100 Therapy Questions: A Working Bench for Individual and Group Sessions

A therapy question is the smallest unit of clinical work. Everything else, the framing, the silence, the reflection, the intervention, sits on top of a question that opened the door. Sofia is mid-session with a client who has spent twenty minutes circling the same surface narrative about her sister, and Sofia can feel the hour drifting. She does not need a clever new technique. She needs the next question, the one that names what is already in the room, the one that lets the client say the thing she has not said yet. That is the question this bench is for.

This is a working bank of 100 therapy questions across the arc of a session, from the first sixty seconds of arriving to the last ten minutes of integration. It is the bench you pull from when the session needs a different angle, when the prompt you usually reach for is not landing, when the room has gone quiet and you have ten seconds to ask the question that lets the client keep going. The companion piece, the therapy questions guide, is the librarian’s view, why questions matter, what makes one good, how to read the room. This post is the shelf itself. Read the guide for posture; bookmark this for the moment.

A note on use. Pick two prompts at most per session, ask them slowly, and sit in the silence after. The honest answer almost never arrives first. If you find yourself working through these 100 therapy questions in order, you have stopped reading the room and started running a script. The discipline is the same one Yalom (2002) names in The Gift of Therapy: the question is in service of the client, not the clinician’s sense of forward motion.

Educational content for licensed therapists. Adapt every prompt to the client in front of you, your modality, and your scope of practice. None of this is a substitute for clinical supervision.

Opening the session (1–10)

Arriving prompts that set the agenda. The first sixty seconds of a session frequently decides what the next forty-nine are about, and a clean opening question points the hour at something the client can actually work on. Use these when you want the agenda to come from the client rather than the calendar.

1. What’s most on your mind walking in today?
2. If we had only twenty minutes, what would you want them to be about?
3. What did you walk through to get here?
4. What’s the smallest thing you noticed this week that you don’t usually mention?
5. Where would you like to be at the end of this hour?
6. What was the last thing you said to yourself before sitting down?
7. What’s something you almost didn’t bring up today?
8. What’s a question you’d want me to ask if I knew what you were carrying?
9. On a scale of one to ten, how present do you feel right now?
10. What do you want from yourself in this hour?

Bridging from last week (11–20)

These are the prompts that surface what shifted between sessions. Most clients will tell you the loudest thing first; what shifted between then and now is often quieter and more useful. Bridge prompts respect continuity without forcing the client back into last week’s content if something more pressing has arrived.

11. When you left last week, what stayed with you?
12. Has anything from our last conversation kept showing up since?
13. What did you notice yourself doing differently this week, even slightly?
14. What’s one thing from last session you wish you had said but didn’t?
15. Anything come up between sessions you’d want to bring in before we go anywhere else?
16. What’s something we touched on last time that you’ve been avoiding looking at?
17. Did you find yourself replaying any moment from last week’s hour?
18. What part of last session has gone quiet for you, and what part is still loud?
19. If last week opened a door, did you walk through it, stand in front of it, or close it?
20. What’s the version of you walking in today, compared to the one who walked out last time?

Surfacing the body and state (21–30)

Somatic and affect prompts. When a client has been telling you about a situation for too long, the room frequently needs to come back into the body before any further talking is going to land. Use these when the session has stayed in narrative and you can feel the work needs a different door. Many of these align with Porges’ polyvagal framework on tracking state in the room.

21. Where in your body do you feel that right now?
22. What does that feeling want to do?
23. If your nervous system could speak, what would it be saying in the last ten minutes?
24. What’s happening in your breath as you tell me this?
25. What’s your body asking for that you’ve been ignoring?
26. Is there a part of you that’s bracing right now?
27. What do you notice if you let your shoulders drop two inches?
28. Where in the room does it feel safer to look?
29. What’s the temperature of this feeling, on a scale of warm to cold?
30. If the feeling had a colour and a weight, what would they be?

Going under the surface (31–40)

Depth prompts for when the session is ready. These are the questions you ask when the alliance is solid, the client is regulated enough to stay with the material, and the surface narrative has run its course. Asked too early, depth prompts invite the client to perform insight rather than have the experience.

