8 Coping Skills Worksheets for Adults and Youth (+ PDFs)

No matter how much we study, plan, and prepare, life will inevitably throw us curveballs.

When it does, it’s our ability to adapt, problem-solve, and cope that gets us through to the other side.

Coping skills are what allow us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and move forward — hopefully with new knowledge, strengths, and resources we picked up along the way.

A person who was not taught or modeled coping skills in childhood may need extra help developing and refining them in adulthood.

Fortunately, there are excellent coping skills worksheets available that practitioners can use with clients to help them develop and practice their coping skills.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Resilience Exercises for free. These engaging, science-based exercises will help you effectively deal with difficult circumstances and give you the tools to improve the resilience of your clients, students, or employees.

A List of Coping Skills (+Examples)

First, let’s talk about what coping skills really are.

Coping skills are “the thoughts and behaviors used to manage the internal and external demands of situations that are appraised as stressful” (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004, p. 745).

In more colloquial terms, coping skills are the strategies we use to manage stressful or challenging situations.

Before we continue, it’s important to distinguish between coping skills, also called coping mechanisms, and defense mechanisms.

Coping skills are active and deliberate, forward thinking, and grounded in acceptance, while defense mechanisms are often unconscious, focused on preservation, and rooted in avoidance (Cramer, 2002; Silverman & Aafjes-Van Doorn, 2023).

There are several ways to cope, and we all use methods that suit our unique personalities and needs. An activity that causes stress in one individual might help another person cope.

Below, you’ll find a condensed list of coping methods and skills organized into categories (Flannery, 2016). No matter what a person needs in a given moment, there is probably at least one activity listed below that will help.

If you’d rather watch a video to get a great list of coping skills, Kati Morton on YouTube offers just that, outlining what they are and providing 25 options.

4 Types of Coping Skills Worksheets & Their Uses

There are many worksheets available related to coping skills. They typically fall within one of these categories:

1. Inventory of coping skills
   This type of worksheet encourages clients to think about the skills they have available. It is usually a brainstorming exercise that helps them see what options they have available.
2. Present-moment coping
   These worksheets walk clients through being present and mindful, grounding techniques, or other strategies to cope with the distressing present moment. They’re ideal for people who are in a state of high anxiety or distress.
3. Problem-solving worksheets
   These worksheets help clients home in on a problem and consider the best way to tackle it. They’re best used for a situation within the client’s control.
4. Cognitive-behavioral worksheets
   Worksheets with a cognitive-behavioral focus zero in on thought patterns and processes, aiming to assess and potentially change them instead of the situation itself. They’re best suited for a situation that is not within the client’s control.

4 Benefits of Using Worksheets to Help Struggling Clients

As you may know, there is only so much you can do to help your clients within sessions. Talking through problems, getting advice, and building self-awareness are necessary parts of the growth journey.

Worksheets are one such way to guide clients in carrying out dedicated action. The benefits include:

1. Flexibility
   Worksheets can be worked through in their own time and on their own schedule.
2. Active engagement
   They require your client to be engaged in their personal growth, encouraging them to take an active role.
3. Guided self-help worksheets
   Even though you’re not necessarily present at the time, worksheets provide some guidance to your client to ensure they’re on the right track.
4. Future referencing
   The completed worksheet offers an opportunity to refer back, review previous work, and see growth over time.

8 Coping Skills Worksheets for Adults & Others

If you’re looking for printable coping tools that are great for your clients, whether children, teens, or adults, check out the following resources.

For teenagers & young adults

Teenagers and young adults have access to the widest swath of coping resources. The three below are some of the most helpful for stress management.

– Coping skills inventory

This colorful coping skills inventory helps client’s categorize different coping mechanisms they find most helpful. The categories include

• Challenging thoughts
• Releasing emotions
• Practicing self-love
• Distracting
• Tapping into your best self
• Grounding

Remind your client that if they aren’t great at the skills in any of these categories, that’s fine. They should simply note why they struggle with it and what they plan to do to improve their skills.

– Coping with stress worksheets

You’ll find two handy activities in this coping with stress exercise.

In part 1, clients must list the physiological signs and symptoms of stress, brainstorm common responses to stress, and rate their levels of stress with each event or situation that can act as a trigger.

Part 2 will help clients brainstorm new and healthier ways to cope with stress. It first instructs clients to identify the ways they can and cannot control situations that trigger them.

These worksheets will help clients come up with a solid and thought-out plan for dealing with stress and overcoming urges to cope in unhealthy ways.

– Emotion masks

This worksheet encourages clients to think about how they manage their feelings in front of other people. It explains that everyone wears masks at times to hide their true feelings from others.

At the end of the worksheet, there is space to draw the mask(s) they frequently use to hide their feelings.

This worksheet can be helpful for older kids and for adults.

For children & families

To help children identify and work through difficult feelings, it can help to engage them in a fun activity, like the ones described in these worksheets. Whether you’re a parent or a professional who works with kids, these resources can help you help them.

– My feelings, my body

This worksheet is simple — it’s just an outline of a body, along with instructions for putting it to use.

There are many ways to use this worksheet, such as having the child:

• Draw what different emotions look like
• Draw a diary of their school day
• Split the outline vertically in half to compare good and bad things they’ve heard, seen, or done recently

Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, let your child draw or write whatever comes to them and encourage a discussion about it afterward.

