Therapy Questions: A Working Library for Sessions and Groups

A therapy session is shaped, more than anything else, by the therapy questions the clinician chooses to ask. Interventions, framing, silence, reflection, all of it sits on top of a question that opened the door. The question is the unit of clinical work, the part of the hour that sets the focus and decides whether the next minute goes deeper or stays on the surface.

This guide is a working library of therapy questions, prompts you can pull from for individual sessions, groups, between-session check-ins, and closings, organised by where the question sits in the arc of the hour. It is not a script. It is a bench. Pick the prompt that fits the moment, ask it, and then stay quiet long enough for the answer to arrive.

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.

What makes a therapy question do clinical work

The mechanics of useful therapy questions are unglamorous. There is no clever phrasing that unlocks insight. The pattern is the same one Miller & Rollnick (2023) identify in Motivational Interviewing: open beats closed, evocative beats expert-led, and the practitioner’s curiosity is the engine. What works, repeatedly, across modalities and populations:

• Open over closed. “What was that like?” rather than “Was that hard?”
• Specific over general. “Walk me through the moment you noticed your jaw tighten” rather than “How was your week?”
• Curious over confirmatory. “I’m interested in what brought that up, can you say more?” rather than “So you felt anxious because of work?”
• Respecting pace. A question that earns a fast answer is rarely the question that needed asking.
• One at a time. Stacked questions (“How did that feel? Was it like last time? What did you do?”) let the client choose the easiest one to answer and skip the rest.

Three patterns are worth noticing in your own sessions. Are you asking questions to fill silence? Are you asking questions you already think you know the answer to? Are you asking questions that move the client toward a conclusion you have in mind? Each of those is worth slowing down before it becomes habit.

Opening questions

Opening questions set the focus for the session. The right one points the hour at something the client can actually work on; the wrong one starts a conversation that fills time without going anywhere.

For individual sessions

• “What’s most on your mind walking in today?”
• “Last time we ended with [X]. How has that landed since?”
• “If we had only twenty minutes today, what would you want them to be about?”
• “What’s the smallest thing you noticed this week that surprised you?”
• “Where would you like to be at the end of this hour?”

The fourth one, the small surprise, is a workhorse. Most clients arrive ready to talk about the big themes already in their treatment plan, but the live clinical material is often in something smaller they have not yet labelled.

For follow-up sessions

• “Before we start where you want to, can I check in on [the homework / between-session task]?”
• “When you left last week, what stayed with you?”
• “Anything come up between sessions that you’d want to bring in?”
• “Have you noticed yourself doing anything differently since we talked?”

A clean follow-up question respects continuity without forcing the client back to last week’s content if something more pressing has arrived.

For groups

Group openings are tighter. Sixty to ninety seconds per member, structured enough that everyone gets a turn. Therapy questions for groups need a tighter brief than individual-session prompts: short, scalable, and bridging into the day’s work. See the check-in questions for group therapy guide for a longer menu, plus the opening prompts for group therapy collection for ten session-starter formats. The prompts that consistently work across populations:

• “One word for how you arrived today, and one word for what you want to leave with.”
• “On a scale of one to ten, how present do you feel in your body right now?”
• “Something hard from this week, and something that helped, in two sentences.”
• “What’s one thing you’re hoping the group can hold for you today?”

Processing questions

Processing questions move from the event to the experience. The client has named what happened; the work now is what it meant, what it felt like, and what it touches.

Affect-focused

• “Where do you feel that in your body right now?”
• “If that feeling had a name, what would you call it?”
• “What’s the feeling underneath the [anger / shutdown / numbness]?”
• “What happens in you when you say that out loud?”
• “When you remember it now, what comes first?”

Affect-focused prompts are the quickest way out of a session that has stayed in narrative for too long. The client has been telling you about the situation; the question moves the focus to what is happening inside the room as they tell it.

Meaning-focused

• “What does that say about how the world works for you?”
• “If a friend told you the same story, what would you hear?”
• “What’s the part of this you don’t usually let yourself look at?”
• “If this is true, what does it mean about who you are?”
• “Whose voice is that in your head right now?”

The last question, whose voice, is borrowed from IFS-influenced and family-of-origin work, but you do not have to be doing parts work to ask it. Most clients can identify a voice that is not theirs once you give them permission to look.

Pattern-focused

• “Have you been here before?”
• “When was the last time you noticed yourself doing this?”
• “What happens just before [the behaviour / the spiral / the shutdown]?”
• “What would you have to give up to do this differently?”
• “What does this protect you from?”

Pattern questions are most useful in the middle of a course of therapy, once enough material has accumulated that patterns can actually be named. Asked too early, they invite the client to perform self-awareness rather than have the experience.

Intervention questions

These are the questions that ask the client to do something, try a different framing, hold a feeling, name what they need, sit in the discomfort. They are not the only place therapy “happens,” but they are usually where the session changes direction.

