Cope Ahead Plan: Picture a Hard Situation Ahead and Rehearse Your Coping Skills

About this tool

A Cope Ahead Plan is a DBT emotion regulation worksheet for preparing for a difficult situation before it happens. It helps you name the emotions and urges you expect, choose specific coping skills, and rehearse what you will do when the hard moment arrives. The aim is to make your next action easier to remember while leaving room for feelings and events you cannot control.

The practice resembles the mental rehearsal used by athletes and performers: you imagine carrying out a specific action before trying it in the situation itself. For this worksheet, focus on the actions you want to remember, such as asking for a pause or reading from notes. You imagine yourself actively using skills to handle difficulty and the emotions that come with it. Rehearsal does not guarantee that the event will feel familiar, comfortable, or safe.

The most important part is to rehearse coping with problems, not a perfect outcome. You imagine things getting hard, and then you see yourself using your skills, staying steady, and recovering if you slip. That way you are prepared for reality, including the parts that do not go smoothly. Practicing this when calm builds genuine confidence for situations you would otherwise dread or avoid.

Two strands of research back up why this works. Studies on mental practice across sports and performance settings have repeatedly found that vivid rehearsal of an action improves later performance compared with no practice at all (Driskell, Copper, & Moran, 1994). Separately, research on implementation intentions, plans that link a specific situation to a specific response in an if-then format, found that people who make these concrete plans in advance are more likely to follow through when the moment arrives (Gollwitzer, 1999). Cope ahead combines both: a concrete if-then plan plus vivid rehearsal of carrying it out. These findings support the rationale for preparation; they do not establish how effective this particular worksheet is for anxiety or other mental health conditions. Marsha Linehan describes cope ahead within the emotion regulation teaching notes that accompany her DBT Skills Training Manual.

Cope ahead tends to help most with situations you can name in advance and that trigger a predictable pattern, such as a difficult family visit, a medical appointment, a hard conversation, or a recurring trigger at work. It is less useful for distress that comes out of nowhere with no lead time, and it is not a substitute for treatment if the anticipated situation involves significant trauma history: rehearsing a traumatic scene in imagination on your own can sometimes intensify distress, so that work is better done with a licensed trauma-informed therapist.

When you look back at your readiness rating over several plans, notice whether it climbs as you practice this skill more, and notice which categories of skill (physical, cognitive, or self-talk) show up in your most successful rehearsals. If your readiness score stays low no matter how much you rehearse, or the situation you are preparing for involves real danger rather than difficult emotion, that is a sign to bring in outside support through our therapist directory at /therapist/ rather than to keep rehearsing alone.

For example, suppose you expect to freeze during a medical appointment. Your plan might be: if I lose my words, I will read my written question and ask the clinician to explain the answer again. Rehearse feeling embarrassed and still asking. Include a backup, such as handing over your notes. Success means practicing a response you can choose, even when the other person reacts differently from what you hoped.

A readiness rating is your impression of preparedness, not a clinical score or a prediction of how the event will go. Compare the plan with what actually happened afterward. Identify the cue you noticed, the action you attempted, and what was missing. Keep useful steps and revise impractical ones. If visual images are difficult, try quietly describing your planned actions or practicing the words aloud.

Keep preparation focused on a situation you can reasonably expect. Repeatedly inventing more possible disasters can turn the exercise back into worry. Finish with an action you can take, then return to your day. The DEAR MAN Worksheet can help you prepare a request, and the If-Then Plan (Implementation Intentions) can clarify the cue for using it. The Social Anxiety Test can help you organize concerns for a conversation with a professional; it cannot diagnose you.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Reviewed the worksheet for fidelity to the DBT cope ahead skill, including rehearsing coping rather than a perfect outcome.

References

1. Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Manual. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2015.
2. Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2015.
3. Driskell JE, Copper C, Moran A. Does mental practice enhance performance? J Appl Psychol. 1994;79(4):481-492.
4. Gollwitzer PM. Implementation intentions: strong effects of simple plans. Am Psychol. 1999;54(7):493-503.
5. Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Manual, Second Edition: Reproducible Teaching Notes, Emotion Regulation, Build Mastery and Cope Ahead. Guilford Press. https://www.guilford.com/add/linehan7_old/lin-p-3teaching.pdf?t=1

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