Free Therapist Training›Free DBT Toolkit›Chain Analysis
Last updated: November 11, 2026
A chain analysis worksheet lays out one episode of a target behavior, link by link: the behavior itself, the event that set it off, what made the client vulnerable that day, each thought, feeling, urge and action in between, and what followed. It then turns the chain into a plan for where to break it next time and what to repair. The Sentio worksheet is written in plain language, so a client can fill it in with the therapist in session or as homework, and its numbered links table has a 0 to 5 intensity column and a column for a more skillful step at each link.
The template comes from the free DBT toolkit of the Sentio MFT program, which trains therapists with deliberate practice. Sentio's free training also includes DBT deliberate practice resources. The worksheet is an original design built on the components of a behavioral chain analysis that Shireen Rizvi sets out in Chain Analysis in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (2019), with a plan for next time and a repair step added at the end.
This is an optional template from the Sentio MFT program's free DBT toolkit, an original design for you to adapt.
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| Name | Date filled in |
|---|---|
Pick one time the behavior happened and stay with that one time. Write plain facts, the way you would tell them to someone who was not there. Go in order, one part at a time. If strong urges come up while you write, stop and use your safety plan.
1. The behavior
| What did you do? When and where did it happen? How long did it last, or how strong was it? |
|---|
2. What set it off
| What event started the chain? Write the day and the time. |
|---|
3. What made you vulnerable
| What made that day harder than usual? Think about sleep, food, sickness, medication and stress that had been building up. |
|---|
4. The links in the chain
Start with what happened right after the event that set it off, and end with the moment just before the behavior. Put one thing on each line: a thought, a feeling, a body sensation, an urge, something you did, or something that happened around you. In the third column, name your strongest feeling or urge at that point and rate it from 0 (not there at all) to 5 (as strong as it has ever been). In the last column, write a more skillful step you could take at that point next time.
| Link | What happened next: a thought, feeling, body sensation, urge, action or event | How strong (0 to 5) | A more skillful step that could fit here next time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | |||
| 2 | |||
| 3 | |||
| 4 | |||
| 5 | |||
| 6 | |||
| 7 | |||
| 8 |
If you need more links, add them on another page.
5. What came after
Write what happened because of the behavior. Include anything that felt better, even for a short time.
| Who | Right away: the first minutes and hours | Later: the next day and the days after |
|---|---|---|
| You | ||
| Other people |
6. Your plan for next time
| Break the chain: pick one or two links from part 4. What will you do at those points next time? |
|---|
| Lower your vulnerability: what will you do this week about sleep, food and stress? |
|---|
| Plan for what set it off: can you prevent it? If not, how will you get ready for it? |
|---|
7. Repair
| Did the behavior hurt you, someone else, or something you care about, like your job or a friendship? What will you do to repair it, and when? |
|---|
If you fill it in at home, bring it to your next session.
If you are in crisis
[Your clinic's crisis instructions: who to contact during office hours, after hours, and in an emergency.]
In the United States, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org, to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
What Does a Completed Chain Analysis Worksheet Look Like?
Lena, 28, is an invented client in standard DBT: weekly individual therapy and skills group, phone coaching with her individual therapist, and a therapist who meets with a consultation team. She is in stage 1, about three months into treatment, and self-harm is her life-threatening target. Her diary card showed self-harm on Thursday night, so in session 14 on Tuesday her therapist assessed current risk first and then worked through the chain with her, filling in the worksheet as they went.
The behavior row is kept non-graphic. In session, Lena and her therapist pin down exactly what she did, because the chain depends on that detail.
