Thought Evidence
Reflection
ADHD Executive Function Tools
A structured process for examining a thought that is affecting
how you feel or how you are showing up.
Where This Tool Helps
A thought may contain observations, interpretations, predictions, and self-judgments at the same time. This worksheet helps you separate those parts and compare them with specific evidence without declaring the thought simply true or false.
Write only what feels safe to examine. The goal is a more workable description in your own words, not a forced positive statement or a diagnosis of why the thought appeared.
The worksheet surfaces what is there. The questions at the end are designed to help you do something with what it shows you.
How to Use This Worksheet
- Write the thought exactly as it sounds in your head. Not the polished version. The actual words that show up. "I'm a disaster" is more useful to examine than "I sometimes struggle with organization."
- Separate observations, interpretations, and predictions where you can. If the thought is a fact (verifiable, specific, time-bounded), it does not need restructuring - it needs a response. If it is an opinion, continue.
- Fill the evidence columns separately. Do "evidence for" first, then "evidence against." If you do them simultaneously, the mind tends to discount the contradicting evidence as it writes it.
- The feelings field is not optional. Knowing how a thought makes you feel connects the cognitive work to the real cost of holding it.
- Write the balanced thought in your own words. It should feel true enough that you could actually believe it on a hard day - not so positive that it sounds like a platitude.
Coaching and Health Scope
This is a coaching reflection aid, not therapy, diagnosis, medical care, or a validated clinical instrument. Use it to record your own observations and prepare questions, not to identify a condition or choose treatment. Adapt or stop any prompt that feels unsafe or distressing. Bring persistent sleep, mood, anxiety, medication, physical-symptom, or safety concerns to a licensed health professional; use emergency or local crisis services for immediate danger.
Thought Evidence Reflection
Write the thought exactly as it sounds in your head:
Is this thought a fact or an opinion?
What supports this thought?
What contradicts this thought?
How does this thought make me feel?
What would I tell a friend who had this thought?
A more balanced way to think about this:
Before Your Next Session
Now that you have examined the thought, take a few minutes with these questions before your next coaching session. They connect what the worksheet revealed to how you are operating.
Before your next session:
- The thought you examined - is it one you return to often, or was this the first time you named it? If you have held this thought for a long time, where do you think it came from?
- What did the evidence-against column show you that you do not usually acknowledge? What makes it easier to hold the evidence for than the evidence against?
- What would change in how you approach a specific situation - a conversation, a project, a decision - if the balanced thought were the one that came first?
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