In my therapy business, client education is one of my primary tools. To both provide and supplement my client's educational process, I often use one or more of several "tools" I call handouts. One of these is a handout that enables my clients to report how strongly they are feeling 15 basic emotions on session day on a scale of 1-10. I call it taking "their emotional temperature" and it tells me which are the strongest emotions they are feeling or struggling with on that day.  This provides me with a focal point I can use to work with them during the session. Other handouts I use as tools include "Rules of the Mind" and "Basic Human Emotional Needs"  among others.

Another of my favorite educational tools dates back to the Greek philosopher Socrates who lived around 400 B.C..  Socrates believed that we all have "hidden knowledge" in our minds that can provide us with solutions for our problems but we often can't find our solutions because we are not asking ourselves the right questions. So I often use "Socratic questioning" with my clients to help them "look inside" and find that they actually do have some solutions to their problems in their own mind. An example was when one of my clients came to see me because he felt he just couldn't make decisions. As we talked further, I asked him "do you remember the first time you decided you couldn't make a decision?" He responded by telling me when he first felt that way but then it dawned on him that he had made a decision!