Urges – Self-Monitoring Record

Self-monitoring is a technique in which clients learn to systematically observe and record specific targets such as their own thoughts, body feelings, emotions, and behaviors. The aim is to improve clients’ awareness of their experiences and the contexts in which they occur, in order to help them gain insight into their symptoms and difficulties. Self-monitoring supports collaboration between the therapist and client, and creates opportunities to formulate and test hypotheses about these difficulties. Self-monitoring is usually introduced early in therapy, and provides an inexpensive and continuous measure of problem symptoms and behaviors throughout treatment.

Psychology Tools self-monitoring records have been carefully designed to focus on particular targets. In most instances, there are:

• Regular versions of each form which focus on collecting essential data about the target.
• Extended versions of each form, which allow additional data to be collected about the consequences of client behaviors, and which can

"Many people struggle with urges and cravings. A great way of finding out more about your urges, and the situations and feelings that go with them, is to use a self-monitoring record. It’s like a diary that helps you record your urges or cravings, and other important details which could help us understand more about them. Would you be willing to go through one with me now?"

Step 1: Choosing a focus, purpose, and prompt for data collection

Self-monitoring records are best used to capture information about specific categories of events: those that are of interest to the client or related to their presenting problem. The accuracy of self-monitoring decreases when individuals try to monitor for more than one target, so therapist and client should identify a single well-defined target behavior (e.g., “Situations where you have an urge to use drugs”, “Times when you crave alcohol”, “Moments when you want

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• Bornstein, P. H., Hamilton, S. B. & Bornstein, M. T. (1986) Self-monitoring procedures. In A. R. Ciminero, K. S. Calhoun, & H. E. Adams (Eds.), Handbook of behavioral assessment (2nd ed.). Wiley.
• Cohen, J.S., Edmunds, J.M., Brodman, D.M., Benjamin, C.L., Kendall, P.C. (2013), Using self-monitoring: implementation of collaborative empiricism in cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 20, 419-428.
• Kennerley, H., Kirk, J., & Westbrook, D. (2017) An Introduction to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: Skills and Applications (3rd ed.). Sage.
• Korotitsch, W. J., & Nelson-Gray, R. O. (1999). An overview of self-monitoring research in assessment and treatment. Psychological Assessment, 11, 415-425.
• Liese, B. S., & Beck, A. T. (2022). Cognitive-behavioral therapy of addictive disorders. Guilford Press.
• Persons, J. B. (2008). The case formulation approach to cognitive-behavior therapy. Guildford.
• Proudfoot, J.,