mildlydisconcertingsparrowhawk:
People with ADHD tend to have time blindness.. Which means we dont tend to have a good grasp at how long things take.
Now this really fucks us up cause we end up being unable to start doing things cause we think it’ll take a long time only for it to take a very short time when we actually do it.
Now obviously if someone says ten minutes, we know what it means numerically. But what we don’t easily grasp is what can be done in those ten minutes.
My friends are coming over in ten minutes? I can easily clean up the house and change before then…… Wait, theyre already here? How’s that possible?!
Op I like you cuz you make me feel less shitty about my shortcomings. It’s not just me being shitty! Amazing! It’s a legit thing! Which I still need to deal with and stuff but at least it’s like, not just cuz I’m a terrible person!
A lot of what we are made to believe are our shortcomings are caused by factors outside of our control. We can learn to control them to a point but learning to recognize them as not completely our fault is incredibly freeing.
Tag: time agnosia
2018 has lasted four years yet october lasted a week and november has disengaged from linear time entirely
#january-march was 4 years ago // april was normal i think // may was a week ago // june 1st was a year ago#summer in general was the vague concept of exsistence that lasted anywhere between 13-18 weeks#october was at least a week and a half // November?? tried her best but sister only lasted two days this year#today is already yesterday#2018#edit: i completely forgot september existed which honestly says a lot (via @steebucks)
It’s really bizarre to me whanever neurotypical people start talking like this because this is just what experiencing time is like when you have ADHD. My whole life feels like this and 2018 is no different.
Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.
It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.
You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED.
The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’
It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.
It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?
Maybe I DO have ADHD….
My “favourite” is when my brain is acutely aware of the facts that “today is Wednesday” “I have an appointment on Wednesday” “I need to leave at 1pm on Wednesday to get to the appointment” and “it is 12:30 and I am still in my pyjamas” and just… does not connect any of these facts together into “I need to get dressed and leave the house very soon, in fact I should probably start now”, or even “today is the day I have the appointment” as a starting point…
^^^
Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.
It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.
You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED.
The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’
It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.
It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?
Maybe I DO have ADHD….
executive dysfunction is telling yourself for two and a half hours that you need to shower bc you smell like your workplace and you absolutely Cannot do Anything Else until you shower, doing Any Other Thing before showering is illegal!!! but you still haven’t for some reason??? you’ve just been sitting on your bed in a towel scrolling tumblr for 2+ hours thinking “I need to shower right now immediately” and growing increasingly frustrated that you are still not clean and you haven’t eaten or done your laundry either
ok actually no I’m reblogging this because a) I am clean now (and I smell amazing, thank you), and b) I had a heckin Realize and I wanted to share it with y’all in the hopes it’ll help someone else with a brain like mine.
I figured something out about myself a long time ago– it’s only just now occurred to me that I was in fact solving a problem caused by executive dysfunction, and I haven’t been implementing this solution lately because my brain went “that’s a relatively new term to me and therefore a Different problem that requires a Different solution”. thanks a lot, brain.
anyway, long long ago, before I knew these fancy schmancy Official words, the problem, as I phrased it to myself, was such:
sometimes I get Stuck. I was doing something, or on my way to doing something, and then… I just. got stuck.
“Stuck” looks like refreshing my feed or dashboard repeatedly. or it looks like staring at a spot on the wall. or chewing my fingernails. or picking at a stubborn sticker. all the while, my brain drifts through various unrelated topics I wouldn’t be able to recall if asked. sometimes I can get Stuck for hours before realizing I am Stuck. sometimes I get so Stuck that I go to bed that way (feeling especially bad for being unproductive) and I have to just reset everything by sleeping.
one day I asked myself, “why is this happening? why am I stuck, right now, at this moment in time?” the answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: I was trying to make a decision, and I got distracted. I haven’t moved forward because I haven’t answered that one question or made up my mind.
let me rephrase this in terms of executive dysfunction: many people have expressed that it feels like knowing you need to do a thing but not feeling “ready” to do it. many with ADHD may also be familiar with the feeling of needing things to be “just so” before you embark on a task- you need your setup to look a certain way, or you need to set a timer, or have the right music playing, etc.
when I get Stuck it’s often because I got lost somewhere in that setting-up process, and my brain took the opportunity to nyoom off into Distraction Town.
getting myself Unstuck is solved, 95% of the time, by tracing my steps back to the original decision I was trying to make- often something small and inane- and then troubleshooting from there. (out loud! verbal processing is totally punk.)
