Poor sense of time?

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This is a shot in the dark. My H has  poor time perception. I was reading about how stress can affect time perception, particularly traumatic events. The implication was that time slows down during the event itself, as is commonly known, but it got me thinking.

If PTSD is basically living life as if the trauma never ended, could it permenantly break your time perception?

Another thought, dissociation must also remove one from the time stream. Probably with the opposite effect - time slows down in trauma but probably passes in the blink of an eye in dissociation.

If a child lives in both - trauma frequently, then dissociation in between - their internal clock could just pop its cogs. (Sorry about the mixed metaphor there).

I know poor time management is associated with ADHD but there is some speculation that ADHD may be symptoms of PTSD, at least sometimes.

Anyway, do you have any thoughts on this, whether observing someone with PD and/or PTSD, or perhaps speaking for yourself?

[Andeza]

My husband's M is some flavor of uPD. We don't know what (although extremely high-functioning BPD is definitely possible). I love him dearly and he's amazing 99% of the time, but his sense of time for everything, except the microwave, lol, is totally shot. The microwave thing is uncanny because of how good he is at coming back and hitting the button with one second left. We've had to set a timer for the toddler's bedtime so he knows when to put the kid to bed. His sense of time has always been shot though. Since long before I ever met him, and so I knew what I was getting into. I should add that he deals with an interesting disorder/condition/thing like dyslexia, but with numbers. His parents knew he likely had it because he's the third generation in the family to show signs, but they never did a darn thing to help him because denial is strong with his parents. Poor time management is often associated with this diagnosis (which he doesn't have a diagnosis, but we're absolutely positive he would be diagnosed). So in his case we've got an interesting question as to which, or both, cause time issues.

By comparison, I'm suuuuuper time conscious, to the point of it causing unnecessary anxiety. Our compromise is that for important things, they go on his calendar in his phone and he gets a reminder the day of, or a daily alarm for things like kid bedtimes that aren't changing any time soon. If he turns the alarm off and is going to miss whatever thing it is, I usually pose a question. Does he want to continue napping and not put DS to bed? And if he does then XYZ will also happen as a result. (Not a punishment, just whatever the natural consequence is. Right now that would be DS throwing a very loud, unpleasant tantrum because their is no acceptable substitute for daddy at bedtime. Yay... terrible twos... )

Now, I don't recall time slowing down in my own PTSD event. In fact it felt like it was flying by and there wasn't a darn thing I could do that was going to stop it or slow it down. In my own, personal periods of disassociation, I have still been conscious of time passing by, but struggle to exit the disassociation and rejoin normal bodily functions. For instance if I know I need to get a shower by a certain time in the evening so I can have hot water, but I'm disassociated from my own body, I have to force a reconnection in order to tell my legs to make me stand up and get the process started. It can take a few tries and actually consumes energy. Doesn't happen very often these days, thankfully. When it does happen, I tend to put it off until the last possible moment.

I don't know if any of this helps... I hope it does.

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Ah, dyscalculia. Yes, H is a slam dunk for that as well. Most people would say "I'm bad at math" and might claim dyscalculia like people who like their drawers organized claim OCD, but this is a really notable and significant detachment from the sense and meaning of numbers.

H has always struggled with time, as in time of day and passage of time within a day, but he seemed to have a reasonable (though not terrific) sense of days and weeks going by. But now he has lost that too. He may think several weeks was just a week or even a few days ago. We even had a specific incident where he thought an event happened about six months prior when it had been three and a half years.

I'm alarmed by the seemingly progressive nature of this.

I wonder if he has slipped into a near constant state of dissociation. He is often totally checked out. He considers it ADHD but it used to be more sporadic, like he might be checked out while I ask him a question but if I waited a few seconds, he would come back and be present. Now he will just autopilot the answer and not return.

He has this faraway, glazed look.

I realize I'm talking about more than time perception here but anyway.

[Andeza]

You're one of the few people I've met that's familiar with it, and it falls into the nebulous and amorphous realm of neurodivergence. Within that realm many things overlap, and others are completely juxtaposed. It embodies dyslexia, ADHD, autism, personality disorders, and pretty much everything else not considered "normal." But then, when the criteria are that diverse, who truly is normal?

DH is not ADHD, but also ticks many, many markers for autism. Although... I tick even more boxes on that one.

I don't know your age range square, but it's not impossible he's got other things going on. It may be wise for him to seek an evaluation, but would he? Unlikely based on your other posts.

On the other hand, we're in our early 30s and DH has always been very poor at remembering how long ago something happened. Your comment about somethings several years prior seeming only a few months prior reminded me. I do wonder if, with dyscalculia's affect on sequencing, they are unable to sequence the passage of time accurately on the larger scale. This may be exacerbated by a routine that grows too dull with no large event markers to guide them. But now I've entered the realm of theory, I fear.