31. What’s the part of this you don’t usually let yourself look at?
32. Whose voice is that in your head right now?
33. If a friend told you the same story, what would you hear that you can’t hear about yourself?
34. What does this say about how the world works for you?
35. What’s the belief underneath the feeling?
36. What would you have to give up to do this differently?
37. What does this protect you from?
38. If this is true, what does it mean about who you are?
39. What’s the harder, truer version of what you just said?
40. What would change if you let yourself believe what you already know?

Working with stuck patterns (41–50)

These prompts are for the loop that keeps showing up. The same fight, the same shutdown, the same self-betrayal, the same Tuesday. Pattern questions are most useful in the middle of a course of therapy, once enough material has accumulated that patterns can actually be named without the client guessing.

41. Have you been here before?
42. When was the last time you noticed yourself doing this?
43. What happens just before the pattern starts?
44. What’s the moment you usually realise you’re back in it?
45. What does this pattern do for you, even when you wish it didn’t?
46. Who taught you this move?
47. What would the version of you who has done this differently know?
48. What’s the smallest piece of the pattern you could change without changing the whole thing?
49. If this pattern were a door, what room is on the other side?
50. What’s the part of you that keeps choosing this, and what is it trying to keep safe?

Trauma-informed prompts (51–60)

Pacing-aware, dual-attention prompts. Use only with clients who are inside their window of tolerance and after the alliance can hold the weight; prioritise titration and orientation over depth. Several of these align with the framing in Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and the stabilisation-first sequencing it lays out.

51. Is it okay if we go a little closer to that, or does it feel like we should slow down?
52. What feels safe in the room right now?
53. What part of you is here with me, and what part is somewhere else?
54. What do you need from yourself to stay with this for another minute?
55. What would tell you it’s time to step back?
56. If this got too big, what would help you find your feet?
57. What does the part of you that survived want me to know first?
58. Whose responsibility was that, then, and whose responsibility is it now?
59. What’s the youngest part of you that’s here right now?
60. What does that part need that wasn’t available then?

Relationship and attachment (61–70)

How the client lives in connection. The prompts in this section move the lens from the inner world to the relational field, partners, parents, friends, the therapist, the absent ones. They land best when the client has done enough self-reflection to be ready to look at the patterns showing up across people.

61. Who are you when you’re with this person, that you aren’t elsewhere?
62. What do you protect them from that you haven’t told them?
63. What’s your part of this dynamic?
64. What do you want from this relationship that you haven’t asked for?
65. Who does this remind you of?
66. What would change if you trusted they could handle the truth?
67. What’s the version of love you got as a child, and what’s the version you’re trying to build now?
68. Who in your life is still relating to an older version of you?
69. If this relationship stayed exactly as it is for the next ten years, what would you regret?
70. What part of you is hardest for someone to love right now, and what part is most lovable?

Identity and self-concept (71–80)

The longer arc. These prompts ask who the client is becoming, not just what they are working on this month. They reward clients who have done some of the closer-in work and are ready to look at the shape of the life rather than the texture of the week. Useful in long-term therapy, identity transitions, and the integration phase of trauma work.

71. Who were you before the thing you’re working on now took up so much room?
72. What’s a piece of yourself you’re still re-learning?
73. What’s a label you’ve been quietly trying on lately?
74. What did you used to think was a personality trait that turned out to be a survival strategy?
75. What’s something you’re good at that has nothing to do with what you came in here for?
76. What does the version of you who is well do on a Tuesday?
77. What’s the story you tell about yourself that you suspect isn’t quite true anymore?
78. If you stayed with this work for the next five years, who would you be on the other side?
79. What’s something you used to want that you don’t anymore, and what does that tell you?
80. What’s the part of you that’s been waiting to be allowed to exist?

Action, agency, and the next step (81–90)

Moving toward change. These are the prompts that ask the client to do something between now and next session, to try a different framing, name what they need, take a small action in the direction of the life they have said they want. Use sparingly; an hour with too many action prompts produces compliance rather than change.

