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Evaluation ViewAttendees 5

Traditional Workshop - Ticketed

Treatment - CBT

Traditional Workshop 3 - Getting Clients Unstuck: Advanced Socratic Questioning

Friday, November 21, 2025
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM CST
Location: Strand 5, Level 2
Earn 3 Credit
Ticketed Session
Keywords: CBT, Cognitive Restructuring, Evidence-Based Practice
Level of Familiarity: All
Recommended Readings: Beck, J. S. (2021). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (3rd ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.,   Resick, P. A., Stirman, S. W., & LoSavio, S. T. (2023). Getting unstuck from PTSD: Using Cognitive Processing Therapy to guide your recovery. New York: The Guilford Press.,   Brown, L. A., Belli, G. M., Asnaani, A., & Foa, E. B. (2019). A review of the role of negative cognitions about oneself, others, and the world in the treatment of PTSD. Cognitive therapy and research, 43(1), 143-173.,   Dillon, K. H., Hale, W. J., LoSavio, S. T., Wachen, J. S., Pruiksma, K. E., Yarvis, J. S., Mintz, J., Litz, B. T., Peterson, A. L., & Resick, P. A. (2020). Weekly changes in blame and PTSD among active-duty military personnel receiving cognitive processing therapy. Behavior Therapy, 51(3), 386-400.,   Farmer, C. C., Mitchell, K. S., Parker-Guilbert, K., & Galovski, T. E. (2017). Fidelity to the cognitive processing therapy protocol: Evaluation of critical elements. Behavior Therapy, 48(2), 195-206.
Socratic questioning is an evidence-based technique and cornerstone of cognitive behavioral therapy, but it is also one of the most challenging skills for therapists to learn. Research shows that therapists with greater skill in Socratic questioning have better patient outcomes. Therefore, honing skills in this specific technique can dramatically improve practice quality and make treatment more effective and efficient.

Working with clients who have experienced traumatic events requires even more special skills to effectively explore beliefs to guide recovery. The ability to address sticky “should haves” and other self-blame beliefs hinges on the ability to ask curious, open-ended questions that help the client remember the facts of the situation and important details about the context. This workshop will provide advanced training in how to craft thoughtful Socratic questions that increase client cognitive flexibility leading to cognitive and emotional change.

This workshop will also cover how to address when patients remain stuck in their thinking, such as when they logically but not emotionally accept alternative thoughts. Attendees will learn to explore the function of key beliefs, which, when not addressed, may prevent treatment progress.

This workshop will be interactive with demonstrations and experiential exercises so that therapists leave feeling confident in questions to ask to make more therapeutic progress. Examples will focus on trauma-related beliefs, as these are some of the most challenging Socratic dialogues requiring advanced skills, but the techniques covered will be generalizable to other stressors and problem areas as well.

Enhancing skills in Socratic questioning is consistent with the conference theme. Socratic questioning has been rigorously studied, and the open-ended nature of Socratic questioning is inherently person-centered and inclusive of patients’ various contextual and cultural factors.

This workshop will be presented by 2025 ABCT award-nominated trainers, Dr. Stefanie LoSavio and Dr. Katy Dondanville. Drs. LoSavio and Dondanville are expert cognitive behavioral therapists who train hundreds of providers per year to enhance their practice and maximize their treatment effectiveness.

Outline:
1. Welcome and Workshop Overview

2. Evidence for Socratic Questioning

3. Socratic Questioning Fundamentals

4. Increasing the Effectiveness of Your Socratic Questioning
a. Exploring the Context and Examining Hindsight
b. Good, Better, Best Questions
c. Demonstration
d. Role Play

5. Extra Challenging Scenarios
a. Difficult Topics
b. Extra Sticky Stuck Points
c. Exploring the Function of Beliefs
d. Demonstration
e. Role Play

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, the learner will be able to:
  1. Describe the goals of Socratic questioning during cognitive behavior therapy.
  2. Name three qualities of Socratic questioning that make it an effective therapeutic strategy.
  3. Differentiate open-ended, curious questions from other types of questions.
  4. Demonstrate use of open-ended Socratic questions to guide a client to examine a key belief central to their case conceptualization.
  5. Name two questions that can be used to explore the function of a client's belief.
  6. Long-term Goal: Increase the effectiveness of your Socratic questioning, as evidenced by reductions in patient conviction in unhelpful beliefs.