You’re cheating your self if you rely solely on meds to relieve depression. You can use a variety of tools to combat your depression. Socratic questions is one of them.
Socratic questions are used to reveal, challenge and negate beliefs, assumptions and false evidence that lead to distress.
Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was a very intelligent and wise man. You must be a good teacher if Plato is your student.
It’s amazing that he still influences our thinking and behavior, 2,400 years later.
Intro to Socratic questioning
Socratic Questioning is one of Socrates’ major contributions to modernity. It’s also known as Socratic Dialog or Socratic Maieutics.
maieutics is not only a $500 term, but its meaning is also important for our discussion.
Socrates’ method of eliciting knowledge from a person was to interrogate them and insist on logic. Maieutic means midwifery in Greek. He chose this term because his method was similar to childbirth, and his mother is a midwife.
SQ can be used in many different settings. We will examine it in the context of psychology and specifically depression.
SQ is also effective for treating anxiety.
Socratic questioning research
I came across some research that is still relevant. The Ohio State University team discovered that when therapists used SQ with their Cognitive Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy clients, significant symptom improvements were realized.
The article “Therapist use of Socratic questioning predicts session-to-session symptom change in Cognitive Therapy for depression” was published in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy.
We’ll get to the details of SQ later, but let’s say for now that it involves a series of guided questions where the therapist challenges the client to think about new perspectives.
The study authors
Justin Braun
Depression can cause people to become stuck in negative thinking. Patients can gain a more realistic perspective by asking socratic questions.
Daniel Strunk…
The Socratic method of questioning predicted symptom improvement above and beyond the therapeutic relationship – which was the variable most studied in previous studies.
Let’s get to work…
Study details
This is how the study unfolded. The study involved 55 participants who took part in 16 weeks of cognitive therapy.
The team then analyzed the video recordings for the first three sessions of each participant to estimate how often the therapist employed SQ techniques.
It’s not surprising that the sessions where more SQ was administered resulted in a greater improvement of pre-measured symptoms of depression.
The team was able to see that participants were learning how to ask themselves questions. They were also becoming more aware of negative thoughts and sceptical about them.
The more symptoms we see, the better we can expect to feel.
It’s also important to discipline yourself to use SQ in order to overcome and rationalize our negative thoughts. We’ll discover that we have overlooked information which contradicts what we think to be true.
What is Socratic Questioning?
It’s finally here! What is Socratic Questioning?
It’s a structured way of asking questions that is used to uncover assumptions, explore concepts, identify what we already know, and to follow the logical implications.
What is the difference between SQ and regular questioning? It is systematic and deep.