| Name | Date filled in |
|---|---|
| Lena | Tuesday, in session 14 |
1. The behavior
| What did you do? When and where did it happen? How long did it last, or how strong was it? |
|---|
| Self-harm, about 9:30 p.m., at home; did not need medical care |
2. What set it off
| What event started the chain? Write the day and the time. |
|---|
| Thursday, about 3:15 p.m., at the front desk. My supervisor told me in front of two coworkers that I had double-booked a patient again and that she was tired of fixing my mistakes. |
3. What made you vulnerable
| What made that day harder than usual? Think about sleep, food, sickness, medication and stress that had been building up. |
|---|
| Slept about five hours on Wednesday night. Skipped breakfast and lunch and had only coffee at work. Still upset about Tuesday's argument with my roommate about bills. |
4. The links in the chain
| Link | What happened next: a thought, feeling, body sensation, urge, action or event | How strong (0 to 5) | A more skillful step that could fit here next time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thought: "Everyone heard that. They all think I'm useless." | Shame 3 | Check the facts: two coworkers heard one comment about one mistake. |
| 2 | Face hot, chest tight. Kept my eyes on the screen and did not talk to anyone for the rest of my shift. | Shame 4 | Opposite action for shame: keep greeting patients at the desk. |
| 3 | On the bus home, about 5:15 p.m. Thought: "I'm going to get fired. I can't do anything right." | Shame 5 | Check the facts: no one has said anything about firing me. |
| 4 | Urge to self-harm started on the bus. | Urge 3, shame 5 | Call or text for coaching from the bus, while the urge is at 3. |
| 5 | Got home about 5:45 p.m. Told my roommate I was tired and went to my room. | Shame 5, urge 3 | Sit in the kitchen with my roommate, or text my brother. |
| 6 | Thought about calling my therapist for coaching. Then thought: "She'll think I'm failing at this too." Did not call. | Urge 4 | Call anyway. Asking for help is one of the skills I'm working on. |
| 7 | Skipped dinner. Lay in bed and went over the day again and again: what she said, who heard, every mistake I've made this month. | Shame 5, urge 4 | Get up, leave my room and use a distress tolerance skill from my list. |
| 8 | About 9:15 p.m. Thought: "I can't stand this. I need it to stop." | Urge 4 | Remind myself the urge will come down. Use a skill from my list for 20 minutes and call for coaching. |
5. What came after
| Who | Right away: the first minutes and hours | Later: the next day and the days after |
|---|---|---|
| You | Relief. The shame dropped for about an hour. Then I felt ashamed of the self-harm too and could not sleep until after 1 a.m. | Still ashamed on Friday. Called in sick and stayed in bed most of the day. Drank five drinks that evening. Missing work puts my job at risk, and I want to keep it. |
| Other people | No one knew. I stayed away from my roommate all evening. | A coworker had to cover the front desk on Friday. My supervisor does not know what upset me. My brother texted twice on Friday and I did not answer. |
6. Your plan for next time
| Break the chain: pick one or two links from part 4. What will you do at those points next time? |
|---|
| Links 4 and 6: when the urge reaches 3, call or text for coaching before I act, using the coaching text I wrote in session. Links 2 and 5: opposite action for shame, at the desk and at home. I'll practice it once a day with the scene from work. |
| Lower your vulnerability: what will you do this week about sleep, food and stress? |
|---|
| Lights out by 11 p.m. on work nights. Eat breakfast, and keep a snack at the desk for days I can't take lunch. |
| Plan for what set it off: can you prevent it? If not, how will you get ready for it? |
|---|
| I can't stop my supervisor from correcting me, so I'll plan for it. If it happens again: a five-minute break away from the front desk, then a coaching text before I leave work. On Monday I'll ask her for 10 minutes to go over the scheduling mistake and ask her to bring mistakes to me in private. We planned what I'll say in session. |
7. Repair
| Did the behavior hurt you, someone else, or something you care about, like your job or a friendship? What will you do to repair it, and when? |
|---|
| Thank the coworker who covered for me on Friday and offer to cover her lunch break next week. Called my brother back on Saturday (done). |
Therapist's follow-up in session 14
- Risk: assessed at the start of the session with the clinic's structured protocol (the LRAMP). No suicidal thinking today and no current suicidal intent or plan; suicidal thoughts were last rated 2 on Thursday night, with no intent.
- Safety plan: reviewed and updated together, with a new step for criticism at work (a five-minute break away from the front desk, then a coaching text before she leaves work) and her brother added as a contact.
- Coaching plan until session 15: call or text when an urge reaches 3, before acting, using the coaching text written in session.
- Consultation team: case brought to the team this week with the updated plans and a question: what would make calling easier for her when shame is high?
- Next: a chain analysis worksheet on Friday's drinking as homework. Session 15 opens with the diary card and a risk check, then reviews the coaching plan, the new safety plan step and the talk with her supervisor.
What Is a Behavior Chain Analysis, and When Does DBT Use One?
A behavior chain analysis is a step-by-step account of one episode of a target behavior, and it works as a functional analysis: it pins down what controlled the behavior that time (Koerner, 2012). It is DBT's main assessment method, used in almost every DBT session. Rizvi (2019) gives it five components: the vulnerability factors, the prompting event, the links (thoughts, emotions, actions and other events, whether the client's own or other people's), the target behavior and its consequences in the short and long term.
In individual therapy, the diary card and the target hierarchy decide which behavior gets the chain. Stage 1 targets have a fixed order: life-threatening behaviors first, then therapy-interfering behaviors, then quality-of-life-interfering behaviors, then increasing behavioral skills. Imminent risk of suicidal behavior or self-injury calls for crisis intervention before anything else. Otherwise, any behavior from the first three categories that occurred since the last session, as the card shows, becomes the focus, through a detailed analysis plus in-session work and homework aimed at avoiding it next time. The most weight goes to the highest-priority behavior of the past week.
