Cognitive Behavioural Therapy by Freda McManus

Author:Freda McManus [McManus, Freda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191071577
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2022-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Changing thinking

Once the therapist and patient have collaboratively agreed on a thought to target for re-evaluation there are several different techniques that can be used to achieve this aim. One of the cornerstone techniques is the process of Socratic questioning or the Socratic method, which can also be called guided discovery. Socratic questioning was named after the philosopher Socrates who, rather than answering his students’ queries directly, used a series of exploratory, considered questions to guide them to discover the answer for themselves. The Socratic method is a way of facilitating the patient (or student, as was the case for Socrates) to consider a range of alternative interpretations that they are not currently aware of and use these to re-evaluate a previously held belief. This can be done using structured worksheets such as the thought record, outlined below, to evaluate the evidence for and against their current belief before formulating an alternative perspective. Or it can be done in a less structured way by using a Socratic style of questioning. Socratic questioning involves the following stages:

1. Asking informational questions to clarify understanding of the situation. What situations do you feel worst in? How does that affect you?

2. Empathic listening. Careful non-judgemental attention to what the patient is saying and any observed emotional reactions that go along with it. It sounds like situations in which you feel negatively evaluated are really difficult for you. How do they make you feel?

3. Summarizing and checking your understanding. It seems that feeling judged makes you question yourself—is that right? It looks like those situations make you feel badly about yourself. In any particular respect?

4. Synthesizing or analytical questions designed to broaden the patient’s perspective to include information that they may not currently be aware of. Are there any situations in which you don’t feel judged? Or occasions where you have felt less judged? Or coped better with feeling judged? What was different about these times? What can we learn from that?

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