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Virginia was adept at using the perception of time to facilitate change. Every sentence has a verb, and verbs indicate past, present, or future. Using past tense tends to dissociate and separate the person from an event or behavior, while present tense associates the person into it. Describing a problem behavior in past tense indicates that it is behavior that belongs in the past, leaving room for new behavior in the present. We can begin by describing a possible new behavior in future tense, and then shift to present tense, thus presupposing that the behavior has already been achieved. By describing past events and then shifting to present consequences, it's possible to build new and more useful beliefs about causes and effects.
These temporal predicate shifts can be powerful tools in changing people's responses, particularly when they are combined with presuppositions. Although I could find no examples of her use of temporal predicate shifts in the 1974 transcript in Satir Step by Step, there are many examples from the 1986 transcript in this book. This may indicate that she added this to her work at some time in the intervening years. For a more detailed description of temporal predicate shifts, see Appendix I of this book, or Chapter 2, “Utilizing Time,” in Change Your Mind and Keep the Change (1987).
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