OLGA D. TUCHINA
PSYCHOLOGY OF FUTURE THINKING
PSYCHOLOGY OF FUTURE THINKING
Changing Your Memory of the Future to Change Your Life
What This Web-Site Is About
This is a personal website of the “Memory of the Future Psychotherapy" project's author - Olga D. Tuchina, who, in collobration with Prof. Dmitri Shustov, PhD, has beendeveloping, researching and using this method in her clinical practice.
This method is based on Transactional Analysis (proposed by Eric Berne) and cognitive psychology. It relies on scientific evidence and bona fide and effective psychotherapeutic techniques.
On these pages, you will meet Olga, learn what “future thinking” and “memory of the future” are, how their deficits prevent us from achieving goals and making decisions, and get an idea of how Olga can help you, whether you are an individual client, helping professional or a helping profession trainee.
This method is based on Transactional Analysis (proposed by Eric Berne) and cognitive psychology. It relies on scientific evidence and bona fide and effective psychotherapeutic techniques.
On these pages, you will meet Olga, learn what “future thinking” and “memory of the future” are, how their deficits prevent us from achieving goals and making decisions, and get an idea of how Olga can help you, whether you are an individual client, helping professional or a helping profession trainee.
What is Future Thinking?
- A unique human capacity to imagine one's personal future and use these projections to obtain life goals.
- It includes scenes of the future events that we may imagine; our predictions and forecasts; intentions and plans.
- It also includes the so-called "memory of the future" - our beliefs and projections about the long-term future and even our life finale that we keep in our long-term memory.
What Intrigues Us?
•“Memory of the future”:
How do people ‘predict’ their life events and death (e.g. M. Twain's, V. Brauner's creative premonitions)
•Paradox of future thinking:
How these predictions contribute to or interfere with people’s actual behaviours and change their life course. Why do some people fail to implement their good intentions and plans even if they are well-motivated?
How do people ‘predict’ their life events and death (e.g. M. Twain's, V. Brauner's creative premonitions)
•Paradox of future thinking:
How these predictions contribute to or interfere with people’s actual behaviours and change their life course. Why do some people fail to implement their good intentions and plans even if they are well-motivated?
•Future-thinking power:
How to use FT power to help people improve their psychological functioning; change their self-destructive or other negative behaviours or even change their overall life course
Future Thinking Functions
According to research (e.g. Hallford D., D’Argembeau A., 2021), healthy FT enables
- planning and goal setting;
- desicion making and problem solving;
- acting under stress and uncertainty;
- understanding who (what person) we see ourselves in the future;
- maintain positive emotional state;
- establish social relations and communicate;
- cope with negative emotions that may await us in the future;
- overcome boredom and organize pastime
- resist harmful pleasures and dangerous impulses
- reflect on the possibility of death and adjust to it
When FT Becomes a Problem?
When FT gets impaired, people may face challenges in their psychological and social functioning:
- Failure to resist temptations (substance and behavioral addictions, self-destructive behaviours);
- Inability to follow health and other recommendations; sabotage of treatment or action programs;
- Failure to fulfill 'good' intentions and achieve personal goals and plans: Denial, Sabotage and "Forgetting"
- Reinforcement of depression and evocation of suicidal thinking by dark and hopeless future perspective;
- High anxiety and feeling overwhelmed with fear of uncertainty and/or involuntary images of the frightening and catastrophic future including one's death
- Future Thinking deficits underlay most mental disorders and are especially prominent in addictions.
- Nevertheless, almost all of us may find themselves doing things that they seem to have never intended to do at a time.
- Sometimes we may even enact negative "memories of the future" that we have been investing so much effort to avoid.
- One would expect this happen at times of stress and uncertainty due to an enormous power of "memories of the future" and "life script" which is grounded in them and becomes more available at these challenging points.
What Can I Do When I Face Similar Issues in My Life or Want to Help My Clients Overcome Them?
