ACT Worksheets
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy worksheets for the six core processes: cognitive defusion, acceptance, present-moment awareness, self-as-context, values, and committed action. The collection brings together the tools clinicians reach for most, including the Choice Point, Leaves on a Stream, values clarification, and workability questions. Every sheet is free to read and print, and ready to drop into a session.
23 worksheets available. Free to browse, read, and print.
Avoidance in ACT: Moving Toward What Matters
An ACT-Based Guide to Overcoming Experiential Avoidance
Circle of Control: Your Sphere of Influence
Directing energy toward what you can change
Circles of Influence on Personal Values
Exploring how your values are shaped by self, family, friends, and society
Clarifying What Matters Most
A guided exploration of personal values and how they shape decisions and well-being
Cognitive Defusion Strategies
ACT-based techniques for unhooking from distressing thoughts
Core Values Exploration: Guided Discussion Prompts for Young People
Reflective questions to help children and adolescents discover what matters most to them
Dropping Anchor: An ACT Grounding Skill
The ACE steps for staying steady in an emotional storm
Exploring What Matters: Values Conversation Prompts
Reflective discussion questions for uncovering and articulating personal values
Exploring Your Personal Values Across Life Domains
Clarify what matters most across the key domains of your life
Leaves on a Stream: Cognitive Defusion Through Visualization
A guided mindfulness exercise for observing and releasing thoughts
Making Room for Difficult Emotions (Expansion)
An acceptance skill for letting feelings be present without a fight
Naming the Story: A Cognitive Defusion Skill
Label a recurring narrative so you can see it instead of believing it
Passengers on the Bus: An ACT Metaphor
Keep driving toward what matters while difficult thoughts ride along
Personal Values Discovery and Ranking
Identify and prioritize what matters most to guide purposeful decision-making
Psychological Flexibility: The Six Pillars (ACT)
An ACT-Based Self-Assessment for Adaptive Living
Sky and Weather: Stepping Back from Your Thoughts
A self-as-context skill for unhooking from your thoughts and feelings
The ACT Matrix: Sorting Toward and Away Moves
A point-of-view diagram for noticing avoidance and choosing values-based action
The Choice Point: Towards or Away Moves
An ACT framework for noticing values-aligned vs avoidance behavior in real time
The Six Core Skills of ACT
A simple map of the six skills that build psychological flexibility (the hexaflex)
The Struggle Switch: Clean and Dirty Discomfort
How fighting a feeling turns pain into suffering, and what to do instead
Values-Based Goals: Turning Values into Action
A committed-action tool for translating what matters into concrete steps
When the Struggle Stops Working (Creative Hopelessness)
Noticing the cost of the control agenda and opening space for a new approach
Willingness and Committed Action: Acting on What Matters
Choosing values-guided action again and again, discomfort included
Free ACT treatment manuals
Complete open-access protocols from SAMHSA, NIDA, the VA, and WHO that pair with the worksheets above. Each one links to the official source, free and legal to use.
ACT for Depression (ACT-D) Therapist Manual
A complete 12-session ACT protocol for treating depression, written by Robyn Walser and colleagues for the VA's national therapist training program. Each session includes therapist scripts, sample dialogue, metaphors, mindfulness exercises, and homework, moving from creative hopelessness and control-as-the-problem through acceptance, defusion, values, and committed action.
ACT for PTSD Group Manual
The VA's session-by-session manual for a 10-week ACT group for veterans with PTSD, written by three VA psychologists at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center. Each 90-minute session gets a full script: willingness and mindfulness, defusion, personal values with a card sort, the observing self, and observing the trauma, plus an optional pre-group individual session.