help their patients. There’s even a segment asking about coping strategies; if patients don’t have any, they can work with their respective therapists/counselors to develop strategies.
It pairs well with other PTSD worksheets that we have.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a complex mental health problem. Each person who has it will experience PTSD symptoms differently from others. This particular worksheet focuses only on one specific aspect of PTSD, which is anxiety. There are different PTSD symptoms, and your patients may have several. Using other PTSD worksheets similar to this will help you get a more nuanced perspective of each patient’s trauma and PTSD symptoms beyond just anxiety. By having a more nuanced view, you can develop different ways of tackling their PTSD.
Commonly asked questions
This will depend on the person engaging with it. Some patients can articulate themselves quicker than others, so they can finish answering the worksheet within ten minutes. But don’t be surprised if others take longer. They will write about their PTSD-related anxiety, and that’s already tough enough to discuss through conversation. Give your patient the time and space they need to accomplish it.
If we’re basing this on the instructions, then no. It asks people to write their answers based on the prompts/guide questions as descriptively as possible. Whatever difficulty they encounter will likely be based on their thinking about their trauma and their memories, feelings, and behavior related to it.
Healthcare professionals need to make their patients feel that they’re in a safe and non-judgmental place, and they should establish enough rapport and trust with patients that they’re willing to share things about themselves. So, give them the support they need to finish the worksheet.
You can use this worksheet in conjunction with the following exercises:
- Unpacking Your Anger
- Unpacking Your Boredom
- Unpacking Your Disappointment
- Unpacking Your Empathy
- Unpacking Your Gratitude
- Unpacking Your Pride
We have more worksheets with similar titles to get a more nuanced perspective on your patient’s PTSD.
