Building Discrepancy Worksheet (Free PDF Download)

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Download the worksheet (PDF)

What is the Building Discrepancy worksheet?

The building discrepancy worksheet sets a client’s current behavior against their stated values in four steps. Step 1: Reflect on Current Behavior asks what habits put recovery at risk. Step 3: Explore the Discrepancy then asks, in plain terms, how those behaviors conflict with the values written two steps earlier.

How to use the Building Discrepancy worksheet

Send this one home as homework, since it is written to be answered alone. Ask for Step 2: Define your Values and Goals to be filled first if the client is still ambivalent. Values named in advance are harder to argue away later. Your clients can then answer Step 3 honestly without it reading as a challenge from you. Read Step 4: Plan for Change together in the next session, rather than letting a plan get made alone.

Building Discrepancy Worksheet Download – What’s Included

Two printable pages, not fillable, with four steps and seven open questions. Page one carries Step 1: Reflect on Current Behavior and Step 2: Define your Values and Goals, with the values prompt giving health and family as examples. Page two carries Step 3: Explore the Discrepancy and Step 4: Plan for Change, which asks for changes that align behavior with recovery goals.

Based on Motivational Interviewing (Miller & Rollnick). Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Why this worksheet helps

Help your clients stay on the path of recovery with this relapse prevention worksheet. This worksheet will guide your clients through the process, identifying discrepancies, and motivate them to make lasting change

Mentalyc’s Building Discrepancy worksheet is a valuable tool that can be used to motivate clients and facilitate positive change. By identifying discrepancies between a client’s current behavior and their desired outcomes, you can help them develop a stronger sense of motivation and commitment to change.

This Relapse Prevention Worksheet includes prompts to :

Assess current behavior
Define current values and goals
Identify discrepancies
Explore the consequences
Plan for change

Why the Relapse Prevention Plan Worksheet is Essential:

The Building Discrepancy worksheet is a valuable tool for therapists working with clients who are striving to make positive changes. By effectively using this worksheet, you can help your clients identify discrepancies, increase their motivation, and develop a stronger sense of commitment to their goals.

Frequently asked questions

What is building discrepancy?

In motivational interviewing it means making the gap between what a client is doing and what they value hard to ignore. Miller and Rollnick treat that gap as the source of motivation, not persuasion from the clinician. The sheet builds it by asking for behavior and values separately, then comparing them.

What is an example of developing discrepancy?

A client names family as a guiding value in Step 2, then writes in Step 3 that weekend drinking means missing their daughter’s games. The clinician adds nothing. Reading those two answers side by side is what makes the conflict concrete, which is the whole mechanism here.

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Your Author

Tracy Collins, LCP

Tracy Collins is a licensed clinical psychologist with over six years of direct clinical experience in outpatient and telehealth settings. She specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, structured treatment planning, and measurable therapy outcomes. Tracy has extensive experience writing SOAP and DAP notes, developing insurance-compliant treatment plans, and aligning documentation with ICD-10 and DSM-5-TR diagnostic criteria. Her clinical approach integrates cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, behavioral activation, exposure-based interventions, and mindfulness-based strategies to create structured and outcome-driven therapy plans. At Mentalyc, Tracy supports therapists by creating educational resources that simplify documentation workflows and improve treatment plan defensibility during audits.