Habituation Curve Diagram

A printable graph for plotting SUDS during an exposure to make the falling curve concrete.

About this worksheet

A printable graph for plotting SUDS during an exposure to make the falling curve concrete. It is one of the most widely used tools in Exposure Therapy practice and appears in most standard textbooks on the subject. The worksheet is short enough to fit on a single printed page but is designed to be used many times — the value comes from repetition, not from a single insightful sitting with it.

The technique works on a simple premise: when an internal experience is vague, it tends to feel large and unmanageable; when you put it on paper in concrete language, it shrinks to a workable size. Writing forces specificity. Specificity makes change possible. People often discover, just from completing the worksheet honestly, that the situation looked different on the page than it did in their head.

This worksheet is intended to be paired with reflection, not used as a one-off transaction. Most clinicians ask clients to complete one or two of these per week, then bring them to session for review. If you are using it on your own, find a regular time — many people do these in the morning or before bed — and resist the urge to skip the writing step. Talking yourself through the questions in your head, without writing, will not produce the same effect.

Mental health authorities including the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and SAMHSA describe written self-monitoring as a foundational element of evidence-based self-help. The version below is consistent with that guidance and can be used independently or alongside professional care.

When to use it

Use this worksheet when you notice a pattern that keeps showing up — a recurring difficult thought, a situation that consistently lands you in the same emotional place, a moment in the day that you keep dreading. It is most useful when worked on shortly after the triggering event, while the experience is still fresh enough to remember in detail but far enough back that you have a little distance from it. If you wait too long, the specifics fade and the worksheet becomes generic; if you try to do it while the storm is still active, you may find it hard to write at all. The sweet spot is usually within a few hours of the moment you want to examine.

How to use it: step by step

1. Find a quiet ten to fifteen minutes when you will not be interrupted. Print the worksheet, or copy the prompts into a notebook.
2. Pick one specific moment from the past few days, not a category of moments. "My commute on Tuesday" is workable; "my commutes" is not.
3. Work through each section in order. Resist the urge to jump ahead to the conclusion — the cumulative effect of the questions is the point.
4. Write longer than feels necessary. The first answer is usually the rehearsed one; the third or fourth answer is often where the real material lives.
5. When you reach the reflection step, set the page down for a few minutes before coming back to it. Distance helps you read what you wrote with a different pair of eyes.
6. Save the completed worksheet. Reviewing several together over the course of a few weeks will often surface patterns you cannot see in a single page.

A worked example

A client used this worksheet after a difficult performance review. Her first pass was almost entirely about her boss's tone; her third pass surfaced the underlying belief that any criticism meant she was on the verge of being fired. Naming the belief did not eliminate it, but it changed what she was working on — from a boss problem to a belief problem — and that shift opened up productive moves she had not been able to see.

Tips for getting the most from it

• Date every worksheet. Patterns become visible only when you can see the sequence.
• Write longer than you think you need to. Brevity is the enemy of insight here.
• If the same situation keeps appearing, that is information — the technique is working, and you are seeing where the work actually lives.
• Don't grade your own writing. The worksheet is not an essay; misspellings and incomplete sentences are fine.
• If a section feels impossible, write "I don't know" and move on rather than getting stuck.

Notes for clinicians

When assigning this worksheet, be explicit about what it is for and what it is not. Many clients arrive expecting that completing the page will resolve the underlying difficulty, and are disappointed when the worksheet "didn't work." The worksheet is a thinking tool, not an intervention in itself — its value emerges in session as you and the client examine what they wrote, notice patterns, and make decisions about next steps. Plan to spend at least ten minutes per worksheet in session. If a client is consistently completing the worksheet but symptoms are not shifting, look upstream: is the worksheet matched to the actual maintaining mechanism? Is the client filling it out reflectively or rotely? Is there an avoided topic that the worksheet keeps tiptoeing around? In those cases, switching tools or going meta on the avoidance is often more useful than asking for another completed page.

References & further reading

• NIMH — Psychotherapies
• SAMHSA — National Helpline
• MedlinePlus — Mental Health

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