38 Anxiety Group Therapy Activities to Do With Your Clients

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that approximately 19.1% of adults in the United States have struggled with an anxiety disorder in the past 12 months. Women had a notably higher past-year prevalence than men (23.4% compared to 14.3%) (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d.). Looking at lifetime prevalence, NIMH reports that 31.1% of adults will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives.

As with most mental health concerns, there’s real individual variation in symptoms and severity of impairment among people living with anxiety disorders. NIMH data shows that most individuals with an anxiety disorder experience mild impairment, followed by moderate and then serious impairment, respectively (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d.).

Anxiety disorders affect individuals across the lifespan and can have a significant impact on adolescents and young adults specifically. NIMH estimates that 31.9% of adolescents live with an anxiety disorder, with 8.3% experiencing severe impairment from their symptoms (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d.). In this post, I review 38 anxiety group therapy activities for individuals with anxiety you can use in your practice’s group sessions.

How Does Group Therapy Help Individuals with Anxiety?

Many individuals who struggle with anxiety disorders benefit from a combination of psychotropic medication and behavioral treatment approaches, which can include both individual and group therapy.

There are several benefits to using group therapy activities with anxious clients, adolescents and adults alike. One of the most powerful is simply this: group therapy helps individuals see that they’re not alone in their struggle, and that there are others living with strikingly similar experiences. For someone who’s felt isolated by their anxiety, that realization alone can be significant.

For clients who experience social impairment as part of their anxiety, group sessions offer a real opportunity to learn and practice social skills — including effective communication and boundary setting — in a setting that’s lower-stakes than daily life. Alongside skill practice, groups give members space to talk through how they’re coping with anxiety symptoms as they come up.

Beyond relating to one another’s struggles, group therapy gives members the chance to learn from each other directly. Group members can share what’s helped them and what hasn’t, and offer each other feedback, support, and encouragement — all of which can meaningfully shape the group’s overall dynamic. Anxiety group activities can also be a genuinely fun way to encourage participation from members who are more reluctant to engage.

Do you work with clients with anxiety issues? Check out our Anxiety Worksheets

Considerations Before Facilitating an Anxiety Group

Anxiety group therapy offers real opportunities for skill-building and connection. That said, anxiety disorders vary widely in presentation, and a few clinical considerations are worth keeping in mind before diving into group activities.

Clinical Consideration	What Counselors Should Consider
Differentiate Between Types of Anxiety Disorders	Generalized anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety, specific phobias, and agoraphobia each have distinct features and treatment considerations. Facilitators should tailor activities to the specific presentations in their group rather than treating “anxiety” as a single, uniform experience.
Individualize Exposure-Based Work	While introducing the concept of exposure in a group setting is valuable, actual graded exposure exercises are typically built around a client’s individualized hierarchy and are usually most appropriate for individual treatment or closed, structured group protocols rather than open group activities.
Be Mindful of Accidentally Reinforcing Avoidance	It’s natural to want to make group a comfortable, low-pressure space, but consistently allowing avoidance without any gentle encouragement toward engagement can inadvertently reinforce the same avoidance patterns driving a client’s anxiety.
Stay Within Scope of Practice on Medication	Counselors can provide general psychoeducation about the role medication may play in anxiety treatment, but should avoid endorsing specific medications and should refer clients to a prescribing provider for individualized medical guidance.
Watch for Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia Specifically	Clients with panic disorder or agoraphobia may need additional pacing and care with activities involving physical sensations or unfamiliar environments, since these can closely mimic or trigger panic symptoms.
Consider Cultural Differences in Anxiety Presentation	Anxiety can present more somatically in some cultural contexts than others. Facilitators should avoid assuming anxiety will look the same — or be described the same way — across every client.
Distinguish Clinical Anxiety from Situational Stress	Not everyone experiencing stress or worry meets criteria for an anxiety disorder. Facilitators should assess accordingly rather than assuming every presentation of worry warrants the same level of clinical intervention.

Clinical Note: Anxiety group therapy activities should be facilitated by qualified mental health professionals within an appropriate treatment framework. Interventions should be individualized based on each client’s specific anxiety presentation, risk factors, and treatment goals.

List of Group Therapy Activities for Treating Anxiety

It’s worth remembering that there are fun group therapy activities for anxiety in addition to educational ones. Staying flexible with the activities and topics you use in group can make sessions more enjoyable and more beneficial for your members. Let’s get into some group therapy activities for anxiety treatment groups.