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You're right on every point.

There is something bigger going on. Just sometimes I end up overanalyzing dead ends.

Man, time does blend when life stops and there are no markers. Being homebound and married to a hermit who wishes he was entirely homebound sure does make every day feel as oppressive and the same as the last.

I'm just having a really hard time lately. I'm just having... a really hard time.

[Andeza]

  I know. I pop into that forum too, though I don't always comment because I don't have a pd spouse. He's got his problems, so do I, but not PD. With everything you've got going on in your life, you've got every right to feel completely and totally overwhelmed right now. Please take time for you. Somewhere, somehow, find those few minutes to breathe deeply and separate yourself from the drama that he causes in your life. The little dead ends are much more manageable, I find, than the grand picture. It makes sense that you'd sit and ponder them, as they are each on their own a far safer thing to occupy your mind with. If I were to sit and try to encompass ALL the behaviors and tendencies and whatnot of my uBPDm at one time I might have to reboot my brain. I'll be keeping you in my thoughts and my prayers, sending you all the good things, good vibes, whatever you prefer.

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Thank you 

[Cat of the Canals]

PDmil has a terrible sense of time, and a terrible ability to practically plan an outing. She's the type of person that will drive from one end of town to the other three times in a day because she just can't seem to plan out that several of the errands she needs to run are all clustered together. She just kind of ping-pongs around on a whim (and not in a fun way). I like efficiency, so it drives me INSANE.

She was recently here for a visit, and we had a TON of activities planned, places to go, things to see. She kept saying, "Well, I wouldn't mind driving to [random town that is an hour away]."

Husband: To do what?
Her: Just to see it.
Husband: ??????

She then expressed disappointment when they were leaving that we didn't go to this place. The idea that we'd drive two hours just so she could *see* a very average city, with no particular plans, was perfectly reasonable in her mind.

She would also hop up two minutes before we've planned to leave for some outing and decide, "I guess I should eat something before we go!" (This is after refusing our offers of lunch for several hours.)

My own PDmom is better at planning, but she is habitually late to everything.

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Ugh, I know someone like your MIL in terms of not being able to plan and having weird impulses.

It's like she's not aware of where she is in space and time. Just straining at the leash to follow whatever impulse she's feeling right now.

Your example of wanting to visit a random town just to see it definitely makes me shake my head. I wonder what people like that are thinking. Like you'll just roll up and FUN! WILL! BE! HAD! Smacks of a type of magical thinking imho. Because you and I have a more realistic vision of it - that you'll park. You'll walk down the street. There will be a couple of boring stores and a painfully ordinary pizza joint. And a highway. And pretty soon even she will wonder what the heck she's doing there. And you get in the car. And drive. Another hour. Back home. And wish you had your day back, plus $10 worth of gas.

[Cat of the Canals]

Your example of wanting to visit a random town just to see it definitely makes me shake my head. I wonder what people like that are thinking. Like you'll just roll up and FUN! WILL! BE! HAD! Smacks of a type of magical thinking imho. Because you and I have a more realistic vision of it - that you'll park. You'll walk down the street. There will be a couple of boring stores and a painfully ordinary pizza joint. And a highway. And pretty soon even she will wonder what the heck she's doing there. And you get in the car. And drive. Another hour. Back home. And wish you had your day back, plus $10 worth of gas.

Magical thinking is right. And yet she'll also make vague complaints about everything not being up to par (effectively ruining any spontaneous fun to be had). "Oh, I thought it'd be nicer/bigger/etc." In her mind, everything is going to be fun and wonderful. But once we're there, there's something slightly disappointed about EVERYTHING. And she wonders why we don't want to spend time with her...

Semi-related: I went to the grocery store with her. ONCE. We were there so BIL could grab something specific he needed. She insisted on walking up every. single. aisle. SLOWWWWLY. As if she'd never been in a Walmart before. Neither my husband or myself will willingly step foot in a store with her because she does this everywhere.

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The weirdest part to me is never learning from it.

I think as a small child I sometimes had overly rosy anticipation of some things - like a birthday party was going to be the best day of my life or something. But by the time I was 6 or 7 I'd learned that life isn't a Disney commercial. Nit that I don't have fun! I do! But the magical thinking was outgrown.

It's just hard for me to imagine bolting off somewhere with no plan, thinking it would be amazing, being disappointed, then doung it 100 more times, and still thinking the next time was going to be magically amazing.

I don't know WHAT to say about the every aisle at Walmart thing 

[Andeza]

Oh daaaaaaannng. Walmart. The almighty PD time warp. Sheesh, I keep forgetting about that because I think my brain is trying to shut it out. Slightly diving off topic for a moment...

