How to Make the Most of HappyNeuron Cognitive Worksheets

If you’re reading this article, you might already be familiar with HappyNeuron Worksheets. These are printable cognitive activity packets, based on our digital cognitive exercises. Worksheets are great as supplemental activities between digital sessions, and for clients who don’t enjoy using computers. They can also be helpful for keeping clients engaged during group therapy, or to give to clients as homework! In whatever setting you’re using these worksheets, we want to help you make the most of this resource. Here are our best tips for making the most of worksheets!

Tailor to Your Client’s Needs

As any clinician knows, no two patients are alike. While one worksheet packet might be easy for one person, it could be very difficult for someone else. Make sure you get a solid understanding of what cognitive skills your client is struggling with, so you can pick the worksheet activities that will help them most effectively. 

For example, if your client is struggling to remember names and faces, it’s great to provide them with an activity that exercises both visual and verbal memory, rather than just one or the other. If you’re ever struggling with what activities to provide for a specific patient’s needs, get in touch with us! Our product specialists will be happy to provide recommendations.

Bridge the Exercises to Real Life

This is often overlooked, but is actually one of the most important aspects of using worksheets! Your clients are exercising important cognitive functions that can help to improve their day-to-day lives – but if they aren’t aware of how these skills are being used in daily life, they may not be as motivated in therapy. And, they may not be able to transfer those skills as effectively.

This is why bridging questions are so important! Bridging questions are questions that help the client to think about when and how they use certain cognitive skills in their daily lives. For example, if they’re working on memory exercises, the clinician could ask them questions like:

• How can you use this skill next time you meet someone new at a party?
• When in your life do you need to memorize a list of words?
• Have you run into any situations at work or school where you wished your memory was stronger?
• How could memorizing a list of words help you when grocery shopping?
• How could memorizing what certain symbols look like help you during a long drive?

We provide bridging questions in all of our worksheet packets. However, you know your clients best, so we encourage you to come up with your own bridging questions that are tailored to their lives and what skills they are struggling with. You can help them transfer the skills they’re working on into their routines, making their life a little easier along the way.

Pair Cognitive Worksheets with Emotion + Behavior Activities

Cognition and mental health are closely intertwined. With worksheets, clinicians can help individuals to “organize” their brain in a way, and bolster their ability to function in their daily lives. While working on cognitive skills like memory, attention, or planning, it may also help clients to organize their thoughts with activities like planners, gratitude mapping, or self-reflection prompts. Check out our session resources pack for these activities and more! It’s only $5, and once you have access to the files, you can print and use these resources forever!

Subscribe to Save

We provide free mini packets each month, so of course you can use those as needed. However, if you want to provide a wide variety of worksheets to your clients throughout the year, we recommend signing up for our yearly subscription! This acts like a magazine subscription – each month, you’ll get a new big packet delivered to your account, in addition to the free mini packets. This will give you a lot more worksheets and a lot more bridging questions – which we hope will save you a lot more time by providing you with readymade activities for your clients!

Conclusion

If you use our worksheets, we hope that you and your clients get a lot out of them! And if you haven’t tried them, we highly recommend trying our collection of free mini packets to get started and see what HappyNeuron Worksheets are all about. They are created in-house by our small but mighty team, designed specifically to help clinicians fill their sessions with practical exercises for clients, saving you time and energy along the way. With this guide, we hope that you and your clients can make the most of cognitive worksheets!