Stress is a natural reaction that can affect individuals experiencing a range of psychological concerns. Those who experience chronic stress are at an increased risk of mental health concerns and related socioeconomic difficulties. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that psychological stress is one of the most concerning health challenges of our time. Keep reading to learn 9 stress management activities to do with your clients in therapy sessions.
When we experience physical, psychological, or emotional stressors, our adrenal glands release cortisol. Cortisol is known as the “stress hormone” and is a natural part of our bodies’ stress response. Over time, continual high levels of cortisol can contribute to a range of mental health disorders, including depression and anxiety.
Stress management activities can be used to help those who are struggling with high levels of stress. These exercises can include activities focused on improving physical health, nutrition, exercise, and other strategies that focus on improving cognitive and emotional functioning. Some of the most common approaches used in stress management sessions include mind-body therapies, mindfulness practices, relaxation activities, and talk therapy. Studies have indicated that mindfulness and meditation practices are the most effective in reducing cortisol levels.
Mindfulness practices originate from Buddhism and include a focused awareness of your experience along with a purposeful and nonjudgmental focus on the present moment.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs provide clients with the opportunity to learn a range of activities that can be used to better manage stress. This includes breathing meditation, body scanning techniques, and gentle, yoga-inspired physical exercises. Research has helped us understand that with regular practice of mindfulness skills, we can improve our ability to fully process our emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations as they arise.
How Stress Management Activities Can Help Your Clients
Stress management activities can be helpful for clients who are struggling with mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and prolonged stress. Additionally, those who are experiencing anger often, fear, appetitive changes, energy level changes, poor concentration, sleep disturbances, increased substance use, and physical concerns like headaches or stomach problems can also benefit from stress management activities.
Stress management activities can be beneficial for adults, teens, and children because they can often be modified to various age groups and symptoms. Therapeutic activities can promote session engagement and help clients learn and practice skills that can help them effectively manage stressors they face. You may also find that stress management activities help your clients identify new challenges or stressors that they may not and help them express their thoughts and emotions.
Stress management activities can be structured or fluid. They can easily be incorporated into individual, family, and group therapy sessions. TherapyByPro has an assortment of worksheets available for mental health professionals. Examples of their stress management activities include:
- Coping Skills Worksheet Bundle
- Stress Management Worksheet Bundle
- Stress Triggers Worksheet
- Recognizing Stress Worksheet
Stress Management Activities for Your Clients
You can incorporate stress management activities for adults and children into your sessions with ease. Therapeutic activities, including the ones listed below, can be customized to your clients specific needs. When using stress management activities for kids, it is important to ensure that your activities are appropriate for their age and development level.
Stress Management Activities for Kids
- Play therapy is commonly used to treat a range of behavioral and other mental health concerns among children. Creating a feelings thermometer can help children gain awareness of their emotions and practice verbalizing their emotional experiences. This can also help them identify stress levels for different experiences. For this activity, you can provide your client with a picture of a thermometer. You can then ask them to indicate how strong their feelings are, ranging from low to high intensity. You can use this activity to explore which emotions are the most challenging for your client to sit with and learn which coping strategies would be beneficial to focus on.
- Deep breathing is an effective coping skill for a range of emotional challenges, including stress. To help kids better understand the process of deep breathing, you can use blowing bubbles to demonstrate the process of deep breathing. This can help children who may not understand other ways of introducing this practice. With these stress management exercises, kids can learn to control their breathing in a slow and purposeful way while having fun.
- Creating a worry box can help children externalize their stress and worry. With this activity, you can supply your client with the materials needed to decorate their own worry box. This is a flexible activity that can use colored pencils, markers, paint, and other craft supplies. Once their box is made, you can help them write or draw their worry on a piece of paper that they then place in the box. Spend time exploring what it is like to place their worry in the box and how this affects their current stress level.
- Movement is an effective coping skill for emotional distress. You can help your client practice animal yoga poses like cat, dog, and cobra. Yoga practices can provide children with an outlet for physical energy and promote mind-body awareness. These are simple movements that children can do independently when they find themselves feeling overwhelmed or stressed.
Stress Management Activities for Adults
- Progressive muscle relaxation is a helpful stress management exercise that can be incorporated into group and individual sessions. For this activity, you can read from a pre-written script or find an audio online that guides you through this exercise. Your client will focus their attention on tensing and relaxing specific muscles in the body in a particular order. Many find that this exercise brings attention to the areas of your body that are holding tension and promotes relaxation. Clients who respond well to this activity may find it helpful to incorporate it into their routine. Allow for time in session to process your client’s experience with this exercise.
- Guided imagery meditations align well with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) therapy. With this activity, you can use a script or find an audio file online. Guided imagery meditations can help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which can help reduce stress. Some clients find that guided imagery meditations are more helpful than other forms of meditation because of the visualization component. When the meditation was complete, you could process your clients’ experience by asking about their thoughts, emotions, and feelings during the exercise as well as how they felt when it was completed.
