The 0–100 scale
The SUDS scale, tracked against the thing that caused it
SUDS stands for Subjective Units of Distress — a 0 to 100 rating of how bad you feel right now, where you set the scale. It’s one of the oldest and simplest tools in anxiety work, and it’s still mostly handed out as a photocopied worksheet.
What the numbers mean
There is no official wording for each point, and that’s the design rather than a gap. SUDS is subjective on purpose: a 70 means whatever 70 means to you, and it only has to stay consistent with your own other numbers. These anchors are a starting point, not a rubric.
- 0
Completely calm
No distress at all. Most people only hit this asleep or genuinely absorbed in something.
- 25
Mild, manageable
You notice it. It isn't changing what you do, and you could still concentrate if you needed to.
- 50
Uncomfortable
Clearly present. Your attention keeps returning to it and it's starting to affect choices.
- 75
Very distressed
Hard to think about much else. The body is involved now — heart rate, stomach, shallow breathing.
- 100
The worst you can imagine
Your personal ceiling. It's meant to be your own worst, not a universal one.
Why one rating is almost useless
A single SUDS score is a thermometer reading with no chart. It tells you today was a 60. It cannot tell you whether 60 is high for you, whether the thing you were dreading came in under what you expected, or whether the same situation is getting easier over months.
What makes the scale worth anything is the series — the same person, the same scale, the same kind of situation, over time. That is exactly what a paper worksheet is worst at. Sheets go missing, get filled in from memory days later, and never add up to a line you can look at.
Recall is the specific problem
Rating a Tuesday meeting on Friday isn’t a measurement of Tuesday — it’s a measurement of how Tuesday feels to remember, which is a different and usually calmer thing. Ratings taken close to the moment are the only ones worth plotting, which means the tool has to be somewhere you already are.
Three ratings, one event
Meloa attaches SUDS to real, dated things on your calendar rather than to a free-floating daily prompt, and asks at three points:
T−1
Before
How bad you expect it to be, rated while the dread is actually present rather than in hindsight.
T0
During
An in-the-moment reading, if you want one. Optional, and skipping it costs nothing.
T+1
After
How it actually went, once it's over. This is the half almost nobody does, and it's the half that makes the record mean something.
Because the before and after are tied to the same event, they can be compared. Do it a few times and you get something a single score never gives you: a measurement of how far your own prediction runs from your own outcome. Most people find the gap is larger than they would have guessed, and consistently in the same direction. More on why that gap exists.
If you’re working with a therapist
Each check-in can optionally split into four sub-scores — somatic, cognitive, anticipatory and autonomic, 0–25 each — so a flat 70 can be read as a body-led 70 or a rumination-led 70. Periodic GAD-7, LSAS and PHQ-9 snapshots sit alongside them, each one independently skippable and stored as null rather than zero when skipped, so a measure you didn’t take can never be misread as a floor score.
None of it is visible to anyone but you unless you choose to export it. If you want to bring it to a session, you generate a PDF and hand it over. What that report contains.
What this is not
Meloa records what you tell it. It does not diagnose, does not treat, is not a medical device, and is not exposure therapy — SUDS is used within therapies like that, but the scale on its own is just a way of writing down how you feel. If you’re using this alongside treatment, your clinician decides what the numbers mean.
Start a SUDS record that adds up to something.
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