CBT Techniques You Can Practice at Home

1. Thought records

The cornerstone of CBT. When you notice a strong negative emotion, write down:

1. The situation (what happened)
2. The automatic thought (what you told yourself)
3. The emotion and its intensity (0–10)
4. Evidence supporting the thought
5. Evidence against the thought
6. A balanced alternative thought
7. Re-rate the emotion

Most people find their emotional intensity drops 30–50% just by completing this exercise. Evii's CBT Reframing template guides you through this process with AI follow-ups.

2. Cognitive distortion identification

Learn to spot common thinking errors that fuel anxiety and depression:

• Catastrophizing — Assuming the worst will happen
• All-or-nothing thinking — Seeing things as black or white
• Mind reading — Assuming you know what others think
• Emotional reasoning— “I feel it, so it must be true”
• Should statements— Rigid rules about how things “should” be
• Personalization — Blaming yourself for things outside your control

3. Behavioral activation

When you're depressed, you stop doing things you enjoy, which makes depression worse. Behavioral activation breaks this cycle: schedule one small, pleasurable or meaningful activity each day, even when you don't feel like it. Start tiny — a 10-minute walk, calling a friend, cooking a meal.

4. Behavioral experiments

Test your anxious predictions. If you believe “everyone will judge me if I speak up in the meeting,” try speaking up once and observe what actually happens. When reality contradicts your anxious prediction, your brain updates its model of the world.

5. Worry scheduling

Designate a 15-minute “worry window” each day. When anxious thoughts arise outside this window, note them down and postpone them. When your worry window arrives, you'll often find the concerns have dissolved — your brain realized they weren't as urgent as they felt.

6. Graded exposure

Create a hierarchy of feared situations (1–10). Start with the least scary and gradually work your way up. Each successful exposure teaches your brain that the feared outcome doesn't happen (or is manageable), reducing anxiety over time.