Lena's week shows the order at work. Thursday's self-harm is life-threatening behavior, so it gets the chain in session 14, ahead of her late diary card, a therapy-interfering target in her plan, and Friday's drinking, a quality-of-life target.
One chain covers one episode. Repeated chains reveal patterns over time, DBT case formulation is built from those patterns, and treatment plans address what needs to go differently in the chain. Rizvi (2019) treats chain analysis as central to case formulation and treatment planning from the earliest stage of treatment onward.
How Do You Run a Chain Analysis That Stays Useful?
Keep it specific, keep it to one behavior and one episode, and put the detail where the chain turns. Rizvi (2019) starts with a clear, behaviorally specific description of the single instance: exactly what was done, how, how much and over what time, which a broad label such as self-injury cannot give. Friday's drinking, a separate behavior, gets a worksheet of its own as Lena's homework before session 15. Rizvi prefers the term target behavior because the client may not see the behavior as a problem, and she notes that a chain can be done on effective behavior too. A chain on Lena's Tuesday, when a coaching call and her skills carried her through an argument with her roommate, would show which links to repeat.
The order of assessment differs from the order of events. After the behavior, Rizvi recommends assessing the prompting event, then the vulnerability factors, then the links, then the consequences, while noting that no single order is right after the target behavior. The worksheet follows that sequence.
- Prompting event. The event that seems to have set the behavior off, the one without which it would not have happened, tied to a specific time. It can be external, such as another person's behavior, or internal, such as a thought or a nightmare. Lena's is her supervisor's criticism at 3:15 p.m.
- Vulnerability factors. What left the client more susceptible to the prompting event that day, such as poor sleep or eating, physical illness, skipped medication or recent stressors piling up. The guiding question is why the behavior happened on that particular day, so a long-standing condition such as a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder does not count. Lena's were about five hours of sleep, skipped meals and Tuesday's argument about bills.
- Links. Everything, internal or observable, between the prompting event and the behavior: thoughts, emotions and their intensity, urges, interpersonal events, other external events and secondary target behaviors. Not every link is dysfunctional. Lena's link 6 starts with a skillful thought, calling for coaching, before a second thought blocks it. The worksheet names body sensations as a kind of link and rates the strongest feeling or urge at each link.
- Consequences. What followed, right away and later, within the client and in the environment. They point to what may be reinforcing the behavior, since immediate consequences often maintain it even when the client mainly notices the long-term harm. Lena's relief that night is the one to watch.
Spend the session's time where the chain turns: the links where intensity jumps and the links where a skill could have fit. In Lena's chain those are link 4, where the urge reached 3 on the bus home, and link 6, where she thought about calling for coaching and did not. Links that change nothing can be noted and passed quickly.
Validation belongs in the chain too. Linehan (1993) presents problem solving and validation as the two core strategies of DBT. When the chain reached the missed coaching call, Lena went quiet; later in the session her therapist came back to the call and validated Lena's shame before going on.
How Does Solution Analysis Follow the Chain?
Solution analysis turns the chain into a plan, and it is usually woven into the chain analysis as it goes. DBT problem solving pairs chain analysis with solution analysis, supported by orienting and commitment strategies. Therapist and client pick a link that controls the behavior, generate, evaluate and carry out solutions for that link, often practicing in the session, and then move to another link. In choosing a link, weigh how strongly it controls the behavior, how often it recurs across chains, how easy it is to treat, how closely it ties to the client's goals and how willing the client is to work on it.
The kind of link points to the kind of solution. A skills deficit calls for skills training; cues that prompt the behavior call for stimulus control; an unwarranted emotion set off by a cue calls for exposure; faulty thinking calls for cognitive modification; and an environment that reinforces the problem, or fails to reinforce skillful behavior, calls for contingency management. Repairing harm caused by the target behavior is one contingency-management solution, and the worksheet gives repair a part of its own.
Lena's plan works at four points. At links 4 and 6 she will call or text for coaching when the urge reaches 3; she named not calling as the link she most wants to change, asking for help is already one of her skill goals, and a coaching call worked on Tuesday. At the shame links she has an opposite action plan for work and for home, rehearsed in session. A sleep and meal plan lowers her vulnerability, and a planned talk with her supervisor prepares for the prompting event.
The shame that stopped her from calling is the kind of link exposure treats, since DBT uses exposure when a cue triggers an unwarranted emotion that blocks skill use. DBT often applies exposure informally, with the cue at hand and no hierarchy, so in session her therapist oriented Lena to the procedure and then had her read the coaching text aloud while staying with the shame.
Practice the Skill
Rehearse the two moves a chain analysis depends on: asking for the next link when a client jumps from the prompting event straight to the behavior, and turning one link into a solution the client is willing to try. Episode 16 of Practice Time walks through problem assessment and Episode 17 walks through problem solving. Sentio's DBT deliberate practice webinar also lists running a chain analysis that stays useful among its skill targets.
