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One of the advantages of using cognitive behavioural therapy is that it is a solution based therapy directed at working the presenting problem through to conclusion. It examines the beliefs and thoughts behind our actions, and allows us to change them to produce a beneficial outcome for you.

Let’s talk about time and how CBT uses time to make deep and beneficial changes.

With any change work I need to know two important reference points. Firstly, what exactly is the problem and secondly what is the desired outcome. By knowing this we can measure progress and see what is stopping you from reaching your desired outcome.

To begin with I tend to work from a future date and work back towards the present tense. I do this by asking a question along the lines of: How would you like you life to be in twelve months time, and what will be different?

This is a better way of working than moving from the present tense into the future. Often the problem a client presents me is proving such an obstacle that they feel stuck, uncertain and rarely consider the future in any great level of detail. By working from the future back towards now we can bypass a lot of emotional resistance and confusion.

Upon asking how would you like your life to be in 12 months time, I usually get a long, non specific answer, which is exactly what I’m looking for because it means the problem hasn’t yet been applied or given any large amount of consideration. The future is at that point “clean” and full of opportunity. This is why much of my work is initially based far out in the future because it’s a nice place for the client to consider options which were previously being blocked out by the problem.

What I will now begin to do is to starting chunking down into more detail and making that future more of a reality. I can ask the client to consider what they will be doing, who will they be with and what is important to them at that time.

I will gradually move nearer to the present, so for example from 12 months out to 6 months out and then down to 3 months. This is the point at which two important things happen. Firstly I get more vivid and specific feedback of what the client will be doing, who they would like to be with and even what they will be wearing at this future time. Secondly, they will start to feel slightly confused because it almost feels forbidden to think this way without feeling a level of anxiety. The presenting problem is gently starting to come into play and being applied to the future.

This is where I can compare the problem the client described to me in the present tense, and the way the problem is being described in the future. Past memories and experiences are often distorted with strong emotions which can mask the true underlying problem. As such, working in the present tense the client will tend to report back mainly emotional content. When moving back from the future, I will tend to get more factual and direct information.

By comparing these two pieces of information, I have a complete overview of what the problem really is and exactly what we need to do to overcome it.

A common mistake I see people making is setting past based targets. For example stating that you wish things were now as they were 2 years ago.

By setting a past based target, you’re instructing your mind to work towards becoming what you were. In simplistic terms, it’s like trying to buy a ticket this week for last weeks lottery. The environment around us such as people, places and even our body and habits change week by week, month by month and year by year. It is very subtle but life does change quickly.

Lots of people do mention past based targets during therapy, and I understand why. The nature of my work is to help clients who have problems. Most of the people I meet want to go back to times when things were working out and the problem didn’t exist, because that was time of greater comfort. The beauty of CBT is that we can work together to extract what specifically was good in those previous times, and aim to get this back in future.

An example of this could be if you had a close set of friends who you could confide in and you wish you had them back. Since that time you may have lost contact or they may have moved away, so you won’t be able to have things exactly as they were. But what we can take from that is that you had some close friends you could confide in, and you liked that. So in future you could aim to either strengthen your existing friendships, find new friends or both.

CBT allows you to build future choices, whilst understanding what was important about your past.