To People Who Experience Difficulties. Our FT trainings and counseling techniques have resulted from a more than 10-year-long experience of studying addictions and Future Thinking deficits and helping people with various mental and psychological issues. They are helpful to inhibit the influence of the poorly conscious "memory of the future" and change one's representations of their future life course, which also helps to change acconpanying psycological problems
To Professionals. Our enthusiasm and expertise in research and teaching allows us to share our knowledge and skill at psychological research design, academic writing and therapy of FT deficits and related issues in people with various psychological problems.
About the FT Project Founder
- Olga D. Tuchina is PhD in Clinical Psychology, researcher and Transactional Analysis therapist under supervision who draws inspiration in the state-of-the-art cognitive science and evidence-based counseling.
- Her field of research and practice is people's Future Thinking (FT) in various conditions and under various circumstances.
- She is specifically interested in how people's FT may get impaired and dusturb people's productive functioning and life course. Most often requests that people bring to Olga are professional and reationship issues, issues of addictions, emotional disturbances (anxiety, depression), state of uncertainty and feelings of "internal impasse", distress due to life changes that have occured or are about to happen.
- She helps people to become aware of and change negative FT aspects so that they could restore its full capacity as the greatest resourse for healthy and successful living.
- Olga has authored over 70 scientific works including chapters in international monographs and peer-reviewed journals.
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
Basic Education & Training
- 2022PhD in Clinical Psychology
Saint-Petersburg State University - 20115-Year Transactional Analysis (Psychotherapy) Training Program
D.I, Shustov (TSTA-p), T. Sizikova (TSTA-p), V. Goussakovski (TSTA-p)
European Association of Transactional Analysis - 2009Specialist Degree in Psychology (Psychologist / Professor of Psychology). Recognized by ENIC-NARIC, Serbia (2023).
Institute of Modern Economy, Moscow - 2006Specialist degree in Teaching Foreign Languages
S. A. Yesenin Ryazan State University
Work Experience
- 2023Invited Professor; International Institution of Developmental Transactional Analysis (MIR-TA)
TA therapist under supervision - 2018 - 2023
Researcher, Psychologist, TA therapist under supervision
Moscow Research & Practical Centre for Addictions Treatment
- 2014 - 2017
Assistant Professor, Russian University of People’s Friendship
- 2009 - 2017Counseling psychologist, private practice
EXPERTISE
- Counseling
Group and face-to-face counseling using various strategies - Future Thinking Counseling & Future Specificity Training; Life Script WorkChanging negative aspects of people's FT that interfere with their functioning: Improving specificity, vividness and valence of one's future projections; improving planning and intention formation skills; working with "memories of the future" and long-term future images to change one's life script
- Assisting with Recovery & Clinical Goal AchievementPsychoeducation; motivation for treatment; facilitation of treatment adherence
- Assisting with Research Design and PerformanceAssisting with psychological and medical research design; looking for potential problems; assessing study protocols; help with data presentation; quantitative and qualitative research; statistical processing; scientific paper review and editing
- Translation and WritingAssisting with scientific writing; translation and supervision of qualification and research papers; consecutive and simultaneous translation (Russian & English) in interesting highly sensitive settings
Methods
- Cognitive Therapy
- Transactional Analysis
- Future Thinking Counseling & Future Specificity Training
- Motivational Therapy
- Family Systems
Solutions for Personal Issues
- DIAGNOSING FUTURE-THINKING DEFICITSIndividual diagnostic session (1.5 hrs) or a series of diagnostic sessions (2 to 5) to identify and (if needed) to build a plan for remediation of negative aspects of your FT that interfere with your well-being
- LOOK UP! OR HOW TO SEE ELEPHANT IN YOUR ROOM UNTILL IT'S TOO LATE. FUTURE THINKING TRAININGFor people who face unpleasant consequences of impulsive decision making and experiencing difficulties making decisions under uncertainty. This is a right training if you often find yourself doing something different instead of what was planned or gain the same dissatisfying result inspite of good intentions and planning. Setting - 1 day, 5.5 hrs, 2 two-hour slots + breaks OR 2 days, 2.5-hour slot per day, breaks included. Individual or group format
- THAT'S THE CATCH! TAILORED FUTURE THINKING TRAININGS TO SOLVE PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUESCustomized FT trainings of individual duration (a series of 2 to 5 hour-long sessions or longer when needed) are designed based on the findings of a diagnostic session and aim at changing negative FT aspects that may interfere with goal achievement and/or contribute to unpleasant emotional state or psychological problem. Individual or group format
- FREE WILL TRAINING: FROM "REMEMBERING" TO CREATING YOUR FUTURE. A STUDY OF YOUR LIFE SCRIPTThis training (or a series of 2 to 5 hour-long sessions or longer when needed) allows to investigate people's implicit (poorluy conscious) representations of their life course and fate that may guide their decisions at challenging life points. It allows to see schemas that interfere with making optimal decisions and pushing the person to the tragic outcome. The training endows participants with tools to overcome "memories of the future" and improve the capacity for conscious planning of one's life course.
