Making a Scale for your Anxiety

At school, we often help students struggling with emotional regulation by creating a 5 point scale with them regarding their unique emotional experience. I thought this idea could be really helpful for my understanding of my own anxiety. Since I did find it helpful, I thought I'd share it on the off chance it might be helpful to others too. :)

The process of making this chart helped me understand the different ways anxiety appears in my life. I found it useful regarding my emotional self-awareness and my ability to notice my emotions (which has always been hard for me).

(Note: Although I'm talking about anxiety, this chart activity can be used for any emotion.)

Here are some images of the scales that I am basing this idea on: one and two (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Making the scale:

(Note: this is intended to take time, and you may want to make a draft in pencil so that you can add and adjust things during the next few days.)

5 is crisis level. What does your anxiety look like at its worst? One thing that surprised me was realizing sometimes a strange calm can mask my anxiety at this level of severity and this level can look several different ways. I chose to break level 5 into 3 parts to reflect these different ways crisis can look for me.

I also added a 0 on my scale for no anxiety, and 1 became practically-nonexistent anxiety. You may not need or want to make the 0 and 1 distinction that I made.

To fill in each part of the chart I asked myself these 4 questions:

--- What are my thoughts like at this level of anxiety?

--- What is my body like at this level of anxiety?

--- What are my social or physical actions like at this level of anxiety?

--- What situations or locations is this level of anxiety usually associated with?

If you want to see the end result, here is mine (note: I do mention self-harm and being at the doctors (without detail) in #5, in case that might be upsetting for you).

Additional step:

Brainstorm what you can do about your anxiety at each of these stages.

At stages 0/1 the action might be "continue what you're doing" but on levels 4 and 5 there might be a number of steps. I find 0, 1, and 5 have the least coping skills for me because 0 and 1 don't need them and 5 is just: call for help. For me, most of my coping skills would be listed at stages 3 and 4. Each scale is intended to be different, matching your own specific experience and needs.