17 Therapeutic Techniques Exercises

Tools
(3 customer reviews)

Effective therapeutic work requires more than understanding what a client is struggling with. Practitioners also need practical ways to work with what comes up in the room — whether that means helping a client approach a difficult emotion, explore a pattern, build a skill, reconnect with what matters, or take a meaningful step forward.

Having a range of therapeutic techniques at hand gives you more ways to respond to different clients and different moments in therapy. An exercise can bring structure to the work, make an abstract concept more tangible, or give clients the chance to experience and practice something for themselves. The right technique can deepen a session, create movement when a client feels stuck, and give them something useful to carry into daily life.

This collection brings together 17 evidence-based resources informed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Gestalt Therapy, Positive Psychology, and related approaches. Covering emotional regulation, behavior change, psychological flexibility, coping, strengths, values, motivation, mindfulness, and decision-making, the pack expands your therapeutic toolbox with practical, ready-to-use techniques for sessions and between-session work.

$ 35

You will be equipped with the following tools:

  • Acting Opposite to Urges

    This exercise directs clients to act in ways that are contrary to the behaviors toward which their difficult emotions pulled them.

  • Behavioral Activation

    This tool aims to help people with depression or lowered mood become more physically active through activity scheduling and mood monitoring.

  • Character Strengths Overuse and Underuse

    This overview aims to summarize the pitfalls of character strengths and clarify that wise strength application always involves being able to do more or do less according to the demands of the situation and applicability to a given context.

  • Cognitive Restructuring

    This exercise aims to help clients recognize automatic negative thought habits and replace them with more accurate and rational thinking habits through cognitive restructuring.

  • “I’m Having the Thought That” – A Cognitive Defusion Exercise

    The goal of this exercise is to help clients reduce the dominance and believability of unhelpful thoughts by practicing cognitive defusion.

  • Motivational Interviewing Techniques

    This tool was created for practitioners to help facilitate the integration of MI techniques into their practice.

  • Observing Self Exercise: Noticing the Noticer

    The goal of this exercise is to help clients develop the ACT skill of “noticing the noticer”, the part of themselves that observes experiences without judgment.

  • Praising Effort Over Ability

    This goal of this tool is to provide practitioners with guidance on how to use growth-oriented language in session to help their clients foster a growth mindset.

  • Rewriting Rigid Rules About Living

    The goal of this exercise is to help clients recognize rigid ‘demand’ thinking and replace it with more flexible ‘preference’ thinking.

  • Seeing Through the Hindsight-Bias

    This tool aims to help clients unpack a past decision so that they may understand what contributed to this choice at that point in time.

  • Stay or Leave? The Empty Chair Technique

    This tool aims to help clients who are unsure whether to stay or leave their job to understand this conflict through illuminating and separating the two competing internal arguments.

  • The Beyond Limitation Question Technique

    The goal of this exercise is to gain insight into a client’s core values and goals that are driven by authentic, intrinsic motivation by helping the client think outside his/her normal limitations.

  • The Coping Strategy Wheels

    The goal of this tool is to provide a clear categorization of the most commonly used coping strategies.

  • The Hexaflex and Inner Compass: A Reflective Practice

    This tool helps new and inexperienced ACT practitioners reflect on client sessions using the hexaflex and inner compass metaphor, by focusing on the client’s values as the practitioner’s ‘true north’.

  • VIA Signature Strengths Scoring Sheet

    The goal of this inventory is to create a structured overview of the different sources of information (e.g., the practitioner, peers, or online assessment) that can be used to identify the strengths of a client.

  • Window of Tolerance

    This tool aims to increase people’s ability to perceive and understand accurately the signs that they are hyper-aroused or hypo-aroused.

  • Worry Window

    The goal of this exercise is to help clients reduce the frequency, intensity, and disruptiveness of worry by scheduling a daily ‘Worry Window’ in which they consciously engage with their worries.

  • Bonus: Observing-Self-Exercise (mp3)

This pack includes 17 evidence-based therapeutic exercises designed to help clients work with unhelpful thoughts, difficult emotions, avoidance, rigid beliefs, motivation, coping, and behavioral patterns. Each activity supports greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, psychological flexibility, and more intentional responding across personal, relational, and professional contexts.

Drawing from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Gestalt Therapy, Positive Psychology, and related approaches, the exercises combine structured guidance, reflective prompts, experiential techniques, and practical therapeutic applications. Whether helping clients challenge negative thinking, manage worry, regulate emotional urges, clarify values, strengthen coping strategies, identify personal strengths, or make more thoughtful decisions, this toolkit offers a flexible collection of interventions that can be adapted to a wide range of client needs.

Download the pack to help clients move beyond insight alone and put therapeutic learning into practice through greater awareness, flexibility, resilience, and intentional action.

The following experts create our tools and resources:

  • Emma Mudge

    BSc (Hons), PGCert, PGDip

  • Jo Nash

    Ph.D.

  • Lucinda Poole

    Psy.D.

  • Hugo Alberts

    Ph.D.

  • Elaine Houston

    B.Sc. (Hons)

  • Joshua Schultz

    Psy.D.

  • Ryan M. Niemiec

    Psy.D.

This resource is designed for anyone who wants to better understand and work with patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and coping that can contribute to psychological distress. It is ideal for individuals seeking practical, evidence-based tools to manage worry, regulate emotions, challenge unhelpful thinking, strengthen coping skills, clarify values, and respond to difficult situations with greater awareness and flexibility. It is also well-suited for therapists, coaches, counselors, educators, and other helping professionals who want a versatile collection of therapeutic techniques to support clients across areas such as cognitive restructuring, behavioral activation, emotional regulation, psychological flexibility, strengths, motivation, mindfulness, coping, and decision-making.

