If there is a method in psychology that has received significant empirical support with the endorsement of more than 2000 scientific studies, it is the socratic method, the questioning of one’s own thoughts and beliefs. The socratic method is used in cognitive psychology and its purpose is to replace ideas that are not real with others that better suit reality.
Do we know that behind an exaggerated emotional state there is always a thought?Too exaggerated and false? Events don’t determine our emotions, there’s always the intermediate instance of cognitions, and that’s where we have room for action and control.
- It was the philosopher Socrates who began to debate with his Fellow Athenians after a visit to the Oracle of Delphi.
- So the method has received its name.
- Socratic questioning or socratic method.
Socrates, through logical questions, tried to find the truth of his interlocutors’ arguments, and to find out whether they were logical and rational or not. If they had no logic, there came a time when Socrates’ interlocutor countered himself, having to inevitably accept another, more logical and rational point of view.
Human beings tend to think irrationally, falsely and exaggeratedly, it is true that certain negative thoughts can often help us protect ourselves from danger, ask for help or face certain situations, but at other times these thoughts are so exaggerated in relation to the situation that they do not help us, on the contrary, they block us and make us go against our goals.
In therapy, the socratic method is taught to patients to be the ones who question each other, those who argue with their own thoughts and interpretations, to a point where they reject non-logical thoughts and modify them more for healthier ones, healthier and calmer emotions.
As we have already said, to question our own interpretations of reality is to wonder whether what we think is logical or not, whether it corresponds to reality, or whether we are victims of our own beliefs and mental filters.
We must take into account that we perceive reality with our five senses, and that it is in them that we must trust, for example, if my thought is “it is raining”, I have to tell myself that it is true. I have a number of questions to ask myself:
With these questions we prove that our thinking is realistic, logical and rational. But what about other kinds of negative and irrational thoughts, such as “I’m worthless?” shouldn’t this have happened to me?Or? My life will never make sense again?
The reasoning process is the same: we have to confront these ideas with reality, ask the same questions until we find out if this is true or not, as scientists would.
On the other hand, the patient looks for arguments that refute all these cognitions and show that they are false and exaggerated thoughts, so with the thought “Will my life never make sense again?”, One has to ask:
There are many other questions designed to test the empirical validity of certain negative thoughts, some explore many arguments, as we have just seen, others are designed to test the usefulness of thought and others to know whether what we think, after all, would be so serious or not.
The more questions we ask that show that what we think is not appropriate in relation to reality, the better. The goal is to convince ourselves that we are magnifying the situation, that we are concerned without evidence, or that we are saying that something is right. terrible when it’s actually unpleasant, but bearable.
When a person engages in a daily socratic dialogue with himself, he becomes an expert and learns to interpret the world in a healthier and more rational way, which generates more peaceful emotions, which, in turn, allow problems to be tackled more safely. The key is to persevere until you do it automatically.