What is Behavioral Activation? A Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Podcast Episode.

Whether you’re new or aware of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, behavioural activation is a critical part of this therapeutic approach. It focuses on helping a person to do what they love to improve their mood, their mental health and their life. However, as one of my clinical psychology lecturers once said, this is extremely difficult, a lot of people struggle and even psychology students struggle to do behavioural activation when given it as a fun assignment. Yet it is a lot of fun, it is doable and it really can make the world of difference to your mental health. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is behavioural activation, how to do behavioural activation and more fun facts. If you enjoy learning about psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and mental health, then this will be a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

What is Behavioral Activation?

Behavioural activation is an evidence-based treatment for depression and low mood, and it’s used to help people overcome the withdrawal from their daily activities. For example, in depression, it is very common for someone to become socially withdrawn, not experience pleasure in activities they used to enjoy and as I’ve spoken about in previous episodes, everything becomes a lot more difficult. Such as, when I had depression in 2024, I couldn’t get out of bed, it took me 5 hours to have a shower and my body felt like lead. Depression made everything feel impossible, so behavioural activation seeks to change the withdrawal symptoms of depression.

Behavioural activation works by identifying the activities that we might lack the motivation as well as interest in doing when we feel low, and these activities are reintroduced into a person’s life over time so we can incorporate enjoyment, structure and a sense of achievement into our lives.

Personally, I remember in my depression, even though I normally flat out love writing, reading, seeing my friends and talking with them. Depression robbed me of these activities that I enjoyed. Reading, writing and seeing my friends felt too much, it took too much energy and the pleasure simply wasn’t there because of my low mood. Yet now that I’ve reintroduced these critical areas back into my life, I am a lot happier, my mental health is great and I love my life.

Of course, I am seriously not saying that it was easy. If you read my book, Healing As A Survivor, then you will see just how hard this was, but it is possible, doable and it is very rewarding in the end.

In addition, when we’re experiencing low mood as I mentioned earlier, we tend to stop participating or find it a lot more difficult to take part in everyday activities. This leads us to withdraw and avoid these activities, like washing, paying bills and we avoid seeing our friends. Partly, this is because these activities feel too overwhelming, but it is also because depression and low mood robs us of the motivation to complete these activities.

At first, we might put off these activities because we believe avoiding them will be better for us, but overtime, as we continue to avoid these activities, it becomes more difficult to make them a part of our routine again. I like to think of it like a gym membership. During my first year at university when I was living on campus, I bought a gym membership and I went every day I think during the first term. Then it was Christmas break and I just couldn’t reform the habit, so I never ever went again.

Furthermore, there is the vicious cycle of low mood because of the interplay between our emotions, physical sensations, behaviours and thoughts. These factors interact and show that the things that we do or don’t do because of our low mood maintain how we’re feeling. Therefore, behavioural activation breaks the vicious cycle by reintroducing the activities overtime and this has a positive impact on how we feel.

Finally for this section, before we move on to the four steps of behavioural activation, I want to address a criticism of behavioural activation. Something I have seen in my personal experience as a psychology graduate is that people who pushback against Cognitive Behavioural Therapy flat out hate behavioural activation because it is connected to CBT. I used to have a former friend who absolutely refused to do behavioural activation because it was from CBT. Yet I still notice a lot of anti-CBT people doing behavioural activation, they simply just don’t call it that. They still do the four steps of behavioural activation, their mental health still improves but they are adamant they are not doing behavioural activation.

In other words, please consider giving this a try. It might or might not work for you, it is difficult but a lot of people find behavioural activation very rewarding in the end.

How To Identify Activities in Behavioral Activation?

The first step of behavioural activation is to identify the activities that you’re no longer doing, and these activities are ones that you used to find pleasurable but you’re no longer doing. Either this is because of your low mood or you don’t have time to do them in your week anymore. Also, some mental health professionals recommend you think about activities that you want to do but have never had the motivation to do before as well.

Additionally, you can break these activities down into three categories. These categories are pleasurable, routine and necessary. This is important because research shows that for a person to have a healthy balance of mood, we need to include these three main types of activities in our weekly routine.

Pleasurable activities are activities that give us a sense of achievement as well as connectedness to other people and our community, and this leads to an increased quality of life. Such as, gardening, singing in a choir, walking the dog, baking a cake, learning a new skill and seeing friends and family.

Routine activities are the activities we do day to day to make our lives more comfortable. For instance, exercise, preparing food, hoovering, a regular bedtime, going to the gym, doing the washing, eating a healthy meal amongst others.

Necessary activities are essential activities as well as the longer we leave them the worse the negative consequences are. For example, food shopping, paying car tax and car insurance, personal care, booking medical appointments, updating our resumes and applying for jobs.

On a personal note, I definitely understand why applying for jobs and updating our resumes go out the window when we’re depressed or experiencing low mood, because when my mental health isn’t great, I find applying for jobs just hell on Earth. Let’s face it, applying for jobs is always soul-crushing, depressing and it is just awful. I feel this way even when my mental health is good, but when my mental health is bad, these feelings just increase and get worse.