– Noodle caboodle

Noodle caboodle is a technique borrowed from mindfulness training and is essentially a child’s version of progressive muscle relaxation.

Read the instructions aloud while you and the child follow along.

The purpose of the worksheet is to teach them a coping technique they can use on their own to help them relax.

– Bubbling over

Bubbling over uses the metaphor of a pot boiling over to explain feeling overly stressed, angry, or anxious.

There are three columns with illustrations of pots: one at a simmer, one at a rolling boil, and one bubbling over.

The worksheet lists goals that correspond to each boiling stage, and they correspond to the responsibilities of both the child and the adult when stress, anxiety, or anger take over.

The child is responsible for bringing their bubbling “pot” back to a simmer, and the adult’s responsibility is to aid them in their goal.

• The goal for the simmering pot is simply to keep it simmering.
• The goal for the pot at a rolling boil is to return it to a simmer.
• The goal for the bubbling-over pot is also to return it to a simmer, but it may require some more drastic action to get there.

This worksheet is a great way for kids to think about and plan ahead for stressful and difficult situations that will arise. It’s also a good way for them to let adults in on how they’re feeling and what they need when the going gets tough.

For anxiety

Many people experience anxiety as a normal part of life and are able to combat it, but when it gets to be too much, there are many coping methods at their disposal. Try these coping skills worksheets with your clients.

– The What If? Bias

With this worksheet, clients must think of positive and negative outcomes that can result from different situations.

The worksheet is simple, with only two columns:

What if it’s negative?
What if it’s positive?

On each side, clients write down the possible outcomes of the same situation. For example, if they are nervous about giving a presentation, on the negative side they might write: “What if I freeze and can’t speak?” On the positive side, they might write: “What if I do well?” or “What if I stumble but laugh about it?”

This exercise can help clients balance out the good and bad potential outcomes and take on a more realistic outlook.

– Decatastrophizing

This is a great worksheet for anyone struggling with panic or anxiety. The worksheet instructs clients to imagine the worst possible outcomes and how they’d cope if those outcomes came true.

Simply thinking through the likelihood and possible outcomes of a catastrophe can help decrease anxiety about the potential situation.

Our Best Practices for Coping Strategies & Worksheets

When your clients use coping strategies and worksheets, there are a few tips and tricks to make sure they are getting the best experience.

First, encourage clients to set aside time and mental space to work through these worksheets. They don’t require a ton of effort but need a few solid minutes of focus.

Second, provide your clients with self-awareness journaling prompts to pair with these worksheets. They can either journal beforehand to release stress or process difficult feelings, leaving more mental capacity to tackle the worksheets, or journal afterward to document their experience and write about what helped or what didn’t. This process can help them create a working list of effective strategies and tools.

Finally, let your clients know that not all coping skills will work for them, and that’s OK. Emphasize the importance of self-compassion as they try new techniques, even when they find the new techniques are not all that helpful for them.

4 Alternative Positive Coping Skills Activities to Try

If your client struggles to find coping techniques or activities that work for them, it’s time to think creatively.

Suggest the following de-stressing and resilience-building activities:

1. Movement and dance
   Drama therapy often encourages movement and dance to help clients release pent-up feelings, express themselves, and find healing. If words fail, have them try movement instead.
2. Storytelling
   As a species, we love storytelling; to help your client make sense of their feelings and cope with their stresses, have them narrate their story to process their negative emotions.
3. Relaxation and grounding techniques
   These techniques can be used to root your client firmly in the present moment and soothe fears and worries, bringing relaxation and peace. They include meditation techniques, visualization, and self-compassion exercises.
4. Breathing techniques
   Breath is foundational, and practicing breathwork can tame even the most significant of stressors. Encourage your clients to try breathwork techniques.

Helpful Resources From PositivePsychology.com

For more helpful information, check out these other resources from our website:

• Workplace Stress Management: 11 Best Strategies and Worksheets is a great article on strategies for helping your clients manage work stress.
• Healthy Coping: 24 Mechanisms & Skills for Positive Coping is an article on adaptive coping strategies you can recommend to clients if they need ideas or guidance.
• Connect the DOTS can help clients discern when coping mechanisms are healthy and when they can be maladaptive.
• The Dropping Anchor meditation is another exercise from the Positive Psychology Toolkit that can provide your clients with an effective and immediate tool for coping with distressing or overwhelming emotions. The tool provides the following in more detail, but here’s the basic formula clients can use to drop an emotional anchor (note: the steps form the acronym “ACE”):
  • Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings.
  • Come back into your body.
  • Engage in what you are doing.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others overcome adversity, this collection contains 17 validated resilience and coping exercises. Use them to help others recover from personal challenges and turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.

A Take-Home Message

Teaching children good coping skills is one of the best ways to give them a head start on life. However, as the plethora of resources above indicate, it’s never too late to start building these skills.

With the coping skills worksheets, tips, and techniques in this article, you can help clients try new things, expand their comfort zone, and add highly adaptable skills to their tool chest.

Once clients can regulate their emotions through healthy coping skills, they’ll have the capacity to tackle the more specific and complex challenges that brought them to you in the first place.

Coping is a vital building block that they can use as a foundation for a host of other skills, abilities, and strengths that will facilitate a life well lived.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Resilience Exercises for free.

ED: Updated June 2025