1. Understanding the Anxiety Response: Fight, Flight, and Freeze

Clients benefit enormously from understanding that anxiety is a physiological survival response, not a personal weakness or overreaction.

What It Is: This psychoeducational activity introduces the body’s fight, flight, and freeze responses, explaining anxiety as the nervous system’s automatic reaction to perceived threat (Bracha, 2004).
How It Helps Clients: Understanding the physiology behind their symptoms — racing heart, tight chest, restlessness — helps clients make sense of sensations that often feel confusing or frightening on their own.
How To Do It: Provide psychoeducation on the fight, flight, and freeze responses and how they show up physically. Ask group members which response tends to be most familiar to them, and discuss how understanding this shifts their relationship to their symptoms.

2. Understanding Anxiety Disorders

Clients often experience relief simply from learning that their specific pattern of symptoms fits a recognized clinical picture.

What It Is: This activity provides psychoeducation on the different anxiety disorders — including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and specific phobias — and their defining features (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).
How It Helps Clients: Recognizing which pattern fits their own experience helps clients feel less alone and gives them language to describe what they’re going through more precisely.
How To Do It: Provide education on the different anxiety disorders and their core features. Ask group members which presentation feels most familiar, and allow space for questions and discussion.

3. Understanding Avoidance and the Anxiety Cycle

Of everything covered in this list, this concept may be the single most important one for clients to genuinely understand — avoidance is what keeps anxiety alive.

What It Is: This activity introduces the anxiety-avoidance cycle: avoiding a feared situation reduces anxiety in the short term, which reinforces the avoidance and strengthens the fear over time (Mowrer, 1960).
How It Helps Clients: Understanding this cycle explains why avoidance — the very thing that feels like relief in the moment — is often the mechanism keeping their anxiety in place, which builds motivation for the harder work of gradually facing feared situations.
How To Do It: Explain the anxiety-avoidance cycle using a relatable example. Ask group members to identify a situation they currently avoid, and discuss, without pressure to act on it yet, how avoidance may be reinforcing that specific fear.

4. Introduction to Graded Exposure

Exposure is the most well-supported treatment approach for anxiety disorders, and introducing the concept in group can lay the groundwork for more individualized work (Abramowitz, Deacon, & Whiteside, 2019).

What It Is: This activity introduces the concept of graded exposure — gradually and systematically facing a feared situation in manageable steps — using a general example rather than a specific member’s personal hierarchy.
How It Helps Clients: Understanding the logic behind graded exposure demystifies the process and reduces the intimidation clients often feel at the idea of “facing their fears” all at once.
How To Do It: Walk through a general example of a fear hierarchy, from least to most anxiety-provoking. Discuss the principle of gradual, repeated exposure, and encourage members to consider working with you individually to build their own hierarchy outside of group.

5. Panic Attack Psychoeducation and Response Plan

Panic attacks are frightening in part because of how misunderstood the physical sensations often are — clients frequently fear they’re having a medical emergency.

What It Is: This activity provides psychoeducation on the physical sensations of panic and the catastrophic misinterpretations that often accompany them, then helps clients build a personal response plan for when panic symptoms arise (Clark, 1986).
How It Helps Clients: Understanding that panic symptoms are frightening but not medically dangerous can reduce the fear-of-fear cycle that often escalates a panic attack.
How To Do It: Provide education on panic symptoms and common catastrophic thoughts that accompany them (e.g., “I’m having a heart attack”). Help each client build a brief, personalized response plan they can use when symptoms arise.

6. Anxious Thought Challenging

Anxious thoughts often involve very specific patterns — like catastrophizing or overestimating the likelihood of a feared outcome — that are worth naming directly.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to identify a specific anxious thought, then investigate the actual evidence that supports or disproves it.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing this process in group gives clients a repeatable framework they can apply independently the next time an anxious thought arises.
How To Do It: Ask the group to identify anxious thoughts they struggle with. Once a thought is identified, walk through the evidence that supports and disproves it, and discuss common anxiety-specific distortions, such as catastrophizing or fortune-telling, that may be present.

7. Worry Time: Scheduled Worry Postponement

Trying to eliminate worry outright rarely works — this technique instead works with it, by containing it to a specific window of time (Borkovec, Wilkinson, Folensbee, & Lerman, 1983).

