Anger triggers worksheet: a free printable for adults

What does “trigger” mean, and what doesn’t it mean?

A trigger, on this worksheet, is a situation you often get angry in. It isn’t a button somebody else presses. The most careful wording I’ve found is in SAMHSA’s anger management manual, a US government manual for group therapy. It says it uses the word because people who’ve been through substance use treatment already know it, then adds:

The term “trigger” is not meant to convey that anger is an automatic response that cannot be controlled.

The manual teaches people to watch for two things:

• Events are what happened, such as being stuck in traffic. Some touch what it calls red flags, sensitive areas that “usually refer to longstanding issues that can easily lead to anger”.
• Cues are the warning signs that you’ve become angry and that the anger is still rising. It sorts them into four categories: physical, behavioural, emotional and cognitive (thoughts).

Between the event and the anger, the manual puts your reading of the event: “When you get angry, it is because your interpretation of an event has provoked your anger.” That’s how one clinical programme teaches it, not a study result. It’s why the worksheet asks who was there and not who caused it.

How to fill in page one of the anger triggers worksheet

Page one of the anger triggers worksheet is about events. Start with the last few times you were angry.

1. Under “Situations I often get angry in”, write one situation per row in “What happened”. Keep to facts. In the SAMHSA manual, events are facts and interpretations are “opinions, value judgments, or perceptions of the events”. “He moved the deadline” is an event. “He doesn’t respect me” is an interpretation.
2. In “Who or where”, note who was there and where you were.
3. In “How often”, a rough guess is enough: daily, most weeks, a few times a year.
4. Read down the rows, then fill in “What I expected that didn’t happen”. Look for a rule or a hope that keeps getting broken, such as “people should do what they said they’d do”. This box is the worksheet’s own way of asking about interpretation. It isn’t taken from the manual.

How to fill in page two of the worksheet

Page two of the worksheet covers what else was going on, and your cues.

1. Under “What else tends to be going on”, tick what fits and add your own. NHS inform’s anger guide says that when people are “stressed, tired, or dealing with other problems, they’re more sensitive to triggers”, and a US Department of Veterans Affairs checklist includes “Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired (HALT)”. Both are self-help materials, not study results, and the rest of the list (pain, a drink, noise, running late, a bad day) comes from neither. I’m not claiming any of these cause anger. Tick only what you’ve noticed in yourself.
2. Under “Early signs that I’m getting angry”, fill in the four boxes. They follow the four cue categories in SAMHSA’s manual. The table below gives each category with the manual’s examples.
3. Finish with “One thing I can change, and one thing I can plan for”. Pick one of each and keep them small.

Box on the worksheet	Cue category	The manual’s examples
In my body	Physical	Rapid heartbeat, tightness in chest, feeling hot or flushed
In my thoughts	Cognitive (thought)	Hostile self-talk, images of aggression and revenge
In what I do	Behavioural	Pacing, clenching fists, raising voice, staring
Other feelings that come with it	Emotional	Fear, hurt, jealousy, guilt

SAMHSA doesn’t endorse this worksheet. For more on the last box, there’s the anger iceberg worksheet.

A filled-in example (made up)

This example is invented to show how much detail to write. It isn’t my worksheet or any real person’s.

Field	Example entry
What happened	A colleague talked over me in the Monday meeting
Who or where	At work, in front of the team
How often	Most weeks
What I expected	That I’d get to finish my point
What else was going on	Not enough sleep, running late
In my body	Hot face, tight jaw
In my thoughts	“He does this on purpose”
In what I do	Go quiet, then snap at someone else
Other feelings	Embarrassed
Change	Go to bed earlier on Sunday
Plan for	Say “I’d like to finish”, then talk to him afterwards

What the evidence says about listing your triggers

Listing triggers and cues is taught inside whole anger programmes, and the evidence is for the programmes. The SAMHSA manual describes its programme as “a combined CBT approach that employs relaxation, cognitive, and communication skills interventions”, designed for adults with substance use and mental health conditions. (CBT is cognitive behavioural therapy.) A 2018 review of meta-analyses found that anger treatments “have consistently demonstrated at least moderate effectiveness among both non-clinical and psychiatric populations”. A systematic review of 42 studies of CBT for anger, from the same year, raises the possibility that this favourable picture “may need closer scrutiny”, partly because people in studies can give answers that make them look better. I’ve read only the abstracts of both.

None of that says what a triggers list does by itself. I haven’t found a study that tests one alone, which doesn’t prove there isn’t one. The manual says it and its workbook have been used for self-study, and that “there has been no research into the validity of this use of the manual”, only anecdotal reports of success. A printable worksheet is that kind of use. Treat it as a way to see your patterns and expect no more of it.

What to do with the finished worksheet

A finished worksheet is a first guess made from memory. NHS inform suggests thinking about whether you can avoid a trigger that keeps coming up, or handle the situation differently. So avoid what you reasonably can, plan for what you can’t, and use the early signs on page two as the moment to do what you planned.

Then check the list. An NHS trust’s anger workbook suggests keeping a diary “for a few weeks” to “see whether there are any patterns”. The daily anger log is made for that. After a few weeks, compare the two and fix the rows you got wrong. Kettle, my daily anger journal for iPhone, asks the same question about expectations. It isn’t on the App Store yet.

A worksheet can’t fix some triggers. If one of yours is another person’s behaviour towards you that is frightening or controlling, or your own reactions are frightening the people around you, that’s a reason to get help. I’m not a clinician and can’t assess you. A professional can.

For more on why anger happens, read Why am I so angry? The other worksheets are on the tools page.