Cognitive (CBT-leaning)

• “What’s the evidence for that thought? What’s the evidence against it?”
• “If your best friend held that belief, what would you want to say to them?”
• “What would have to be true for the opposite to be the case?”
• “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you believe that right now?”
• “If I told you that thought was a guess rather than a fact, what would shift?”

These borrow from Socratic questioning, the discipline Beck Institute treats as the diagnostic posture of CBT. They are most useful with clients who are already comfortable putting words to thoughts; clients who are stuck in affect or somatic activation usually need a different door first.

Acceptance and values (ACT-leaning)

• “If this feeling came along for the ride, what would you still want to do?”
• “What would you do today if pain were not the enemy?”
• “What does this difficult moment make space for?”
• “What matters to you that’s harder to access right now?”
• “If you could choose what this struggle is in the service of, what would it be?”

ACT-style questions reframe the function of the difficulty rather than try to argue the client out of it. They land best when the therapeutic alliance is solid and the client is not actively flooded.

Relational (parts, attachment, IFS-leaning)

• “What does the part of you that’s struggling need right now?”
• “Who does this remind you of?”
• “If this feeling could speak, what would it say?”
• “How old does this part of you feel right now?”
• “What would it be like to thank that part for trying to protect you?”

Parts language is one of the most accessible interventions across populations. Even clients who are not familiar with IFS understand “the part of me that wants to leave” or “the part that gets quiet.”

Closing questions

Closing questions tie the session off, mark what changed, and bridge into the week. They are the questions most therapists rush. A 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.

• “What’s one thing you’re taking from today?”
• “What stood out to you in the last hour?”
• “Anything you’re going to be thinking about between now and next time?”
• “What’s the smallest thing you’d want to try this week?”
• “How are you leaving compared to how you arrived?”

For groups, the closing question has to scale down the same way the opening did. A single sentence per member, structured enough that the closing does not run over. “One word for what you take with you” is the most reliable group closer in this library.

Topic-specific questions

The library above is organised by where the question fits in the arc of a session. The library below is organised by topic, useful for groups working on a specific theme, or for individual sessions where the agenda is already set.

Anxiety

• “What is the worry actually trying to do for you?”
• “If you knew the worst version of this would happen, what would you want to have done?”
• “Where do you feel anxiety in your body right now? What does it want to do?”
• “What’s the difference between this anxiety and useful caution?”
• “What does your anxiety predict about you that isn’t true?”

Depression

• “What’s harder than it should be right now?”
• “What did you used to enjoy that you have lost access to?”
• “What’s the smallest piece of evidence that something is still here?”
• “If you had a little more energy, what would you spend it on?”
• “What does the depression tell you about yourself? What do you suspect is not true about that?”

Trauma

(Approach with care, attention to window of tolerance, and supervision.)

• “Is it okay if we go a little closer to that, or does it feel like we should slow down?”
• “What feels safe in the room right now?”
• “What part of you is here with me right now, and what part is somewhere else?”
• “What do you need from yourself in this moment to stay with this?”
• “If we could only do one thing for that part of you, what would it be?”

Recovery

For a longer bank, see the 100 recovery group questions listicle. The mainstays:

• “What did the using do for you that you have not yet figured out how to do another way?”
• “What does sober you want that high you cannot have?”
• “Who in your life understands recovery, and who is still relating to the old version of you?”
• “What’s a craving you got through this week, and what carried you?”
• “What is one piece of identity you are still re-learning?”

Relationships

• “What do you want from this relationship that you have not yet asked for?”
• “What do you protect them from that you have not told them?”
• “What is your part of this dynamic?”
• “What would change if you trusted that they could handle the truth?”
• “If this relationship stayed exactly as it is for the next ten years, what would you regret?”

Teens

(Shorter, more concrete, fewer interpretive prompts.)

• “What’s something an adult got wrong about you this week?”
• “What’s something that’s taking up more space in your head than you want it to?”
• “If you could pick one thing for parents to stop doing, what would it be?”
• “What’s something you’re proud of that no one else knows about?”
• “What’s the part of being you that’s hardest right now?”

Using this library well

Three habits will get more out of these therapy questions than memorising any list:

1. Read the room before the list. The question that fits this client in this minute is rarely the most clever one. It is the one that names what is already in the room.
2. Sit with silence after asking. Most therapists rescue silence within five seconds. The client’s first answer is usually not the most honest one. The honest answer arrives in the second silence.
3. Notice your own pull. If you find yourself asking the same question across clients, ask whether you are asking it for them or for yourself. Both happen. Naming it in supervision is the work.

For the workflow side of running these prompts well, capturing the response, tying it to a treatment goal, and building forward from session to session, the progress notes best practices guide and the BIRP notes template cover the documentation side. The therapy topics for sessions library is the companion you pull from when you need a session theme but the agenda is not set yet.

Where Emosapien fits

A library like this works best when you do not have to remember which question to ask. Emosapien is an active co-therapist that listens alongside the session and surfaces the prompt that fits the moment, not as a transcript, but as a clinical assist tied to the treatment plan and the modality you work in. Therapists stay in control; the AI handles the bench so you can stay present in the room.