What It Is: This activity introduces scheduled “worry time,” a technique where clients postpone worries to a designated 15–20 minute window each day, rather than engaging with them the moment they arise.
How It Helps Clients: Containing worry to a specific time reduces how much it intrudes on the rest of the day, and many clients find that by the time their worry window arrives, the urgency of the thought has already faded.
How To Do It: Introduce the concept of worry time and how to practice it: noticing a worry, briefly noting it, and deferring full engagement until the scheduled window. Ask members to try this before the next session and discuss their experience.

8. Daily Check-In Ritual

A consistent opening ritual helps the facilitator gauge where the group is starting from each session.

What It Is: This activity asks members to check in at the start of group and rate their anxiety over the past day or few days.
How It Helps Clients: A quick rating gives the facilitator an immediate sense of the group’s collective needs for that session, and gives members a consistent, predictable way to open group.
How To Do It: Ask each member to rate their anxiety over the past day or two on a simple scale. Use these check-ins to help gauge the direction and focus of that day’s session.

9. Meditation Practices

Different meditation styles resonate differently with different clients, so exposing the group to a few builds a more personalized toolkit.

What It Is: This activity introduces different forms of meditation, including guided meditation and progressive muscle relaxation.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing multiple styles in a group setting helps clients identify which approach feels most accessible before committing to an independent practice.
How To Do It: Guide the group through examples of different meditation forms. Discuss how each could be incorporated into members’ daily routines.

10. Breathing Exercises

Breath-based regulation is one of the most accessible tools available to clients, since it requires no materials or preparation.

What It Is: This activity introduces breathing techniques, such as box breathing, as a tool for regulating the body’s anxiety response.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing breathing skills in a calm group setting builds the familiarity needed to access them effectively during a more anxious moment.
How To Do It: Discuss the benefits of breathing exercises. Practice a technique such as box breathing together, and talk through situations where this could be a helpful coping skill.

11. Counting as a Coping Skill

A simple counting technique gives clients something concrete to redirect their attention toward in an anxious moment.

What It Is: This activity introduces counting-based techniques as a coping skill for anxiety.
How It Helps Clients: Counting occupies the mind with a simple, structured task, which can interrupt an escalating anxious thought spiral.
How To Do It: Discuss the benefits of counting-based coping skills. Ask group members to identify specific situations where this technique might be useful for them.

12. Five Senses Grounding

Grounding through the senses is one of the most reliable tools for anchoring a client back to the present moment.

What It Is: This activity introduces grounding techniques that use the five senses to bring attention back to the present.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing this skill in a low-stakes group setting builds familiarity, making it more accessible when a client needs it during real anxiety.
How To Do It: Walk the group through a grounding exercise using each of the five senses. Discuss specific situations where this technique could be a helpful coping skill.

13. Visualization: Finding Your Happy Place

A calming mental image, once practiced, can become a genuinely accessible tool during moments of anxiety.

What It Is: This activity introduces visualization by asking members to describe a personal “happy place,” then guiding the group through imagining themselves there.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing this visualization in group builds the mental “muscle memory” needed to access it more quickly during a real anxious moment.
How To Do It: Ask each member to describe their happy place. Guide the group through a few minutes of imagining themselves there, then process the experience and whether members see themselves using this skill independently.

14. Body Scan for Anxiety

Anxiety often shows up physically before a client consciously registers it emotionally.

What It Is: This activity provides a body outline worksheet and asks clients to identify where in their body they physically experience anxiety, such as a clenched jaw or tense shoulders.
How It Helps Clients: Increasing awareness of the mind-body connection helps clients recognize anxiety earlier, before it escalates, and reinforces the value of body-based coping skills.
How To Do It: Provide a body outline worksheet. Ask clients to mark where they notice anxiety physically, and encourage regular body scan practice to build awareness of these patterns over time.

15. Fear in a Bowl

Hearing that others share the same specific fear can be a powerful, immediate antidote to the isolation anxiety often creates.

What It Is: This activity asks members to anonymously write down a fear that contributes to their anxiety, place it in a bowl, and raise their hand if they relate as fears are read aloud.
How It Helps Clients: Seeing how many hands go up for each fear reinforces that members are far less alone in their specific anxieties than they may have assumed.
How To Do It: Have members anonymously write a fear and place it in a bowl. Read each fear aloud and ask members to raise their hand if they relate — members who prefer more privacy can be invited to close their eyes instead.

