What is Socratic Questioning?
The Socratic method is often described as the cornerstone of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It asks a series of focused, open-ended questions that encourage reflection. This technique produces insightful perspectives and helps identify positive actions. It’s a thoughtful dialogue with yourself or between two or more people. You will often see it used in counseling to help reveal deep values and beliefs that frame and support what we think and say. Each question is asked with genuine curiosity and to help you look at the bigger picture.
In CBT, the focus is to modify a person’s thinking to facilitate emotional and behavioral changes. Socratic questioning can help you identify and define the problem, identify the impact of your beliefs and thoughts, and examine the meaning of events. By becoming aware of your beliefs and thoughts, you then have the ability to adjust your thinking or behaviors if needed.
How to do Socratic Questioning:
While Socratic questioning is best done with another person, like a therapist, it can be done on your own too. However, it’s important to make sure that you are in the right frame of mind. You want to be genuinely curious about identifying your true thoughts and feelings about the matter at hand as well as be able to be honest with yourself.
Socratic questioning follows the steps below:
Why use Socratic Questioning?:
Oftentimes we can get stuck in our negative, unhelpful thoughts and that can lead to depression and anxiety. Our thoughts do affect how we feel and ultimately how we behave. If you find that you are struggling with your feelings and behaviors, then challenging how you think will help you achieve changing your feelings and behaviors. As with anything, practice is key and will help this way of thinking become more natural and less time consuming.
Below are specific questions to ask yourself to help determine how you really feel about something.
Questions regarding an initial question or issue
What is significant about this question?
Is this a straightforward question to answer?
Why do you think that?
Are there any assumptions I can take from this question?
Is there another important question that follows on from this one?
Questions about assumptions
Why would someone assume that X?
What am I assuming here?
Is there a different assumption here?
Questions of viewpoint
Are there alternative views?
What might someone who thought X think?
How would someone else respond, and why?
Questions of clarification
What do you mean when you say X?
Can you rephrase and explain differently?
What is the main issue here?
Can you expand that point further?
Questions of implication and consequence
Why do you think this is the case?
Is there any other information needed?
What led you to that belief?
Are there any reasons to doubt the evidence?
Questions of evidence and reasoning
Can you provide an example?
Why do you think this is the case?
Is there any other information needed?
What led you to that belief?
Are there any reasons to doubt the evidence?
Questions regarding origin
Have you heard this from elsewhere?
Have you always felt this way?
What caused you to feel that way?
Additional questions:
What is the negative thought to be questioned?
What is the evidence for this thought? Against it?
Am I basing this thought on facts or feelings?
Is this thought black and white, when reality is more complicated?
Could I be misinterpreting the evidence?
Am I making any assumptions?
Am I looking at all the evidence or just what supports my thought?
Is my thought a likely scenario or is it the worst case scenario?
Reference
https://positivepsychology.com/socratic-questioning/
The Socratic method is often described as the cornerstone of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It asks a series of focused, open-ended questions that encourage reflection. This technique produces insightful perspectives and helps identify positive actions. It’s a thoughtful dialogue with yourself or between two or more people. You will often see it used in counseling to help reveal deep values and beliefs that frame and support what we think and say. Each question is asked with genuine curiosity and to help you look at the bigger picture.
In CBT, the focus is to modify a person’s thinking to facilitate emotional and behavioral changes. Socratic questioning can help you identify and define the problem, identify the impact of your beliefs and thoughts, and examine the meaning of events. By becoming aware of your beliefs and thoughts, you then have the ability to adjust your thinking or behaviors if needed.
How to do Socratic Questioning:
While Socratic questioning is best done with another person, like a therapist, it can be done on your own too. However, it’s important to make sure that you are in the right frame of mind. You want to be genuinely curious about identifying your true thoughts and feelings about the matter at hand as well as be able to be honest with yourself.
Socratic questioning follows the steps below:
- Understand the belief: state clearly your belief, thought, argument
- Look for evidence: ask yourself open-ended questions to elicit further knowledge and uncover assumptions, misconceptions, inconsistencies and contradictions.
- Challenge your assumptions: if contradictions, inconsistencies, exceptions, or counterexamples are identified, then ask yourself to either disregard the belief/thought or restate it more precisely.
- Repeat the process again, if required.
Why use Socratic Questioning?:
Oftentimes we can get stuck in our negative, unhelpful thoughts and that can lead to depression and anxiety. Our thoughts do affect how we feel and ultimately how we behave. If you find that you are struggling with your feelings and behaviors, then challenging how you think will help you achieve changing your feelings and behaviors. As with anything, practice is key and will help this way of thinking become more natural and less time consuming.
Below are specific questions to ask yourself to help determine how you really feel about something.
Questions regarding an initial question or issue
What is significant about this question?
Is this a straightforward question to answer?
Why do you think that?
Are there any assumptions I can take from this question?
Is there another important question that follows on from this one?
Questions about assumptions
Why would someone assume that X?
What am I assuming here?
Is there a different assumption here?
Questions of viewpoint
Are there alternative views?
What might someone who thought X think?
How would someone else respond, and why?
Questions of clarification
What do you mean when you say X?
Can you rephrase and explain differently?
What is the main issue here?
Can you expand that point further?
Questions of implication and consequence
Why do you think this is the case?
Is there any other information needed?
What led you to that belief?
Are there any reasons to doubt the evidence?
Questions of evidence and reasoning
Can you provide an example?
Why do you think this is the case?
Is there any other information needed?
What led you to that belief?
Are there any reasons to doubt the evidence?
Questions regarding origin
Have you heard this from elsewhere?
Have you always felt this way?
What caused you to feel that way?
Additional questions:
What is the negative thought to be questioned?
What is the evidence for this thought? Against it?
Am I basing this thought on facts or feelings?
Is this thought black and white, when reality is more complicated?
Could I be misinterpreting the evidence?
Am I making any assumptions?
Am I looking at all the evidence or just what supports my thought?
Is my thought a likely scenario or is it the worst case scenario?
Reference
https://positivepsychology.com/socratic-questioning/
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