Keep reading
DBT Diary Card, the daily self-monitoring card whose highest-priority target sets up the chain
DBT Progress Note Template, how to record a session built around a chain analysis, with Lena's session 14
DBT Target Hierarchy, the stage 1 order of priorities that decides which behavior gets the chain
Free DBT Toolkit, every template in the set, each with a PDF and a completed example
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a behavior chain analysis in DBT?
A behavior chain analysis is a step-by-step account of one episode of a target behavior that works as a functional analysis, pinning down what controlled the behavior that time. It is DBT's main assessment method and is used in almost every DBT session. It covers the vulnerability factors, the prompting event, the links leading to the behavior, the behavior itself and its short- and long-term consequences, and a solution analysis follows it.
What are the steps of a chain analysis?
Start with a behaviorally specific description of the target behavior: what was done, how, how much and over what time. Rizvi (2019) then recommends assessing the prompting event, the vulnerability factors, the links and the consequences, while noting that no single order is right after the behavior. A solution analysis follows, choosing links to change and practicing the solutions. The Sentio worksheet adds a last step for repair.
What is the difference between a chain analysis and a solution analysis?
A chain analysis finds what led to one episode of a target behavior and what followed it; a solution analysis decides what to change. Solution analysis follows the chain and is usually woven into it: therapist and client pick a link that controls the behavior, generate and evaluate solutions for it, often practice them in session, and then move to another link. DBT problem solving pairs the two.
What counts as a vulnerability factor in a chain analysis?
A vulnerability factor is anything that left the client more susceptible to the prompting event on that occasion, such as poor sleep, poor eating, physical illness, skipping prescribed medication that day, or recent stressors piling up. The guiding question is why the behavior happened on that particular day, so a long-standing condition such as a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder does not count.
What should a therapist do when a chain analysis involves self-harm?
Pair the chain with the clinic's risk procedures: assess current risk with the clinic's protocol, review and update the safety plan, set a coaching plan for the week, follow up at the next session and bring the case to the consultation team. The Linehan Risk Assessment and Management Protocol (LRAMP), a free form posted by the University of Washington for clinical use, is one example of a structured protocol.
Can teens use a chain analysis worksheet?
Yes. The Sentio worksheet uses short sentences and plain words, so a teen can fill it in with the therapist or as homework, and the toolkit has a separate diary card for teens. In DBT for adolescents, teens learn to call for coaching before acting on a problem behavior, and optional family therapy sessions aim to help resolve family conflict and crises.
References
Rizvi, S. L. (2019). Chain analysis in dialectical behavior therapy. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-4625-3890-4. https://www.guilford.com/books/Chain-Analysis-in-Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy/Shireen-Rizvi/9781462538904
Rizvi, S. L., & Ritschel, L. A. (2014). Mastering the art of chain analysis in dialectical behavior therapy. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 21(3), 335-349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2013.09.002
Heard, H. L., & Swales, M. A. (2016). Changing behavior in DBT: Problem solving in action. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-4625-2264-4. https://www.guilford.com/books/Changing-Behavior-in-DBT/Heard-Swales/9781462522644
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-0-89862-183-9. https://www.guilford.com/books/Cognitive-Behavioral-Treatment-of-Borderline-Personality-Disorder/Marsha-Linehan/9780898621839
Linehan, M. M., Comtois, K. A., & Ward-Ciesielski, E. F. (2012). Assessing and managing risk with suicidal individuals. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 19(2), 218-232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2010.11.008
Koerner, K. (2012). Doing dialectical behavior therapy: A practical guide. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-4625-0232-5. https://www.guilford.com/books/Doing-Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy/Kelly-Koerner/9781462502325
Comtois, K. A., Carmel, A., & Linehan, M. M. (2025). DBT Next Steps clinician's manual: Building a life worth living. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-4625-5811-7. https://www.guilford.com/books/DBT-Next-Steps-Clinicians-Manual/Comtois-Carmel-Linehan/9781462558117
Miller, A. L., Rathus, J. H., & Linehan, M. M. (2007). Dialectical behavior therapy with suicidal adolescents. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-4625-3205-6. https://www.guilford.com/books/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-with-Suicidal-Adolescents/Miller-Rathus-Linehan/9781462532056
Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. (n.d.). Dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents. Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved November 9, 2026, from https://preventionservices.acf.hhs.gov/programs/469/show
University of Washington Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics. (2016). Linehan Risk Assessment and Management Protocol (LRAMP) (Version 1.0). https://depts.washington.edu/uwbrtc/wp-content/uploads/LSSN-LRAMP-v1.0.pdf
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. (n.d.). Get help. Retrieved November 9, 2026, from https://988lifeline.org/get-help/
About This Template
Corrections and suggestions: mabundez@sentio.org.