16. Exploring What Helps: Coping Successes and Anxiety-Free Moments

Clients often focus so heavily on their struggles that they overlook their own evidence of what actually works.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to describe a time they coped effectively with anxiety, as well as a time they didn’t feel anxious at all, and explore what contributed to each.
How It Helps Clients: Identifying specific factors — internal skills or external circumstances — that supported past success gives clients concrete, personalized strategies to draw from again.
How To Do It: Ask group members to share a time they coped well with anxiety and a time they didn’t feel anxious. Explore what helped in each situation, and what circumstances or actions they might be able to recreate.

17. Coping Skills for Difficult Emotions

Clients benefit from a broader coping toolkit than the one they’d generate entirely on their own.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to share which emotions they struggle most to cope with, and reviews healthy coping skills for each.
How It Helps Clients: Hearing what has worked for other group members expands each client’s personal coping toolkit beyond their own experience.
How To Do It: Ask the group to identify emotions they find difficult to cope with. Discuss healthy coping skills that can be used for each specific emotion identified.

18. Coping Cheat Sheet Card

A physical, portable reminder is more likely to actually get used in a real moment of anxiety than a mental list.

What It Is: This activity has clients create a small card listing three to ten coping skills they can carry in their wallet.
How It Helps Clients: Having a tangible, always-accessible reference reduces the mental effort required to recall a coping strategy while already anxious.
How To Do It: Provide small cards or index cards. Ask clients to write down several coping skills they can turn to when struggling — such as breathing, counting, calling a friend, or using a hotline — and encourage them to keep the card somewhere accessible.

19. Coping Skills Bingo

A game format can lower resistance and increase engagement for clients who might otherwise disengage from direct discussion.

What It Is: This activity uses a bingo board featuring different categories of coping skills, such as distraction, emotional release, mindfulness, grounding, self-care, and thought challenging.
How It Helps Clients: Requiring members to name a specific coping skill for each category in their winning row reinforces the material in an active, memorable way.
How To Do It: Create bingo boards with different coping skill categories. When a member calls “bingo,” ask them to identify a specific coping skill for each category in their row.

20. Coping Skills Collage

Creative, hands-on engagement can help clients connect with coping planning in a way that feels more personal than a written list.

What It Is: This activity invites clients to create a visual collage of coping skills for their anxiety using magazines, construction paper, scissors, and glue.
How It Helps Clients: A visual representation of coping strategies can serve as a more engaging, memorable reminder than a written list alone.
How To Do It: Provide magazines, construction paper, scissors, and glue. Ask clients to create a collage representing coping skills for their anxiety, and allow time to share and reflect as a group.

21. Coping Skills Jeopardy

Reinforcing psychoeducation through a game format helps concepts stick better than a straight lecture-style review.

What It Is: This activity uses a jeopardy-style game to review categories relevant to your group, such as anxiety psychoeducation, medication, treatment approaches, coping skills, triggers, and community resources.
How It Helps Clients: Gamified review increases engagement and gives the facilitator a low-pressure way to assess how well concepts have been retained.
How To Do It: Develop a jeopardy-style board covering categories relevant to your group. Play as a group, and use incorrect or uncertain answers as an opportunity to briefly reinforce the concept.

22. Stress Ball Making

A hands-on, tactile activity gives clients something physical to hold onto — literally — during moments of anxiety.

What It Is: This activity has clients make their own stress balls using balloons, flour, and a funnel.
How It Helps Clients: A tactile coping tool clients make themselves tends to feel more personal and accessible than a generic, store-bought version.
How To Do It: Provide balloons, flour, and a funnel. Guide clients through making their own stress ball, and review situations where they might use it as a coping skill.

23. Mandala Coloring

Structured, repetitive creative activities like coloring can have a genuinely calming effect for many clients.

What It Is: This activity provides clients with mandalas and colored pencils for a calming, low-pressure creative exercise.
How It Helps Clients: The repetitive, structured nature of mandala coloring can help quiet racing thoughts in a way that’s accessible even to clients who don’t consider themselves “creative.”
How To Do It: Provide mandalas and colored pencils. Allow time for members to color, then process the experience and whether members found it calming.

24. Music as a Coping Skill

Music can offer clients a non-verbal outlet for emotions that are difficult to put into words, and can also actively shift mood in the moment.

What It Is: This activity explores music as a coping tool in two ways — listening together to a variety of genres and reflecting on the emotional response, and inviting members to share a song they personally relate to.
How It Helps Clients: Music can access and express emotion in a way that talking sometimes can’t, and gives clients an easy-to-access coping tool for daily life.
How To Do It: Play a few songs from different genres and ask members to silently note their thoughts and feelings while listening. In a later or the same session, invite members to bring in a song they personally relate to and share how they connect with it.