- Journaling is a popular therapeutic activity that can be helpful for various mental health concerns, including stress management. While journaling can be a free-form activity, it can also be structured. For clients struggling with managing their stress, you can encourage them to reflect on stressful situations they experienced. By having them look at beliefs and thoughts that added to their stress, you can help them challenge or reframe these beliefs. Cognitive restructuring is a helpful and effective approach from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that can help improve thought awareness. You can reinforce the takeaways from this activity by talking about cognitive restructuring in session.
- Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (CBT) has a range of therapeutic activities that can be used for stress management. Mindful walking is a practice that clients can incorporate into their everyday life. With this stress management activity, you’ll encourage your client to walk slowly and pay attention to each step they take. Encourage them to use their senses to bring their attention to their breath and the surrounding environment. Mindful walking can help clients bring their attention to the present moment, decreasing rumination.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a therapy commonly incorporated into stress management treatment. Values clarification worksheets are used to identify personal values so you can determine if your current actions align with and support these values. This stress management exercise can help reduce stress and help clients identify behavioral changes they can make to decrease stress in their lives. Ensure that you have time to process this worksheet with your client and discuss how they can implement their behavior changes discussed.
Frequently Asked Clinical Questions
Below are FAQs clinicians are asking:
How does a clinician differentiate between standard acute stress and pathological chronic stress during initial session planning?
Evaluate whether their elevated cortisol levels and physiological symptoms represent temporary responses to a distinct event or indicate an entrenched, continuous state of systemic exhaustion. Standard acute stress subsides once the threat is resolved, whereas chronic stress keeps the sympathetic nervous system continuously active, dramatically increasing long-term risks for clinical depression, persistent hypervigilance, and somatic concerns like tension headaches or sleep disturbances.
What is the recommended clinical protocol if a guided imagery meditation triggers an unexpected panic attack or severe emotional flooding?
Cease the visualization script immediately and transition the client directly into active, physical co-regulation using present-moment grounding exercises. Avoid forcing the client to continue processing mental imagery or stay in a meditative state while their threat pathways are hyper-aroused; instead, guide them to open their eyes and scan the physical boundaries of the room until their nervous system returns to a stable baseline.
How should a child counselor handle a client who understands deep breathing in theory but experiences physical restlessness during practice?
De-escalate the structural pressure of traditional breathing by shifting the session toward playful, movement-based interventions like blowing bubbles or animal yoga poses. Children experiencing sensory processing issues or severe ADHD traits frequently struggle with static regulation exercises, requiring dynamic mind-body activities to safely release physical tension and build somatic self-control before attempting structured breathing counts.
When is it clinically appropriate to transition an adult client from structured cognitive restructuring journals to ACT values clarification activities?
Introduce ACT values clarification worksheets once the client demonstrates adequate thought awareness and can successfully track their specific stress triggers on a daily log. Moving past analytical thought records into values mapping allows you to identify where their current lifestyle actions mismatch their core beliefs, providing a practical foundation for implementing sustainable, value-based behavioral changes between sessions.
Can an independent practitioner safely utilize standalone mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) activities for a client presenting with acute, severe bipolar depression?
No, mind-body relaxation practices must be paused or immediately paired with careful care coordination and primary psychiatric tracking. Attempting to address deep-seated depressive lethargy or cyclical mood instability with standalone meditation exercises without multi-professional support risks missing advanced crisis indicators and can inadvertently compromise the safety container necessary for stabilizing severe clinical conditions.
Final Thoughts On Choosing The Right Stress Management Activities for your Clients
When you’re evaluating stress management activities, take time to consider what topics would benefit your client the most. This may include recognizing triggers and learning effective coping skills. Try to be mindful of incorporating various coping skills so your client can see which strategies are the most helpful.
Stress management activities can be customized to align with your clients treatment plans and goals. With collaboration from your client, you can personalize strategies and coping skills to get the most out of treatment. To learn more about therapies and interventions that can be used with clients struggling with stress, explore available training and continuing education opportunities.
TherapyByPro is a trusted resource for mental health professionals worldwide. Our therapy tools are designed with one mission in mind: to save you time and help you focus on what truly matters-your clients. Every worksheet, counseling script, and therapy poster in our shop is professionally crafted to simplify your workflow, enhance your sessions, reduce stress, and most of all, help your clients.
Want to reach more clients? We can help! TherapyByPro is also a therapist directory designed to help you reach new clients, highlight your expertise, and make a meaningful impact in the lives of others.
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Resources:
- Can YS, Iles-Smith H, Chalabianloo N, Ekiz D, Fernández-Álvarez J, Repetto C, Riva G, Ersoy C. How to Relax in Stressful Situations: A Smart Stress Reduction System. Healthcare (Basel). 2020 Apr 16;8(2):100. doi: 10.3390/healthcare8020100. PMID: 32316370; PMCID: PMC7349817.
- Olivia Rogerson, Sarah Wilding, Arianna Prudenzi, Daryl B. O’Connor, Effectiveness of stress management interventions to change cortisol levels: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Psychoneuroendocrinology, Volume 159, 2024, 106415, ISSN 0306-4530, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106415.
- (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453023003931)
- Worthen M, Cash E. Stress Management. [Updated 2023 Aug 14]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2025 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513300/