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Clients can usually tell the difference between an off-the-cuff question and one that is attuned to where they are. No matter the modality or the diagnosis of a client—whether you're using CBT questions, psychoanalysis questions, or something else—the right prompt from a therapist can shift a session and deepen the work.
Different situations and contexts call for different therapy questions for clients, or what some clinicians call psychology questions or counseling prompts. You need to have a variety prepared for assessment, check-ins, specific diagnoses, and age groups.
Therapy questions for clients
What questions do therapists ask their clients? There is not one direct answer here, but whether it’s therapy questions for adults or adolescents, there are some general guidelines that can help when thinking about structuring therapy questions:
Deepen the client’s process: Encourage a client to turn inward and explore. Good questions elicit something useful from the client and give them room to find the insight themselves.
Open-ended: This is therapy 101, but it cannot be overstated. What, how, and why are usually better places to start when considering therapy questions for clients, rather than closed yes-no questions.
Pay attention to timing: The right question at the right time can unlock something significant for the client. For example, a question asking to describe a feeling will often land better when a client is visibly displaying emotion versus when they are just logically describing something that happened. I have asked someone to name a feeling while they were still walking me through the situation. It landed as an interruption.
Know when silence is needed: Sometimes clients need the space and time to really reflect on a question. Patience, waiting, and tolerating silence are important parts of skilled questioning.
Common stressors questions for therapy
You may need to start by asking clients therapy questions to uncover stressors or explore known stressors. Open-ended questions that give the client control of how much they want to share can be a good place to start.
Examples include:
What causes you to feel stressed most often?
How have things been with finances lately?
What have you been thinking and feeling about the work situation?
How much is this impacting your daily life?
When looking at these common stressors questions for therapy, it can also be helpful to understand their ability to cope with the stressors. Ask clients therapy questions such as:
What are you doing to cope with the stressors?
How is your coping helping or not helping?
Therapy check-in questions
Check-in questions are asked at the beginning, and often the end, of a session. They are specific, open-ended questions that can help track the therapeutic relationship, a client's safety, mood, mental state, and progress—information that also shapes your session notes after the appointment.
Examples of therapy check-in questions include:
Beginning of session
How have you been feeling this week?
How did it go with working on what we discussed last week?
On a scale of 0 to 10, how has your depression/anxiety/stress been this week?
Did anything come up since the last session that you want to talk about?
End of session
What is your main takeaway from today that you want to focus on this week?
Do you feel like we worked on what matters most to you or was there something we missed?
How can I support you better during our sessions?
CBT questions
Socratic questioning is a core technique in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). These CBT questions help clients identify their own patterns, evaluate these patterns, and shift their thinking through cognitive restructuring.
Because they build on each other, the sequence of questioning matters. This is viewed as being more helpful to the client than a therapist telling them what needs to change.
Some examples of Socratic therapy questions for clients include:
What do you experience when you have this thought in your mind?
Was there any time in your life when you did not believe this thought?
What is the evidence that proves this thought is true?
Is there any evidence that might disprove or challenge this thought?
Are there any alternative ways of viewing or thinking about the situation? What are they?
How would you rephrase the thought if you were to base it solely on the evidence you identified?
Therapy questions for depression
Good therapy questions for depression can help identify target symptoms, assess for risk, and nudge the client out of being stuck. Here are a few examples:
What has a typical day looked like lately—from waking up to going to bed?
How has your [sleep, appetite, concentration] been this week?
Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or ending your life? (Risk screening should be followed up on. If risk is on the table, use a validated tool like the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) inside your own risk protocol, and move to safety planning.)
What type of thoughts or self-talk do you notice when you’re feeling low?
What would you say to a close friend who was having these exact thoughts?
On a day you felt slightly better, what was different about it?
What's one small, doable thing this week that might give you a sense of accomplishment? Can we check in on that next time together?
If you or a client are experiencing a crisis, immediate help is available. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 (or call/text 988 in the U.S.). Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
Therapy questions for psychoeducation
Brief psychoeducation has shown it can reduce medication non-adherence, reduce symptoms, and reduce relapse rates, with the clearest benefit seen in the medium term, especially for people with more severe mental health diagnoses.
Learning is often most effective when it is active and collaborative. Questions turn that teaching from a lecture into a dialogue:
Assess for existing understanding: Ask the client about what they already know to get a baseline. “What's your current understanding of what [depression/anxiety/bipolar disorder] is?”
Invite their curiosity and questions: Ensure that you are answering what the client wants to learn about most. “Of everything that’s been going on, what would be most helpful to make sense of first?”
Deliver information through guided questions: Bring in dialogue and specific situations from the client’s life through questions. Information can be delivered after the question. “When you avoided that situation, what happened to your anxiety in the short term? And what about the longer term?” Follow up with education on avoidance and anxiety.
Check for comprehension and address any concerns: Follow-up questions reinforce what landed and surface any emotional reaction to it. “Does that fit with your own experience, or does something not quite match?”
Connect the learning to coping: Once the client shows understanding, you can start directing them toward some ways of managing those symptoms. “If you noticed those early warning signs again, what's a step you could take?”
Good therapy questions for clients are part of the foundation for quality interventions and outcomes. The work is having the right questions ready before the moment arrives. Which ones do you want to have in hand this week?
Sources
Heiniger, L. E., Clark, G. I., & Egan, S. J. (2018). Perceptions of Socratic and non-Socratic presentation of information in cognitive behaviour therapy. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
Hill, C. E., & Norcross, J. C. (2023). Skills and methods that work in psychotherapy: Observations and conclusions from the special issue. Psychotherapy.
Posner, K., Brown, G. K., Stanley, B., Brent, D. A., Yershova, K. V., et al. (2011). The Columbia–Suicide Severity Rating Scale: Initial validity and internal consistency findings from three multisite studies with adolescents and adults. American Journal of Psychiatry.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (n.d.). 988 suicide & crisis lifeline.
Zhao, S., Sampson, S., Xia, J., & Jayaram, M. B. (2015). Psychoeducation (brief) for people with serious mental illness. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
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