The CBT-TIME Transdiagnostic Protocol

The protocol developed by Dr. Ohad Hershkovitz is structured, detailed and based on three focal points: cognitive, emotional and behavioral.

During the cognitive stage, the patient learns to identify and challenge thinking patterns that increase emotional problems, learns to reduce the time spent engaging in unhealthy thoughts, and learns to use healthy thinking to create motivation and increase self-confidence.

During the emotional stage, the patient learns to tolerate unpleasant emotions in a manner that allows the emotion to subside and habituate, and in addition the patient learns to increase the experience of positive emotions.

During the behavioral stage, the patient learns to identify and to tolerate without heeding behavioral impulses – such as “fight or flight”, avoidance, “control-freak”, escape, eating, compulsive rituals, perfectionism, need for certainty – as well as to be proactive in releasing emotional tension in an effective and healthy manner so as to decrease the experience of automatic tension release behaviors and body focused repetitive behaviors – such as hair pulling, nail biting and skin picking or various addictive behaviors like compulsive shopping, compulsive gambling and kleptomania.The protocol developed by Dr. Ohad Hershkovitz differs from standard protocols that focus on a specific set of symptoms. For example, today there are protocols for eating disorders, post-trauma, OCD, and for anxiety. However, these protocols are very specific, focusing on the symptoms themselves, and often miss unhealthy habits at a deeper emotional level or problems with the self-confidence that lie behind these symptoms.

For example problems of phobia, OCD, eating disorders or anxiety often come in combination with secondary issues of self-confidence which include perfectionism, self-criticism, being a “control-freak”, and avoidance.

These secondary issues are usually not the reason for starting treatment or the focus of the treatment itself, but they do negatively affect the patient’s life, as well as being part of the same unhealthy habits which contribute to the patient’s symptoms. For this reason there is a limitation to traditional protocols that focus only on a specific and limited set of symptoms.## About the Author

Dr. Ohad Hershkovitz completed his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in the United States and has been treating a wide range of problems for over 20 years, focusing on the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) method.Dr. Ohad Hershkovitz trains clinical professionals from Israel and around the world in the use of the protocol: he has presented at the 2020 EABCT Conference in Europe, at the Israeli Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy Conference, and also holds training workshops for therapists.