81. What’s the smallest thing you’d want to try this week?
82. What would you do differently tomorrow if you took today’s hour seriously?
83. What’s one conversation you’ve been avoiding that you’re a little closer to ready for?
84. What’s a request you could make this week that you haven’t made before?
85. What would you need to put down to make room for that?
86. What’s the next right thing, even if it’s not the big thing?
87. What would tell you this week was worth living, even quietly?
88. What’s a boundary you’ve been thinking about but haven’t said out loud?
89. If nothing else changed, what one piece of behaviour would shift the most?
90. What’s something you’re going to do that you haven’t told anyone yet?

Closing and integration (91–100)

The last ten minutes. Closing prompts mark what changed in the hour and bridge into the week. Most therapists rush this stretch; the session that ends well usually ends because the closing question asked the client to notice what they were taking with them, not because the clock said so. Sit in the silence after. The closing answer often is the session.

91. What’s one thing you’re taking from today?
92. What stood out to you in the last hour?
93. What’s something you said today that you didn’t know you were going to say?
94. What’s a piece of this hour you’ll be thinking about between now and next time?
95. How are you leaving compared to how you arrived?
96. What’s a question I asked today that you’d want to keep asking yourself this week?
97. What part of today’s session do you want to come back to next time?
98. What’s the smallest piece of insight you’d want to protect from being forgotten?
99. If this hour had a one-sentence headline, what would it be?
100. What do you want to say to yourself tonight about how this hour went?

How to use this bench

Three habits will get more out of these 100 therapy questions than memorising any subset of them. The first is simple discipline: pick one or two prompts per session, no more. The bench is not the session. The session is a chair, and only one person sits in it at a time. If you ask three depth prompts in an hour, the client will answer the easiest one and let the other two go.

The second habit is silence. Most therapists rescue silence within five seconds, and the client’s first answer is almost never the most honest one. The honest answer arrives in the second silence, the one that comes after the client has given the polished version and realises you are still there, still curious, not in a hurry to move on. Sit longer than is comfortable. Then sit a little longer.

The third habit is not to perform the question. A prompt asked because you saw it on a list and wanted to try it will land flat. A prompt asked because the room asked for it will land. The difference is usually visible in the half-second before you speak: are you asking because the client needs the next door opened, or because you are filling the gap? Ask yourself first, and if the answer is the second one, stay quiet instead.

A fourth habit, for therapists earlier in their career: notice which prompts you reach for repeatedly. If you are asking the same three questions across most clients, ask in supervision whether you are asking them for the client or for yourself. Both happen. Naming it is the work.

Group adaptations

When you take any of these 100 therapy questions into a group, the brief tightens. Sixty to ninety seconds per member, structured enough that everyone gets a turn, bridging cleanly into the day’s topic so the round does not become a series of unrelated monologues. A long, open-ended individual-session prompt that takes a client fifteen minutes to answer will derail group cohesion. Use the shorter, more concrete prompts from the Opening, Bridging, and Closing sections, and adapt the depth and pattern prompts by adding a frame: “in one or two sentences” or “a single example” keeps the round moving without flattening the work.

The other shift is bridging. In group, the prompt has to point everyone at the same territory; otherwise the session becomes ten people working on ten different things, which is therapy theatre rather than group therapy. Pair a group-level opening (one of prompts 1–10, scaled to a sentence) with a topic prompt drawn from elsewhere on the bench, and let the round move at the pace of the slowest member. For longer banks tuned to specific group contexts, the check-in questions for group therapy library and the opening prompts for group therapy collection are the companion shelves to this one. For individual-session check-ins specifically, the therapy check-in questions for individual sessions guide covers the shorter, lower-stakes prompts that fit the start of a one-to-one hour.

Where Emosapien fits

A bench like this works best when you do not have to remember which prompt to reach for. Start your journey with Emosapien, an active co-therapist that listens alongside the session and surfaces the question that fits the moment, tied to the treatment plan and the modality you work in. The therapist stays in the room and in control of every note that gets signed; the AI handles the bench so you can stay present with the client. For the documentation side, the AI clinical notes page covers how the response gets written into the progress note without you typing it twice.

References

• Yalom, I. D. (2002). The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients. HarperCollins.
• Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (Eds.). (2019). Psychotherapy Relationships That Work, Volume 1: Evidence-Based Therapist Contributions. Oxford University Press.