- COUNSELINGFuture thinking and future-related issues; difficulties reflecting on the future; addictive behaviours; codependence; emotional issues; issues in relationships with yourself and close people; relocation (migration) challenges; close people's addictions and codependence (for relatives of people with addictions; adult children of people with addictions). Individual, family and group format
Solutions for Professionals
- THE SCIENCE OF FORESIGHT: HOW TO HELP PATIENT TO OVERCOME MYOPY TOWARDS FUTURE. FUTURE EVENT SIMULATION TRAININGTraining for specialists working with people with emotional (anxiety and depression) problems and/or dependent behaviors. Specialist will get acquainted with such concepts as:
- Future Thinking and delay discounting,
- specific aspects and deficits of FT and other mental functions that prevent people from clear assessment of the future consequences of one's behaviours and making optimal choices;
- existing methods of diagnosing these aspects and deficits;
- evidence-based approaches to therapy of FT deficits.
Setting - 1 day, 5.5 hrs, 2 two-hour slots + breaks OR 2 days, 2.5-hour slot per day, breaks included. Individual or group format - READING THE FUTURE: METHODS OF DIAGNOSING FT DEFICITSSpecialists will learn to apply qualitative and quantitative methods of studying (diagnosing) FT deficits (overgeneralizations, time perspective and phenomenological deficits, low self-projection capacity etc), options of the study results processing (including hints for statistical processing for research processes). They will get an opportunity to test these methods in terms of group work (or dyadic work with the trainer).
- MYOPY FOR THE FUTURE: FUTURE THINKING DEFICITS IN PEOPLE WITH ADDICTIONS AND CODEPENDENCYTraining for specialists and rehabilitation teams working with dependent people and their families. Lecture and workshop formats are available
Specialist will get acquainted with such concepts as:- Future Thinking and delay discounting,
- specific aspects and deficits of FT and other mental functions that reinforce addictions and interfere with recovery;
- existing methods of diagnosing these aspects and deficits;
- evidence-based approaches to therapy of FT deficits in people with addictions.
- RESEARCH COUNSELING
- Counseling and supervision for the issues of designing, performing and data processing in medical and psychological research
- Reviewing articles, qualification and other scientific works. Scientific editing.
- Supervision to overcome difficulties at the stage of scientific search and research planning as well as at further research stages
- TRANSLATION AND EDITINGTranslation (English <=> Russian) of qualification works with an option of editing: Looking for failures and "bottlenecks"
Key Publications
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Borodkina A. Katie’s implicit life plan for the end of summer: how implicit prospection may influence the course of events. In J. F. Gunn III, D. Lester (Eds.) Perspectives on a Young Woman's Suicide: A Study of a Diary (pp. 73-92). Tailor & Francis, 2021.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Lester D. The social relationships of suicidal individuals: A neglected issue. In D. Lester (Ed.) The End of Suicidology: Can We Ever Understand Suicide? (pp. 127-133). Nova Publishers; 2019.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Agibalova T. Games Abstainers Play. Transactional Analysis Journal. 2018; 48(1): 43-58.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Agibalova T., Zuykova N. States of Self as Agents of Self-Killing: An Egogram-based Suicide Note Analysis Study in Russia. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research & Practice. 2018; 9(1):5–22.
