Recovery from trauma or addiction can be a painstaking and rigorous process that doesn’t just involve physical recovery. It involves tough psychological work that people can go through with the help of a therapist, but largely progress is made on one’s own. 

That doesn’t mean they can’t get help to help themselves. 

The Institute of Love and Time (TILT) is committed to giving individuals the tools to help themselves. They do this by providing evidence-based, non-addictive, humane technologies and tools that allow people to have a deeper connection with themselves – and from that place of strength and resilience – learn to create a healthier and more positive future.

Their newest technology in this endeavor is their Time Machine app. 

Talking with one’s past and future self

Time Machine is TILT’s flagship app, inspired by proven therapeutic techniques not always accessible to communities with fewer resources. It’s meant to help those impacted by poverty, trauma, abuse, addiction, or incarceration by delivering three supportive and transformative tools to build meaningful and scalable trauma recovery. 

The Time Machine app works by letting the users talk with themselves in different stages of their lives. The first tool is a daily practice of recording and hearing messages from and for the user, letting them create a healthy relationship with themselves over time. The second tool is a “meditation tent,” that allows people to record their own supportive meditations to play and replay throughout the day or whenever they want. The final tool is the “hope garden,” which provides a space for people to plant seeds of hope for their future. 

In a peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Psychology, 96 participants self-reported their experiences with Time Machine and showed significant improvements in time perspective, feelings of unconditional love for themselves, and overall well-being scores. All of these are critical to recovery. What’s more, participants with the worst childhood trauma actually “caught up” over the 26 days of the study to the overall well-being reported by those with less traumatic childhoods. Time Machine helped foster a remarkable shift in these individuals’ well-being. 

Growing individuals’ growth and well-being 

Time Machine was awarded a multi-year grant of $500,000 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the US’ largest public health philanthropy focusing on access to health care, public health, health equity, and changing systems to address barriers to health. 

TILT is seeking strategic partners in the health and wellness space. They are seeking partnerships to directly integrate and share this tool with communities. Some of their partners include Cook County Corrections, First Responders in Idaho, Oregon, Michigan, and Washington DC, and addiction support groups in several geographic areas.