These tools are designed for adults who want to better understand and change unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and coping. They are suitable for a wide range of situations, including worry, emotional overwhelm, rigid thinking, low motivation, difficult decisions, stress, self-criticism, unhelpful habits, and periods of personal or professional change. Flexible and adaptable, the exercises support adults in building emotional awareness, strengthening coping skills, increasing psychological flexibility, clarifying values, identifying strengths, and developing more intentional and effective ways of responding to life’s challenges.

These tools are designed to be simple, flexible, and easy to integrate into everyday life. Each exercise includes clear instructions, practical guidance, and step-by-step support to help users apply the techniques effectively. They can be used independently for personal growth or incorporated into existing coaching, therapeutic, or wellbeing practices - allowing you to adapt them to individual needs and contexts.

Yes, each tool includes clear, step-by-step instructions, practical guidance, and thorough descriptions, making them simple to integrate into your current therapeutic or coaching approach. They are designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing you to seamlessly incorporate them into your sessions with clients.

Upon purchase, you will receive access to a .zip file containing all the tools as PDFs. If you have any difficulty accessing the tools, please contact us at [email protected].

Absolutely! While these exercises are especially valuable in therapy, coaching, group work, and educational settings, many can also support personal reflection and self-development. The same evidence-based techniques used to help clients examine unhelpful thoughts, regulate emotions, strengthen coping, clarify values, and increase psychological flexibility can also support meaningful individual growth and greater self-awareness. Whether you are managing worry, rigid thinking, emotional overwhelm, low motivation, difficult decisions, stress, or unhelpful habits, these tools offer practical guidance to help you respond with greater awareness, flexibility, resilience, and intention.

Yes, these tools are adaptable for individual clients, groups, teams, and diverse client populations. You are encouraged to use your professional experience and expertise to tailor the tools to meet the unique needs of each client and scenario.

Yes, but in order to promote good practice, please note that you are advised to use the tools within the boundaries of your professional expertise. For instance, if you are a certified clinician, you are advised to use the training within clinical psychology.

Yes — the toolkit is grounded in established psychological research and draws from evidence-based approaches including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Gestalt Therapy, Positive Psychology, and related therapeutic traditions. The exercises address well-researched processes such as cognitive restructuring, emotional regulation, behavioral activation, psychological flexibility, coping, strengths, mindfulness, values, and motivation. Some tools have been directly examined in scientific studies, while others are based on established theoretical and research-supported foundations. The toolkit translates these psychological principles into practical, structured interventions that help individuals recognize unhelpful patterns, regulate emotions, strengthen coping, challenge rigid thinking, clarify values, and respond more intentionally to difficult experiences. Each resource is designed to be practically applicable across therapy, coaching, group work, educational settings, and appropriate personal development contexts.

You’re free to download these tools in PDF format and print them for your personal or professional use, such as in a coaching or therapy setting. You’re not allowed to publish these tools publicly.

Within seven days of your purchase, if you decide that the tools aren’t for you, we’ll be happy to offer a refund.

Absolutely! Send us an email at [email protected] and we will gladly help you.

Description

Effective therapeutic work requires more than understanding what a client is struggling with. Practitioners also need practical ways to work with what comes up in the room — whether that means helping a client approach a difficult emotion, explore a pattern, build a skill, reconnect with what matters, or take a meaningful step forward.

Having a range of therapeutic techniques at hand gives you more ways to respond to different clients and different moments in therapy. An exercise can bring structure to the work, make an abstract concept more tangible, or give clients the chance to experience and practice something for themselves. The right technique can deepen a session, create movement when a client feels stuck, and give them something useful to carry into daily life.

This collection brings together 17 evidence-based resources informed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Gestalt Therapy, Positive Psychology, and related approaches. Covering emotional regulation, behavior change, psychological flexibility, coping, strengths, values, motivation, mindfulness, and decision-making, the pack expands your therapeutic toolbox with practical, ready-to-use techniques for sessions and between-session work.

  1. Kyle Wade Thomas

    Designed as the conduit through which statistically significant and meaningful content flows, PostivePsychology.com has quickly evolved into my go-to source for all things Positive Psych. The courses, presentations, and workbooks are supported with evolving content, tools, interventions, research/book recommendations, and community in ways that are reliable and valuable. One can use this as a foundation for a professional practice as a psychologist, coach, or holistic philanthropist.

    Kyle Wade Thomas Head of Global Business Development, SmartDraw Software

  2. Wendy B. Wenger, MA

    I was a MH/DA therapist and have been aware of the practice of positive psychology for a long time, and believe in the approach. I have created many worksheets that I used with my clients over the years. I enjoy reading materials about positive psychology and have purchased some of your worksheets to use within my new practice of providing life coaching. If you had existed when I first starting providing therapy, I would not have had to create some of my own worksheets. Thank you for all of your hard work.

    Wendy B. Wenger, MA Retired MH/DA Therapist & Life Coach

  3. Andra Costache

    Being a newly practicing positive psychology coach, I was awe-struck by the concomitant simplicity and complexity of the Sailboat Metaphor and how well it brings together key concepts in positive psychology. I feel that the best evidence to clients is to be able to continuously discover something new every time I use it on myself. 

    Andra Costache Positive Psychology Practitioner & Coach

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