Most guidance on progress notes explains the formats. This post skips that and shows you what a completed note actually looks like, written out in full, for a realistic session. If you want the explanation of what SOAP, DAP, and BIRP are and when to use each one, that's covered in a separate post. This one is just examples.
The clients and sessions below are fictional but written to reflect the kind of work that actually shows up in outpatient private practice. The goal is to give you something concrete to compare your own notes against.
SOAP note example
Session context: Individual therapy, established client, presenting with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Session focuses on work-related anxiety ahead of a performance review.
Subjective
Client reported increased anxiety over the past week, which he attributed to an upcoming performance review scheduled for Friday. Described feeling "like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop." Reports disrupted sleep over the past five nights, including difficulty falling asleep and waking between 3 and 4am. Described difficulty concentrating during the workday and avoidance of tasks he anticipates will be discussed in the review. Denies suicidal or homicidal ideation. Reports continuing to attend work and maintain daily routines despite distress.
Objective
Client presented alert and oriented. Appeared mildly anxious with slightly elevated speech rate at the start of session. Affect softened as the session progressed and client engaged with cognitive restructuring work. Well-groomed. Maintained eye contact throughout. No psychomotor agitation observed.
Assessment
Client is presenting with anxiety symptoms consistent with his established diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, with the upcoming performance review serving as the proximate stressor. The anticipatory anxiety and avoidance pattern are familiar and appear to be activating core beliefs around adequacy and anticipated criticism. Some meaningful progress noted: client was able to identify the catastrophizing pattern without prompting during today's session, which represents growth from earlier in treatment when this required significant scaffolding. Sleep disruption is being monitored and has not reached a level warranting referral at this time. No safety concerns.
Plan
Utilized cognitive restructuring to examine evidence for and against client's prediction of a negative review outcome. Practiced decatastrophizing. Client identified three pieces of concrete evidence supporting a neutral-to-positive outcome, which he reported finding somewhat stabilizing. Assigned between-session task: client will write down the objective evidence available to him regarding his work performance and bring it to next session. Next session: follow up on performance review outcome; continue work on core belief around adequacy; revisit sleep hygiene if disruption persists.
DAP note example
Session context: Individual therapy, established client, presenting with relational difficulties and attachment-related patterns. Session focuses on a conflict with her partner over the weekend.
Data
Client arrived on time and presented as calm. Reported a difficult conversation with her partner over the weekend in which she "shut down and couldn't say anything." Described feeling emotionally flooded during the argument and withdrawing as her default response. Noted that she felt shame afterward about not being able to stay present. During the session, client made a connection between this pattern and experiences of feeling unheard in her family of origin, which she described without prompting. Affect was thoughtful and engaged throughout; some tearfulness when discussing family history. No safety concerns.
Assessment
Client is demonstrating continued and deepening insight into her relational patterns, particularly the link between emotional flooding and withdrawal. The connection she drew to her family-of-origin experiences is clinically significant and consistent with the attachment-informed framework guiding treatment. The shame response following shutdown is emerging as a maintaining factor worth exploring: it appears to amplify the avoidance cycle rather than motivate repair. Working alliance remains strong. Client is showing capacity to observe her own patterns with increasing curiosity rather than self-criticism, which is a meaningful shift from the beginning of treatment.
Plan
Explored the flooding-withdrawal-shame cycle using a psychoeducational frame. Introduced the concept of self-regulation before repair, reframing shutdown as a nervous system response rather than a character flaw. Client responded positively to this framing and expressed interest in learning grounding techniques to use in moments of flooding. Will introduce specific grounding practices in next session. Between-session task: client will observe and note the physical sensations that precede her shutdown response, without judgment. Next session will build on this somatic awareness and introduce the grounding sequence.
A note for a difficult session
Not every session is tidy. Here is a DAP note for a session that did not go as planned, which is worth seeing because these are often the hardest to document well.
Session context: Individual therapy, established client, presenting with depression. Client arrives in acute distress following a job loss earlier in the week.
Data
Client arrived ten minutes late and presented visibly distressed. Disclosed at the start of session that she was laid off on Tuesday and had not told anyone, including her partner. Reported feeling "completely numb" and described a sense that things will not improve. Endorsed passive suicidal ideation without plan or intent: "I don't want to die, I just don't see the point." Denied active plan, means, or intent to act. Reports eating minimally since Tuesday and sleeping 10 to 12 hours per day. The planned session agenda was set aside to address the acute stressor and assess safety.
Assessment
Client is in acute distress following a significant loss. The passive SI is consistent with her depressive presentation at the beginning of treatment and does not represent an escalation in safety risk based on current clinical presentation, but warrants close monitoring. The decision not to disclose the job loss to her partner is clinically relevant: it suggests a return of the isolation pattern that was a focus of earlier treatment. Client's affect, while distressed, remained engaged and she was able to respond to safety questions directly and without deflection. No acute safety intervention indicated at this time. Will increase contact frequency this week.
Plan
Provided space for client to process the acute loss. Conducted safety assessment; no imminent risk identified. Collaboratively identified one small disclosure task: client will tell her partner about the job loss before the next session. Reviewed crisis resources and confirmed client has the crisis line number. Scheduled a brief 20-minute check-in call for Thursday. Next full session scheduled for the regular time next week. Will reassess frequency and safety at that point.
What these notes have in common
- They use the client's actual language. Quoting what a client said ("like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop") is more clinically meaningful than paraphrasing into abstraction. It documents their subjective experience accurately and is harder to dispute.
- The Assessment section reflects clinical thinking, not restatement. Restating what happened in the session is not an assessment. An assessment is your interpretation: what does this mean, what has changed, what are you watching for.
- The Plan is specific about what happened and what comes next. "Will continue" is not a plan. A plan names the intervention used, any between-session task assigned, and what the next session will address.
- Safety is documented explicitly when it comes up, and noted as not applicable when it doesn't. "Denies SI/HI" in sessions where it's relevant to check is cleaner than silence.
How long should a progress note be?
Long enough to document what happened, short enough that you can write it the same day. The examples above run between 150 and 250 words per section. A complete SOAP note using this standard will typically be 400 to 600 words. A DAP note will usually be 300 to 500.
Notes longer than this are usually a sign that something is being processed rather than documented. Notes shorter than this usually lack the specificity that makes them defensible. Neither length is a fixed rule, but if your notes are consistently one paragraph across the board, they are probably too thin. For more on the habits that make consistent, specific notes possible, this post on writing notes faster covers the practical side. And if you are still deciding which format to use, SOAP vs DAP vs BIRP explains when each one fits.
The hardest part of writing notes like these isn't knowing what to include. It's having the time and mental bandwidth to write them right after a full clinical day. The session is fresh for about 30 minutes. After that, the details that make a note specific start to fade.
Confidant uses on-device AI to draft a structured note immediately after each session, giving you something specific to edit rather than a blank page. The examples above reflect the kind of output it produces, which you then review, adjust, and sign.
