Participant tools
and worksheets

Explore the SMART Recovery participant toolkit to find worksheets with handy guides on how to use them.

  • Worksheet

The ABC's

The ABC Model is a good way of understanding how we can help change our feelings and behaviour by challenging our thinking.

  • Worksheet

Change Plan

The change plan worksheet captures and organizes essential elements of a plan, including desired changes, reasons, steps, helpers, success indicators, and obstacles.

  • Tool

Coping With Urges

Recording and analyzing urges through a log empowers individuals in recovery to gain awareness, identify patterns, anticipate triggers, and develop strategies to manage and overcome them.

  • Tool

Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)

Performing a cost benefit analysis (CBA) helps individuals weigh the positives and negatives of a behavior, facilitating motivation, decision-making, and progression from precontemplation to the contemplation and preparation stage of change.

  • Tool

Disrupting Unhelpful Thinking

Disrupting involves challenging and testing our thoughts to gain a more accurate perspective, enabling informed decision-making rather than impulsive reactions.

  • Checklist

Enjoyable Activities Checklist

This worksheet prompts the consideration and active planning of pleasurable and meaningful activities, including past and present interests, activities to discontinue, and new experiences to explore.

  • Worksheet

Practicing Self Acceptance

People struggling with behaviours of concern often feel a great deal of shame, self-blame and guilt. They may judge themselves harshly and beat themselves up about their behaviour.

  • Tool

Lifestyle Balance Pie

The lifestyle balance pie helps us to visually map out which areas of life are important to us and which areas need greater attention.

  • Worksheet

Enjoyable Life Worksheet

Sometimes we find it difficult to think of things we would like to do more of. The following checklist includes ideas and inspiration

  • Tool

Weekly Planner

Once you have set some specific goals and broken them down into smaller, specific steps, the weekly planner can be useful for keeping these goals on track and ensuring that you are taking active steps towards achieving them.

  • Tool

Setting SMART Goals

It’s important to make sure goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed.

  • Tool

Lifestyle Audit

When we slow down on a behaviour of concern, it can leave a gaping hole in our lives. Often, we find that we have a lot more free time, which used to be filled with activities related to our old behaviour. Also, we may no longer associate with the same group of friends. 

  • Tool

Problem Solving

This tool helps us to first define the problem, including when it usually happens, who else is involved, what happened and the associated thoughts and feelings

  • Worksheet

Unhelpful Thinking Styles

Psychologists have identified a number of typical unhelpful thinking styles. Familiarising yourself with them can help you recognise them quickly so you can challenge them and reframe them as more helpful or balanced thoughts.

  • Tool

Refusal Skills

When others invite us to engage in a behaviour of concern, this can be one of the most difficult triggers to resist. It's a very common stumbling block on the path to change. Being prepared in advance for these situations and developing refusal skills can increase the chance of successfully avoiding a slip-up.

  • Tool

Urge Log

An awareness and understanding of urges is crucial to recovery. One way to understand urges is by recording them. After a few entries, participants may notice patterns and similarities about their urges. The log then becomes a road map that will help them to anticipate situations and emotions that may trigger urges and  plan ways to avoid recognized triggers or distract themselves from the urge until it passes.

  • Tool

Maintaining Motivation

The maintaining motivation worksheet encourages us to remind ourselves why we wanted to make our change. It asks us to think about how far we’ve come and how the changes we’ve made have impacted our life. 

  • Tool

Rating Scale

Sometimes participants may lack the confidence to make a change, even though changing is important to them. When considering a participant’s readiness to change, it can be helpful to weigh up not only how important it is to them, but also how confident they feel about being able to achieve the change they want.