Coaching practices for That Was Then This is Now
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For That Was Then This is Now, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Something will trip a memory and suddenly my body reacts like the old thing is happening all over again, right now
- Right now this feels like it will matter forever, like it’s permanently rearranged my life, and some calmer part of me suspects that in a year I won’t even think about it
- When I tell people what happened it comes out as a flat recap
- I keep responding to who my partner was a couple of years ago instead of who they are now
- There are a handful of scenes I keep returning to
Practices that may help
- Ground in the present when the past intrudes
Use the senses and the room to signal "that was then, this is now" when memory floods the body.
The Body Keeps the Score, Honestly Explained - The Now Habit, Made Practical
Neil Fiore’s Now Habit reframes procrastination as a protective response to anxiety and perfectionism rather than laziness. His approach reverses the usual advice: schedule leisure first (the "unschedule"), reduce the psychological pressure of work, and shift from the identity "procrastinator" to "person who starts." The framework is clinically derived and internally coherent; large-scale RCT evidence is limited. - The temporal zoom-out
Set today’s problem against a year, a decade, a century — and ask whether it still ranks.
The View from Above - Structure the story as a transformation, not a summary
The protagonist (you, your customer, your team) should be different at the end than at the beginning.
Storytelling for Persuasion, Made Practical - Map your partner's current inner world
Know your partner's present worries, stresses, and joys -- not just who they were when you met.
Love Maps: Knowing Your Partner's Inner World - Explore your nuclear episodes
Identify the peak, nadir, and turning-point scenes that define your personal myth.
Narrative Identity, Made Practical - Update the map as parts shift
Revisit and revise the map after significant inner work — the system changes, and the map should too.
IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical - Ask: how will this look in one year, five years?
Project forward to check whether the catastrophe still looks catastrophic from a temporal distance.
Decatastrophizing, Made Practical - Entering the present moment
Drop attention out of past and future and into direct sensory contact with now.
The Power of Now, In Practice - Recognize and recover from stage regression
A team that was Performing can drop back to Storming — and the recovery move is different from the original ascent.
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
Related concerns
- Return To The Present
When the mind pulls to past regret or future worry, redirect to what is actually here.
Anchor attention to the present moment deliberately
- Deep Time Perspective
Set today’s problem against a year, a decade, a century — and ask whether it still ranks.
The temporal zoom-out
- Mental Time Travel
Write to your future self or imagine a specific day in your desired future — temporal distance amplifies present bias; vividness reduces it.
Make your future self vivid to reduce psychological distance
- One More Year Syndrome
"Just one more year" is often fear, not a rational financial calculation — learn to tell the difference.
Recognize and address one-more-year syndrome
- Start At The Edge Of Story
Build a preferred story of identity by thickening the exceptions into a narrative with a plot.
Re-Authoring the Alternative Story
- Story Transformation Arc
The protagonist (you, your customer, your team) should be different at the end than at the beginning.
Structure the story as a transformation, not a summary
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.