- “what was I trying to do?”
- “was I trying to decide between two things?”
- (the answer’s usually yes.)
- “what were they?”
- “okay, let’s decide.
- “okay, that’s settled. let’s move on.”
- and then I am free as a bird to nyoom in the direction of The Thing I Wanted To Do All Along, in the amazingly disorganized, scattered, yet rapid-fire way that I do many things.
so!!! in the case of my first post, where I hadn’t showered for 2 hours? turns out I had been trying to decide what music to listen to in the shower. (another hack: my chances of getting Stuck while showering decrease by 75% if I have music playing to help me keep track of time.) I couldn’t immediately make up my mind, got lost in thought, got distracted, and drifted. once I stopped and asked- “why am I stuck?”- then I remembered- “oh yeah! I wanted to listen to music”- and then decided- “I want to listen to Daft Punk’s Discovery album”- I was finally heckin able to shower. and also eat, and also throw my clothes in the dryer.
and may I add I only zoned out once, during the slow part of “One More Time.” 😛
I’m not saying this is a foolproof method. sometimes I don’t have a reason for being stuck, and that’s okay! I’m also not saying this is how every adhd brain works. it’s just how my brain works, and I’m sure there’s at least a few who can relate. for those few, I hope this helps!!
a lot of people are reblogging the original post without the update and leaving frustrated comments and that makes me sad! if I can find ways to hack my brain than so can you! executive dysfunction is a real and frustrating challenge, but don’t buy the lie that there’s no way to work with it or around it!!!
!!!!
This sounds really useful and for some reason, I’m also really happy to find out that I’m not the only person who uses music to keep track of time
Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.
It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.
You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED.
The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’
It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.
It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?
With looking back over one post from earlier after it got more notes, I couldn’t help but start thinking some more about how weird time can be.
Not only do I find myself feeling unexpectedly old, with a (totally predictable) shaky grasp on how much time has actually passed? I’m impressed at how much more condensed some events seem now, than they did then.
I mean, it’s coming up on 15 years later this month since we first met in person. (That I registered, at any rate.*) Hard enough to believe that. And I moved in for good like 8 months later. And there he was, basically adopting my crazy-ass family as mentioned earlier, a few months after that.
I mean, we did get to know each other pretty well online, before the idea of my crashing with him for CCDE 2003 even came up. But, in retrospect things did move pretty quickly overall. Good thing that turned out OK, but it feels a tad weird now thinking about it.
Maybe especially with me sitting here going, “damn, is it really better than halfway through 2018 already?!”
* I was surprised when we were putting all the visa paperwork together, that he was sure we had met at an afpmeet** on my first trip to London in late 2002. Granted, I was seriously overloaded and also more than a little drunk to cope by that point–and probably at least 30 people showed up over the course of the meet. Mr. C was definitely one of them. There are photos. I still don’t recall laying eyes on him then, at all. Must have made more of an impression on him–while really really not in top social form 😵
** I had to laugh at his short version for the application: “We met in a pub in London.” 🙄 Technically true, I suppose, but yeah I did request that he add more context before that got turned in to the Home Office.
Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.
It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.
You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED.
The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’
It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.
It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?
oh shit this is my life
like, getting into gear to celebrate holidays and realizing they happened last week. or catching up with someone like it’s been a few days since we last saw each other but they’re normal functional people so it’s been two years for them. or be thinking “yeah I’ll go see The Force Awakens in the theater one of these days” up until the time Rogue One comes out. or realize that I haven’t done a thing for a given hobby in like six months and haven’t even noticed.
also that nightmare where you’re back in college near the end of the semester and you realize you’ve forgotten a whole class that you haven’t been to since Week Three?
that one sucks.
Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.
It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.
You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED.
The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’
It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.
It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?
Oh crap, I just realized that I forgot about Mr. C’s birthday on the day last week.
What makes it worse was that I was thinking it was a significant date, and decided that must be because the anniversary of my moving here was what turned out to be a few days before 🙄
I know what date birthdays, etc. fall on, but then have a hard time connecting it to that day as it’s happening. That great a grip on time. It’s pretty weird, and embarrassing sometimes.
I mean, I’m not sure he even noticed that I forgot. And he didn’t say anything about mine this year either. But, I still feel pretty bad about it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.