What to Ask Yourself to Get Out of a Negative Thinking Rut

This questioning strategy has been shown to help people with depression – and it could help you get out of a bad thinking spiral, too. (Photo: Getty Images/Eneri LLC/Yahoo Health)

Cognitive behavioral therapy, more commonly known as CBT, is an effective and popular form of therapy for people suffering from depression. Its goal: Attack the current problems in your life by changing the way you perceive things — and altering those negative thought patterns associated with depressed thinking.

But a small new study out of Ohio State University found that it was one particular strategy used in CBT, called Socratic questioning, that led to substantial improvements in depressive symptoms.

“Socratic questioning involves the use of questions to help someone develop a new perspective,” the study’s co-author Daniel Strunk, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University, explains to Yahoo Health. Therapists may use Socratic questioning with clients to help them evaluate the accuracy of their own negative thoughts and beliefs (though it’s possible people without depression can also benefit from this questioning strategy to get out of a negative thinking rut).

In the Behaviour Research and Therapy study, 55 depressed patients took part in 16 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy. Before each session, the patients rated their depressive symptoms. Researchers then videotaped sessions to measure how often therapists used Socratic questioning. The results: The sessions with more Socratic questioning were usually followed by a bigger improvement in symptoms.

Why? People with depression tend to come to negative conclusions about themselves and their circumstances, and “Socratic questioning can help someone take a fresh look at themselves and their situation,” Strunk says.

Here’s how to do it: If you find yourself spiraling into negativity, take one aspect of that negativity and ask yourself why you feel so badly about the issue. Then, ask yourself how much of your life this one issue represents. Are your feelings toward this issue reflective of your life as a whole? Or do you have a lot of good, successful parts of your life, too? You’ll likely realize that while the issue is still there, it seems smaller. Zooming out and putting your problems in perspective will help you compartmentalize them — and help you realize that issues, problems, or bad days don’t need to be all-consuming (nor are they accurate reflections of your overall life). .

Related: 10 Drug-Free Therapies for Depression

Justin Braun, the co-author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State, provided the following example of a Socratic questoining exchange for Yahoo Health:

Client: I’m a failure.

Therapist: What makes you say that?

Client: Well, I keep missing deadlines for my reports at work.

Therapist: ÓAnd how does that translate to you being a total failure?

Client:  I can’t even do my job right. I must be a failure.

Therapist: Are these reports your only responsibility at your job?

Client: Well, no. They are just the summary of my work.

Therapist: How do you perform with your other responsibilities at work?

Client: Actually, I do pretty well with my other responsibilities. It is really the report writing that gets me.

Therapist: OK, and what percent of your job would you say is report writing?

Client: Hmm, I would say probably 5 percent or so.

Therapist: So, your reasoning for being a failure is that you can’t do your job right, but when we dig a little deeper it looks like, in fact, you do pretty well with about 95 percent of your responsibilities at work. How does this new information fit in with the idea that you can’t even do your job right and are thus a failure?

Client: Well, I guess I was not thinking about it this way. I guess if I am doing 95 percent of my job right I can’t be failing.

Therapist: So, how might you rephrase your initial negative beliefs to highlight this new information?

Client: When I look at the bigger picture, I guess I am actually pretty good at my job, but struggle with a very small portion.

Related: 13 People Who’ve Gone to Therapy Share Their Unexpected Results

Compared to a more didactic approach — in which a therapist gives instruction and a patient is supposed to listen — Strunk and Braun suspect Socratic questioning works because of a few different advantages. One: “Because the process is collaborative, clients are very much involved in working to consider a perspective more fully. This means the clients can help to keep the therapists on track as they work together,” Strunk says. Socratic questioning also allows you to reach your own conclusion, rather than being asked to adopt a recommended perspective, he explains. And, by reaching your own conclusion, you’re more likely to believe it and stick to it.

Plus, Socratic questioning is something that you can practice on your own. “With the work they have done with their therapists, we very much hope that clients will ask themselves questions to slow down and more carefully evaluate their negative thoughts and beliefs,” says Strunk. In fact, that’s another key to cognitive behavioral therapy: Therapists work to help you “become your own therapist” — or learn to use the strategies you learned in therapy on your own, he says.

While this study was focused on people with depression, researchers suspect the boons of Socratic questioning “are not strictly limited to people with depression,” says Strunk. So, next time you find yourself spiraling into an overly negative mindset, slow down and turn the questions on yourself. You might be surprised at what you discover.

Read This Next: The Number One Cause Of Depression — Everywhere

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