When you think about it, it makes sense that we need a balance of these activities for a healthy mood. Since if we spend all our time and energy focusing on necessary activities then we wouldn’t get the sense of achievement and connection to others that pleasurable activities give us nor would we do the routine activities that help to make our lives more comfortable. As well as if we focused all our time on pleasurable activities that make us feel connected to others and give us a sense of achievement, then because we are avoiding necessary activities, the negative consequences of not paying bills and doing personal care will only get worse and so on.

Building upon this, when a person is feeling low or depressed, it can be difficult for them to remember what they used to enjoy, so it can be helpful to talk with friends, family members and other people that you trust to help remind you.

Then typically as part of behavioural activation, you would write these activities down, so if I was doing this during my period of depression in 2024, I would write down the following. My necessary activities would be having a shower, getting changed, going to my Outreach work and other personal care items. My routine activities would be eating three meals a day, having a regular and consistent bedtime, washing up and doing my chores for my shared university house. My pleasurable activities would be reading, writing, podcasting, seeing friends, learning, Duolingo French and completing my To Do list.

You and your clients might have completely different activities to me that you enjoy and that’s okay. Take as long as you need, think about it and identify your activities. For instance, I know some people who would write Minecraft, watching streamers, YouTube videos, cooking, singing, dancing, doing circus activities and more on their list.

What is Ranking Activities In Behavioral Activation?

The next step in behavioural activation is ranking activities because you need to rank how difficult the activity would be to carry out. This means you need to think about what are the easiest and most difficult activities to complete and then grade them. Behavioural activation relies on this ranking of activities because you should only carry out the activities to begin with that feel the most achievable before you move onto other activities that might be more difficult for you.

In addition, what activities are classed as easy, moderate and difficult will be completely unique to you, and sometimes it will be hard to come up with these categories after withdrawing from them for a long time. Therefore, it can be useful to ask a family member or friend to help you, you can break down larger tasks into more manageable steps, you could commit to doing a task for ten minutes instead of committing to all of it and it’s important to remember that no activity is too small. You might think texting a friend is so small that it’s pointless, but you are still doing something and that’s what’s important.

Moreover, when ranking your activities it’s important that you try to include at least one routine, necessary and pleasurable activity in each category. This goes back to what I was saying in the last section about ensuring that you have a healthy balance of categories.

You might rank finding the gas bill (necessary), calling a friend (pleasurable) and cleaning the bathroom (routine) as easy activities. Then you might rank washing the car (routine), arranging a medical appointment (necessary) and going for lunch with a friend (pleasurable) as moderate activities. Lastly, you might rank going food shopping (necessary) and going to the gym (routine) as difficult activities.

Personally, if I was doing this for myself back in 2024 when I was severely depressed for a few months, I would probably rank talking to a housemate (pleasurable), eating food (necessary) and going for a shower (routine) as easy activities in the grand scheme of things. Even though for the first few weeks of being depressed, having a shower was seriously not easy.

Afterwards I would probably have ranked reading (pleasurable), writing nonfiction (routine) and going shopping as moderate activities. Then I would have ranked the following as difficult activities writing fiction (routine), going out with friends (pleasurable) and going to work (necessary).

Now, I will fully admit that it was difficult coming up with these ideas and ranking what I found the most difficult during that time, and this is when my mental health is good. Therefore, if my mental health was as severe as it was back then this would have seemed like an impossible task. As a result, if ranking your activities or doing any part of behavioural activation feels impossible, too much and overwhelming, then it’s okay, it’s normal and it’s completely understandable given what you’re going through at the moment.

This is why it can be a great idea to talk to other people in your life and get help.

What is Scheduling Activities in Behavioral Activation?

The third step in behavioural activation is to actually plan and schedule the activities in your diary or calendar so you do them. You are more likely to do these activities if they’re scheduled in your life and by planning a range of activities from all three categories, you are more likely to experience a sense of achievement as well as pleasure as you reintroduce them over time.

Nonetheless, when it comes to scheduling your activities, you need to bear some factors in mind. Firstly, your activities must be balanced because research shows that a balance of different activities (necessary, routine and pleasurable) is best for our mood, so when we schedule our activities, we need to make sure that we’re doing a mixture of them. For instance, make sure that all your time isn’t focused on routine or necessary activities and leave room for pleasurable activities too, and vice versa. This is another benefit of writing and scheduling these activities in your diary because it ensures that you prioritise the most essential activities whilst leaving room for pleasurable activities too.

Personally, when I was severely depressed, I had to make sure that I showered, ate and I went to work. Yet I also made sure that I did some business work and some writing, because these activities make me happy.

Secondly, your activities must be graded in your schedule because it’s really difficult to be motivated to carry out activities after a long break. Like, I am sure all of us remember how hard it is to go back to the gym after a long break. This is why it’s useful to start with “Easy” activities as you wrote down in the last step before you tackle moderate and difficult activities.

Thirdly, you need to be specific with your scheduling of activities because you’re more likely to complete them with them specifically in your calendar. As a result, when you’re scheduling your activities, you need to consider what specific activity you’ll be carrying out, when are you're going to do it, where and who with. It is completely okay to do these activities alone. For example, you might write down “I will clean the countertops at 5:00 pm in the kitchen by myself.”

