Seven boxes, one thought, and both sides of the evidence. Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere, and there is a blank PDF below if you would rather do it on paper.
Fill in what you can. Any box you leave blank is simply left off the finished record.
Step 1
Where you were, who was there, what was said or done. Keep it to what a camera would have caught.
Step 2What did you feel, and how strongly?
One word is usually enough. Anxious, ashamed, furious, flat. Then put a number on it, because that number is what you compare against at the end.
Barely thereAs strong as it gets
Step 3
The sentence, not the summary. "She thinks I am useless" is a thought you can test. "I felt insecure" is not.
Step 4
Facts only. Things that happened, things that were actually said. Not what you assume anyone was thinking.
Step 5
The slow one, and the box that does the work. Times it did not go that way. What a friend would point out. Anything you left out of the box above because it was inconvenient.
Step 6
Fairer, not sunnier. If it reads like a slogan, it is not it. A fair version usually has an "and" in the middle of it.
Step 7How strongly do you feel it now?
Same feeling, rated again. It usually moves less than people expect. Going from 85 to 60 is the exercise working, not failing.
Barely thereAs strong as it gets
Nothing leaves this page. Closing the tab clears it.
Something happens, and a sentence arrives with it so fast that it does not feel like a sentence. It feels like the situation itself. He is annoyed with me. I have ruined this. They are all thinking it. The feeling that follows is a reasonable response to that sentence, which is why arguing with the feeling never gets anywhere.
A thought record slows the middle step down enough to look at. You write the sentence out, gather what supports it, then gather what does not, and see what a fair reading looks like with both piles in front of you. Often the thought survives in a smaller form. Sometimes it does not survive at all. Either way you have swapped a certainty for something you can check, and that is the whole move.
It is one of the standard tools in cognitive behavioural therapy, and it is the one that transfers best to doing alone, because the structure does the work that a second person would otherwise do.
Writing the thought, not the feeling
This is where most first attempts go sideways. Box three asks what went through your mind, and what people write is how they felt. I felt awful. I was embarrassed. Neither of those can be tested, so the two evidence boxes have nothing to work with and the exercise stalls.
A usable thought is a claim about the world with a subject and a verb. She thinks I am incompetent. This will go the way the last one did. Nobody here wants me at this. If you are stuck, notice what the feeling implies. Shame usually implies a claim about how you look to other people. Dread usually implies a prediction. Write that claim down, even if writing it makes it obviously overstated, because that is useful information too.
The box everyone rushes
The evidence-against box takes longer than the other six put together, and it is the one people finish in four words. This is not laziness. When a thought feels true, your memory helpfully supplies everything that fits it and quietly declines to supply the rest, so the material for that box is genuinely harder to reach.
Three things help. Ask what you would say to a friend who showed you the same record, because the standard you apply to other people is usually the fairer one. Look for times the prediction has already been tested and did not come true. And check what you left out of the evidence-for box because it made the case weaker.
If the same record keeps coming back with the same thought in it, the problem may be repetition rather than accuracy, and how to stop ruminating is a better fit than another record.
When this is the wrong tool
When the thought is true. Some situations are as bad as they look, and gathering evidence against an accurate thought is a way of avoiding it. If the record keeps concluding that yes, this really is happening, the work is deciding what to do about it rather than rethinking it.
When you are too activated to write. Nothing on paper competes with a body that is already going. Something physical first works better: paced breathing or a grounding sequence, then come back to this if you still want to.
And when it turns into a nightly audit of yourself. Filling in records compulsively is its own loop. If it is happening at two in the morning most nights, overthinking at night covers what tends to help more.
Three worked examples
Written for this page rather than lifted from a workbook. In all three the evidence-against box is the longest one, which is roughly how it goes when the exercise is done properly.
The message that arrived at six in the evening
The situation
My manager sent "can we talk tomorrow" at 6pm and then went offline. He normally says what it is about.
What I felt
Dread, 85 out of 100
The thought
I am about to be managed out.
What makes it look true
The message was short and he gave no reason. There were two errors in the numbers I sent last week.
What does not fit it
He writes short messages whenever he is leaving for the day, which is what six in the evening is. The last two times he said "can we talk tomorrow" it was about holiday cover and a client call. The errors were caught before anything went out and he thanked me for flagging them. Nobody has ever scheduled a dismissal by text the night before.
