Attachment Therapy Homework Sheets

Notes for practitioners

Assign one sheet, not four. The most reliable predictor of homework being completed is that it takes under three minutes and there is only one of it. Four sheets handed over at once returns four blank sheets.

The sheets capture; they do not process. Each is designed so that a client can complete it while activated or shortly afterwards, which means no interpretation is asked for. Interpretation belongs in the room and asking for it on paper is what makes homework feel like a test.

Set the frequency explicitly. "Whenever it happens" produces nothing. "Every time you notice X, and at least twice before we next meet" produces something, and two entries is genuinely enough to work with.

Expect the first round to be inaccurate and say so in advance. Clients frequently record what they think they should have felt. Naming that possibility before they start tends to prevent it, and normalises the second attempt.

Sheet 1: The incident capture

Five fields, completed within an hour.

Time, the observable event, the first bodily change, the first thought verbatim, what was done. Nothing else, and specifically no field for what it meant — that is the session’s work. The verbatim thought is the field that earns its place: clients almost always paraphrase their own cognitions upward into something more reasonable when recounting them later, and the unedited version is frequently the most useful line in the fortnight.

Sheet 2: The urge-and-gap record

What was wanted, what was done, and how long between.

For any attachment-driven urge — to contact, to withdraw, to check, to test — record the urge, the gap before acting, and the action. This produces the one number that tracks well across a course of therapy and that clients can see moving: the gap. It also separates two things that get conflated in the room, namely how strong the urges are and how much they are governing behaviour, which frequently move independently.

Sheet 3: The relational event log

For couples work, or for a client working on one relationship.

One line per notable interaction: what the other person did, what you did, and how it ended. No motives on either side. Over a fortnight this produces the shape of the cycle far more reliably than either person’s account of it, and it does so without requiring anyone to concede anything — which is what makes it usable in couples work where the accounts are contested.

Sheet 4: The between-session experiment

One behaviour, one time, and what actually happened.

Agreed in session: a specific behaviour, tried once, with a written prediction beforehand. Make one direct request. Stay thirty seconds past the exit point. Send nothing for two hours. The prediction is the part that matters, because attachment beliefs are largely predictive — "if I ask, they will resent it" — and the only thing that reliably shifts a prediction is a written record of it being wrong. Predictions recalled after the fact are quietly revised.

Using the sheets across a course of work

A rough sequence that tends to work.

Sheet 1 early, while the pattern is still being described rather than worked on. Sheet 2 once the pattern is agreed and the target is behaviour. Sheet 3 when the work becomes relational, or from the start in couples work. Sheet 4 last, because behavioural experiments need a formulation to test. This is a rough order rather than a protocol, and running sheet 1 again near the end gives a reasonable before-and-after that clients find more convincing than their own sense of progress.

Terms of use

These sheets are free to print, photocopy and distribute to clients, students and supervisees. No permission or attribution is required and there is no charge. Please do not resell them or present them as your own materials.

They are capture instruments, not an assessment and not a treatment model. They assume a practitioner is holding the formulation, and they are not a substitute for training, supervision or clinical judgement. For a client-facing explanation of the four patterns, the psychoeducation handout is written for exactly that purpose.