This is definitely a step that I would have found useful during my 2024 depression, and it might have encouraged me to do my activities more. However, one of the factors that keeps my mental health good at the moment is a routine. I have my hour-long sessions of doing my writing, business, podcasting and any other activities that I need to do. Then in between these sessions I do routine and necessary activities, like doing the dishwasher, putting the washing on the airers and so on.

Please learn from my mistake of not scheduling. Please schedule your activities.

What Is Implementation and Monitoring in Behavioral Activation?

The final part of behavioural activation is to actually complete the activities that you’ve identified, scheduled and ranked in the other stages. Also, it’s important to monitor your mood as you carry out these activities so you can see the benefits that carrying out these activities bring you. Of course, no schedule will ever be perfect and life will throw you curve balls that means you cannot stick to your schedule as much as you would love to, so flexibility is needed. This is why you might benefit from reviewing the schedule weekly so you can identify and plan how to overcome any obstacles, then you can highlight your achievements too.

When it comes to monitoring your mood, it can be helpful to allow some space in your diary to record the intensity of your mood before and after carrying out the activity using a scale of 0 to 100. As well as after you’ve completed the first week of behavioural activation you might want to add in more activities over time at your own pace. It’s brilliant that you feel that way and you definitely can do that, but please bear in mind that behavioural activation is a gradual process and you shouldn’t rush it. It might be more useful in the longer term to complete a small number of easier activities for a few weeks before moving onto the more moderate activities and then difficult activities.

Finally, here are some common obstacles and solutions that you might face when completing behavioural activation. You might feel that the tasks are too large so you can break down the task further. You might not have enough time to complete the activity, so you can prioritise your activities and ensure you have a balance. If you lack the motivation or energy then be time-specific in your schedule instead of task specific. If a task is too difficult to get started then try to do the activity for only five minutes. If you see no improvement in mood then still complete the activity.

I would add onto the “do a task for only five minutes” solution that this is a brilliant solution, because I can normally “con” myself. I can be firm and say I will only do this for five minutes, but when the five minutes is up I am happy, I am in the zone and I want to continue because it improves my mood, so I continue and my mood continues to improve as well.

Clinical Psychology Conclusion

Originally, the notes and information came from a behavioural activation workbook that an old friend sent me when they refused to do behavioural activation because it was from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I was excited by the idea of a workbook so they were lovely and sent it to me. Honestly, even though I don’t see them anymore, I really do hope they’re doing better now.

Anyway, I’m really happy that I did this episode because it was a lot of fun to explore behavioural activation in a lot more depth. We got to see how behavioural activation works, how to identify, rank and schedule our activities that make us happy. As well as we got to learn about how to monitor our mood and implement behavioural activation into our lives.

Therefore, even if your mental health is fine and you’re happy, I still think it’s important that we think about behavioural activation. It is a valuable reminder to make sure we do necessary, routine and pleasurable activities and ensure that we strike a balance.

If we don’t strike a balance and do these activities then our mental health will suffer, our mood will decrease and we will suffer for it.

I don’t want that for any of you.

Therefore, I want to wrap up this podcast episode with the following questions to get you thinking:

·       What activities make you happy?

·       What would your routine and necessary activities be?

·       How good is the balance of activities in your life and how could you improve it?

·       How could you use behavioural activation to improve your life, your mental health and your wellbeing?

I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

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Have a great day.

Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading

Beck, J. S. (2020). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond. Guilford Publications.

Ciharova, M., Furukawa, T. A., Efthimiou, O., Karyotaki, E., Miguel, C., Noma, H., ... & Cuijpers, P. (2021). Cognitive restructuring, behavioral activation and cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of adult depression: A network meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 89(6), 563.

Cuijpers, P., Quero, S., Noma, H., Ciharova, M., Miguel, C., Karyotaki, E., ... & Furukawa, T. A. (2021). Psychotherapies for depression: a network meta‐analysis covering efficacy, acceptability and long‐term outcomes of all main treatment types. World Psychiatry, 20(2), 283-293.

de Abreu Costa, M., & Moreira-Almeida, A. (2022). Religion-adapted cognitive behavioral therapy: A review and description of techniques. Journal of religion and health, 61(1), 443-466.

Janssen, N. P., Hendriks, G. J., Baranelli, C. T., Lucassen, P., Oude Voshaar, R., Spijker, J., & Huibers, M. J. (2021). How does behavioural activation work? A systematic review of the evidence on potential mediators. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 90(2), 85-93.

Martell, C. R., Dimidjian, S., & Herman-Dunn, R. (2021). Behavioral activation for depression: A clinician's guide. Guilford Publications.

Muyambi, K., Dennis, S., Parange, N., Walsh, S. M., Gray, R., Martinez, L., ... & Jones, M. (2022). Rural health workers' perspectives and experience with an online educational program in behavioural activation: A thematic analysis. Health & Social Care in the Community, 30(6), e5539-e5548.

Whiteley, C. (2025) CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Anxiety. CGD Publishing. England.

Whiteley, C. (2025) CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. CGD Publishing. England.

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