Shustov D, Merinov A., Tuchina O. Episcript Transmission in Families of Alcohol-Dependent Men: Models and Clinical Observations. Transactional Analysis Journal. 2015; 45: 87-95.
Shustov D, Tuchina O. “Theodora” Way Station: How the Psychological Concept of Life Script Mirrors Neurocognitive Memory of the Future. Transactional Analysis Journal. 2019; 49(4): 292-307.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Novikov S., Fedotov I. Combinations of Injunctions and Personality Types Determining Forms of Self-Destructive Behaviour in Alcohol-Dependent Clients: Findings of a Russian Observational Study. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research. 2016; 7(2): 10-20.
Tuchina O., et al. Ambivalent Prospection: Covid-Related Attitudes in Patients with Substance Dependence. Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy. 2020; 3(109): 100-121.
Tuchina O., et al. Priming Future Cultural Identities in Self-Defining Future Projections: Findings of a Pilot Online Cross-Sectional Study. Cultural-Historical Psychology. 2021; 17(3): 104-114.
Tuchina O., Agibalova T., Shustov D. Reflecting on Life script, related unconscious beliefs, and future projections as a factor of remission duration in male patients with alcohol dependence. Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy, 2021; 29(3): 116-139.
Tuchina O.D., et al. Testing Future Thinking Task in Russian-Speaking Sample. Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy, 2022. Vol. 30, no. 3, P. 172–193.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Lester D. The social relationships of suicidal individuals: A neglected issue. In D. Lester (Ed.) The End of Suicidology: Can We Ever Understand Suicide? (pp. 127-133). Nova Publishers; 2019.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Agibalova T. Games Abstainers Play. Transactional Analysis Journal. 2018; 48(1): 43-58.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Agibalova T., Zuykova N. States of Self as Agents of Self-Killing: An Egogram-based Suicide Note Analysis Study in Russia. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research & Practice. 2018; 9(1):5–22.
Shustov D, Merinov A., Tuchina O. Episcript Transmission in Families of Alcohol-Dependent Men: Models and Clinical Observations. Transactional Analysis Journal. 2015; 45: 87-95.
Shustov D, Tuchina O. “Theodora” Way Station: How the Psychological Concept of Life Script Mirrors Neurocognitive Memory of the Future. Transactional Analysis Journal. 2019; 49(4): 292-307.
Shustov D., Tuchina O., Novikov S., Fedotov I. Combinations of Injunctions and Personality Types Determining Forms of Self-Destructive Behaviour in Alcohol-Dependent Clients: Findings of a Russian Observational Study. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research. 2016; 7(2): 10-20.
Tuchina O., et al. Ambivalent Prospection: Covid-Related Attitudes in Patients with Substance Dependence. Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy. 2020; 3(109): 100-121.
Tuchina O., et al. Priming Future Cultural Identities in Self-Defining Future Projections: Findings of a Pilot Online Cross-Sectional Study. Cultural-Historical Psychology. 2021; 17(3): 104-114.
Tuchina O., Agibalova T., Shustov D. Reflecting on Life script, related unconscious beliefs, and future projections as a factor of remission duration in male patients with alcohol dependence. Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy, 2021; 29(3): 116-139.
Tuchina O.D., et al. Testing Future Thinking Task in Russian-Speaking Sample. Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy, 2022. Vol. 30, no. 3, P. 172–193.
Contact us
shtuchina@gmail.com
+381654860183
+381654860183