A fairer version
It is probably about the numbers, and that conversation might be uncomfortable. Uncomfortable and being managed out are not the same thing, and I will know by eleven tomorrow.
How I felt afterwards
Dread, 40 out of 100
The pause after I told a story at dinner
The situation
Told a long story on Saturday. There was a pause of a couple of seconds before anyone said anything.
What I felt
Shame, 70 out of 100
The thought
They all think I am too much.
What makes it look true
There was a pause. I did talk for a while without anyone interrupting.
What does not fit it
Priya asked a follow-up question about a minute later. I have already been invited to the next one. I cannot remember a single thing anyone else said that evening, which is a decent sign that nobody is keeping a record of what I said either.
A fairer version
There was a pause and I have no idea what it meant. I am rating a whole evening on two seconds of it.
How I felt afterwards
Shame, 35 out of 100
The night before a second interview
The situation
Second interview on Thursday. It is Tuesday, half past one in the morning, and I am awake.
What I felt
Anxious, 80 out of 100
The thought
I will freeze on the technical question and they will work out that I have been overstating what I can do.
What makes it look true
I did freeze in an interview in 2023. There are parts of their stack I have used once.
What does not fit it
I built two of the things they asked about in the first round, and they asked me back. Freezing once in six interviews is an event, not a pattern. Nobody I have worked with has ever suggested I overstate anything. If a question lands outside what I have done, "I have not used that in production, here is how I would approach it" is an answer rather than a failure.
A fairer version
I might get a question I cannot answer well, and I have a way to answer it honestly. Being unsure about one part of a stack is not the same as having lied.
How I felt afterwards
Anxious, 45 out of 100
Methodology and citation
sokoon wrote seven prompts following the structure a cognitive behavioural thought record normally uses: the situation, the feeling and its intensity, the automatic thought, supporting evidence, contradicting evidence, a balanced alternative, and a second rating. The tool arranges your own words under those headings and leaves blank boxes out. It does not score, diagnose, or generate an AI analysis, and both ratings are yours rather than a measurement of anything.
Answers stay in page memory. Copy and print act only when you choose them, and refreshing or leaving the page clears the form. The three worked examples are written by sokoon rather than drawn from anyone's case notes. These are original prompts following a widely used CBT structure, not a validated clinical instrument and not a substitute for your therapist's guidance.
Suggested citation: sokoon. “CBT Thought Record.” Methodology described September 7, 2026. sokoon.xyz/thought-record.
Common questions
What is a CBT thought record?
A short written record of one situation, the thought that arrived with it, and the evidence on both sides. It comes from cognitive behavioural therapy, where the working idea is that the thought sitting between the event and the feeling is often more slanted than it looks, and much easier to examine on paper than in your head.
How do you fill out a thought record?
Start with what happened, in plain facts. Name the feeling and rate it out of 100. Write the thought as a sentence. Then list what makes it look true, list what does not fit, and write a fairer version that accounts for both. Rate the feeling again at the end so you can see whether anything moved.
What is an example of a thought record?
There are three worked examples on this page: a short message from a manager, a pause after telling a story at dinner, and the night before a second interview. Each one shows the thought, both evidence columns, the fairer version that came out of them, and the rating before and after.
Is anything I type here saved?
No. Nothing you write is stored, sent, or recorded. It lives in this browser tab and goes when you close it, so copy or print it if you want to keep it.
Can I get a thought record as a PDF?
Yes. The blank worksheet on this page is a one-page PDF you can download and print with nothing to sign up for. Once you have filled one in here, print or save as PDF gives you the completed version instead.
How often should I do one?
A few done properly are worth more than one a day done out of duty. A reasonable habit is one whenever a thought keeps coming back for longer than a day, or whenever a feeling seems bigger than the thing that set it off.
What if I do not believe the fairer version?
That is normal early on and it is not a sign you did it wrong. You are not trying to talk yourself into anything. Belief follows repetition and evidence rather than a single sitting, and a fairer version you half believe is still more accurate than the one you started with.
This is a self-help worksheet, not treatment, and sokoon is AI support for adults 18 and over rather than therapy. If you may harm yourself or someone else, or cannot stay safe, contact local emergency services. In the US you can call or text 988, free and anonymous.
The evidence-against box is the hard one to fill on your own.
That is the part where a second voice earns its place: something that asks what else was going on rather than agreeing with you. sokoon is AI support you can talk a thought through with, one full text session every day on Free, no card. It works alongside therapy, not instead of it.
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