25. Letter to Anxiety

Externalizing anxiety as something separate from the self can shift how a client relates to it.

What It Is: This narrative activity asks clients to write a letter to their anxiety, with the option to destroy the letter afterward as part of the processing.
How It Helps Clients: Externalizing anxiety — treating it as separate from a client’s identity — combined with the physical act of destroying the letter, can offer a genuine sense of release.
How To Do It: Ask clients to write a letter to their anxiety. Allow members the option to destroy the letter after reading it, and process the experience together afterward.

26. “On My Plate”

Visualizing stressors as physically “on a plate” gives clients a concrete way to sort what they can offload from what they’re carrying alone.

What It Is: This activity uses paper plates as a metaphor, asking clients to write down what’s currently causing them distress.
How It Helps Clients: Physically separating what can be removed from the plate versus what requires support helps clients feel less overwhelmed by an undifferentiated pile of stress.
How To Do It: Provide paper plates and writing utensils. Ask clients to write what’s “on their plate.” Explore what they could realistically remove, and what they might need to ask for support with.

27. Self-Care and Anxiety

Self-care is easy to deprioritize when someone is managing anxiety day to day, even though it plays a genuine role in symptom management.

What It Is: This activity discusses the benefits of self-care and asks clients to identify one behavior they can add to their routine.
How It Helps Clients: A concrete, single behavior is more achievable than a vague intention to “practice more self-care,” and following up creates accountability.
How To Do It: Discuss the benefits of self-care for anxiety symptoms. Ask each member to identify one behavior to add to their routine, and follow up in the next session on any noticed benefits.

28. Exercise and Anxiety

Regular physical activity has real, evidence-supported benefits for anxiety symptoms specifically, not just general wellness (Anderson & Shivakumar, 2013).

What It Is: This activity discusses the role of regular exercise in managing anxiety symptoms and invites members to reflect on their current routine.
How It Helps Clients: Understanding the specific link between movement and anxiety regulation can motivate clients who otherwise view exercise purely through a fitness lens.
How To Do It: Discuss the research connecting regular exercise to reduced anxiety symptoms. Ask members to share their current exercise routine and identify one realistic improvement.

29. Positive Affirmations

Affirmations are more effective as a consistent practice than a one-time exercise.

What It Is: This activity provides a list of positive affirmations and discusses how members can incorporate them into their daily routine.
How It Helps Clients: A brief, consistent practice is more sustainable than an occasional one, and repetition over time supports the affirmations becoming more genuinely believed.
How To Do It: Provide a list of affirmations. Discuss different ways members could incorporate them into their day, such as during a morning routine or before a known anxiety trigger.

30. Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

Working toward goals gives clients a tangible sense of forward movement that anxiety often obscures.

What It Is: This activity discusses the difference between short-term and long-term goals and asks clients to identify goals in each category, along with their motivation.
How It Helps Clients: Naming personal motivation behind each goal helps clients stay connected to why the goal matters, especially during moments when anxiety makes progress feel harder.
How To Do It: Discuss the difference between short-term and long-term goals. Ask members to identify a goal for each and share what’s motivating them to work toward it.

31. A Typical Day Without Anxiety

Imagining life without the weight of anxiety can help clients reconnect with what actually matters to them.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to describe what a “typical day” would look like if they didn’t struggle with anxiety.
How It Helps Clients: Identifying specific, desired changes gives clients a concrete personal goal to work toward, rather than treating recovery as an abstract idea.
How To Do It: Ask the group to describe a typical day without anxiety. Explore whether any details they mention could become a personal goal they start working toward now.

32. Communication Skills Practice

Clients with anxiety often struggle to communicate their needs clearly, which direct practice can help build.

What It Is: This activity discusses effective communication skills and provides time for members to practice them in pairs or small groups.
How It Helps Clients: Rehearsing clear, direct communication in a low-stakes setting builds the confidence needed to use it in real relationships.
How To Do It: Discuss effective communication skills as a group. Provide time for members to practice in pairs or small groups, and debrief the experience together.

33. Body Language and Communication

Body language communicates as much as words do, and anxiety often shows up in posture without a client fully realizing it.

