Socratic Practice

Practice Socratic Questioning techniques through roleplay. Choose to practice as the therapist guiding a patient, or as the patient experiencing the technique.

What you practise

• Practice identifying and eliciting automatic thoughts
• Learn to examine evidence through guided questioning rather than direct challenge
• Develop skill in generating alternative perspectives collaboratively
• Experience the difference between Socratic questioning and didactic instruction

Who you can meet

• Alex, 32 — Anxious after mild feedback at work. Alex keeps replaying a small comment from his manager and reads it as proof that he is failing. He over-prepares, hides how upset he is from his partner, and worries that others will discover he is not good enough. Useful focus: examine the evidence for one specific worry, look for assumptions and alternative meanings, and notice the cost of self-criticism.
• Maya, 20 — Panics after feeling ignored by her partner. After a delayed text and seeing her partner interact with an ex online, Maya moves quickly between anger, panic, shame, and thoughts of wanting to disappear. She may test whether the therapist sees her as "too much." Useful focus: validate the intensity, separate feelings from facts, and explore what distance means to her without giving quick reassurance.
• Iris, 34 — ADHD, exhaustion, and fear of failing as a mother. Iris is working 25%, sleeping badly, and struggling with everyday logistics despite being capable. After yelling at her son Leo over a spill, she keeps hearing him say, "Mamma is always angry." Useful focus: examine global self-blame, all-or-nothing conclusions, and the evidence for being a bad mother versus an exhausted parent.
• Angelina, 24 — Low mood, social anxiety, and harsh self-criticism. Angelina tries to hide distress by apologizing and pleasing others after overhearing a coworker complain about closing shifts with her. She treats ordinary signs of rejection as proof that she is burdensome and unlikeable. Useful focus: uncover automatic thoughts, test mind-reading, and move from "I am defective" toward specific evidence and alternative explanations.

What the feedback looks at

• Open-Ended Questioning
• Genuine Curiosity
• Emotional Attunement
• Grounding in Experience (Pillar 1)
• Guided Discovery (Pillars 2 & 3)
• Pacing & Spaciousness
• Validation Before Exploration

Rated against: Framework: Beck et al. (1979), Cognitive Therapy of Depression; Padesky (1993), Socratic Questioning: Changing Minds or Guiding Discovery?; Kennerley, Kirk & Westbrook (2016). The framework is used with citation and every anchor below is PsychBase's own wording. "The Three Pillars" is PsychBase's teaching framing, not Padesky's own model — Padesky describes a four-stage guided-discovery process (informational questions, empathic listening, summarising, synthesising/analytical questions). These anchors rate how WELL the technique was performed, which is a different question from the published observer-rated measure in this area — the Socratic questioning scale of Braun, Strunk, Sasso & Cooper (2015, Behaviour Research and Therapy; ICC .79) — and from the CTS-R's single Guided Discovery item (Blackburn et al., 2001), which the PsychBase CBT lab scores against. Scores here are generated by an AI supervisor and are not equivalent to ratings by a trained human coder.

This lab is for clinical training. The patient is generated by an AI language model from a written case; no real patient and no patient data are involved. Browsing is open; starting a session needs a free account.