What It Is: This activity discusses the role of body language in communication, including the difference between open and closed posture.
How It Helps Clients: Increasing awareness of their own body language gives clients another concrete lever they can adjust, alongside their verbal communication.
How To Do It: Discuss the role body language plays in communication. Explore the difference between open and closed posture, and ask members if there’s anything about their own body language they’d like to work on.

34. Communication Charades

A playful format can make communication concepts feel more approachable than a straightforward discussion.

What It Is: This activity uses a game of charades to reinforce the importance of effective, nonverbal-inclusive communication.
How It Helps Clients: The playful format increases engagement and offers a lighter entry point into a topic that can otherwise feel effortful for anxious clients.
How To Do It: Play a round of charades as a group. Use the activity as a springboard to discuss the importance of effective communication, including the nonverbal component charades naturally highlights.

35. Boundary Setting Practice

Anxiety and difficulty setting boundaries frequently reinforce one another.

What It Is: This activity discusses how to set boundaries and gives members time to practice in pairs or small groups.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing boundaries in a supportive setting builds the confidence to apply the same skill in relationships where anxiety has made it feel especially difficult.
How To Do It: Discuss how to set boundaries as a group. Provide time for members to practice boundary setting in pairs or small groups, and process the experience together.

36. Social Support Identification

Anxiety can make it hard for clients to recognize the support they already have available to them.

What It Is: This activity discusses the importance of social support and asks clients to identify three healthy supports in their life.
How It Helps Clients: Naming specific supportive people gives clients a concrete resource to lean on, rather than a vague sense that support exists somewhere.
How To Do It: Discuss the importance of social support. Ask group members to identify three healthy supports they currently have in their life.

37. Anxiety in Media: Watching and Discussing

Seeing anxiety portrayed on screen can open a conversation clients might not otherwise start themselves.

What It Is: This activity involves watching a clip or film depicting someone struggling with anxiety, followed by group discussion, including reflection on how social media and media portrayals shape our understanding of mental health.
How It Helps Clients: Discussing a portrayal at a slight remove — rather than their own experience directly — can make it easier for some clients to open up about what feels relatable or exaggerated in their own lives.
How To Do It: Select a clip or film depicting someone with anxiety. Discuss what group members related to, any takeaways, and whether anything felt exaggerated. Consider extending the conversation to the role social media plays in shaping our understanding of anxiety.

38. Psychotropic Medication Psychoeducation

Many clients have questions or misconceptions about medication that go unaddressed simply because the topic never comes up directly in session.

What It Is: This activity provides general psychoeducation about the medications commonly used for anxiety disorders, while staying within appropriate scope of practice.
How It Helps Clients: Normalizing medication as one possible tool among several — without endorsing specific medications — can reduce stigma and open the door for clients to have an informed conversation with a prescribing provider.
How To Do It: Provide general education on how medication fits into anxiety treatment as a whole. Offer appropriate referrals for clients interested in speaking with a prescribing provider about their options.

Final Thoughts on Selecting Group Therapy Activities for Your Clients with Anxiety

Anxiety group therapy activities give counselors a real opportunity to provide psychoeducation and promote genuine member engagement. When choosing which activities to use, it’s worth tailoring them to your specific group members — for example, if communication struggles come up repeatedly, you can shift focus toward learning and practicing healthy communication strategies directly.

Anxiety group activities can also be used to increase participation in groups that tend to be more reserved in session, which is especially relevant for newer groups or groups with frequent membership changes. Effective counselors can facilitate engaging, informative group sessions for individuals living with a wide range of anxiety disorders.

Resources

• American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.; DSM-5-TR). American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Resource
• National Institute of Mental Health. (n.d.). Any anxiety disorder. NIMH Statistics. Resource
• Bracha, H. S. (2004). Freeze, flight, fight, fright, faint: Adaptationist perspectives on the acute stress response spectrum. CNS Spectrums, 9(9), 679–685. Resource
• Mowrer, O. H. (1960). Learning theory and behavior. Wiley.
• Abramowitz, J. S., Deacon, B. J., & Whiteside, S. P. H. (2019). Exposure therapy for anxiety: Principles and practice (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
• Clark, D. M. (1986). A cognitive approach to panic. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 24(4), 461–470. Resource
• Borkovec, T. D., Wilkinson, L., Folensbee, R., & Lerman, C. (1983). Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 21(3), 247–251. Resource
• Anderson, E., & Shivakumar, G. (2013). Effects of exercise and physical activity on anxiety. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 4, 27. Resource