Okay, so uBPDm would carry around the "list" (The list is a matter of legend, the end all be all of shopping. If it's on the list, we get it, if it's not, we don't.) in Walmart, where we also would proceed to go up and down every stinking aisle in the crush of the crowd whether we needed anything from that aisle or not. Always Saturday mornings so she could drag enDad along for the psychotic ride at the worst. freaking. time of the entire week. After over two hours of traipsing up and down and back and forth and holding up the store brand frozen green beans next to the Green Giant brand and humming and hawing over which to get, we'd then ever so slowly drag our butts off the the checkout line to stand there for the next thirty minutes.

Walmart runs were at minimum a three hour ordeal, and she had no concept of the amount of time lost out of the precious weekend. None.

By comparison, if I have a list and know what I'm about that day, I'm in and out in half an hour or less. I've no desire to torture my poor kids.

Okay, sorry for the mini rant.

So I've heard it said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I think our PD people don't change what they're doing or how they're doing it because they are constantly expecting it to work.... even though it never does. A non, however, will sit back and ask what should they do differently to achieve the desired outcome? Or is the desired outcome even possible?

So for you, square, your H is not changing anything about how he handles his alarm because he constantly thinks it's going to be better, but it never is. And Cat your MIL is always expecting this other city to be... I dunno, wonderland? Magically different from every other place on the planet somehow, but it's not. Just like she expects the Walmarts to be different.

I swear they could make a whole Dr. Who episode about Walmart and timey wimey stuff...

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About the alarm thing. The disconnect seems to be understanding where the cause->effect is. I've seen this disconnect elsewhere in him too.

Yesterday was his day off and he slept through his alarm for 8.5 hours. So when he gets up he says he needs to do something about his alarm. 

I mean, the alarm is functioning fine. It goes off at the appointed hour. It produces a loud sound as designed.

He consistently sees the problem as "trouble getting up" and ignores the "severe sleep issues" that underlie the "getting up" problem. So there is will be no change.

[Cat of the Canals]

He consistently sees the problem as "trouble getting up" and ignores the "severe sleep issues" that underlie the "getting up" problem. So there is will be no change.

This sounds so much like my late BIL. I don't think he had a full PD, but definitely some severe FLEAs. He maintained absolutely terrible sleep patterns throughout his life. When he was living with us for a while, more than once we went to wake him up (after noon, mind you), and he'd be lying in the middle of his bed, dead asleep but fully dressed, shoes on, blankets off, WITH THE LIGHT ON. We asked him why he was sleeping fully dressed and with the lights on? He said around 3 a.m. he'd decided to "lay down" but wasn't planning on actually going to sleep. 

He'd sleep into the afternoon regularly and then complain about not being able to fall asleep at a reasonable time. All those "sleep hygiene" suggestions you hear, he did the opposite. But he couldn't figure out why he had insomnia? Hmm, big mystery!

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You've bugged my house! You're watching and listening to us! 

1) Sleep with the lights blazing CHECK
2) Say he was just going to lay down a sec CHECK
btw even if you accept that narcolepsy can do this, how does one not learn after the tenth or hundred millionth time that WHEN YOU LAY DOWN YOU FALL ASLEEP. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

3) Complaints about not being able to fall asleep during nighttime hours despite actively doung everything possible to maintain that. Like he expects that one night around midnight, despite all the coffee and energy drinks, despite the worst sleep hygeine, he'll be staring at a screen and suddenly think, hey, I kind of feel like going to bed now.

Also, he denies he was asleep. This used to be a major red line for me. I'd come in, see him asleep, hear him snoring, wake him up, and he'd look at me and inform me he wasn't asleep. Like, gaslighting levels of crazy. I once videoed him before waking him up just to prove it. He woke up, denied being asleep, I told him I had video, started to pull it up, and he gave me the absolute biggest look of contempt I have ever seen, such that I actually did not continue to show him, because I realized I was about to go on the Crazy Rocket Ship to Crazytown on the Moon - he would say the video was from a different day ir something, despite timestamps and same clothing and everything, and I thought my mind might actually break.

I finally had it out with him. I told him if he denied being asleep again, it would be war. I was willing to have the nuclear two day fight every time he denied it just to save my sanity. I think he only denied it once since then, knee jerk, then looked afraid lol. I let that one slide.

[Andeza]

How odd...

DH does that "I'm going to lay down for a minute," all the time. My standard reply is usually "Okay, see you in a few hours." He always protests he's not going to take a nap but then does, of course.

His sleep patterns have never been problematic with work or getting places on time because he sets alarms and then actually gets up, but his sleep cycle is wild. And to be fair, I've seen him try for several months to do the "normal" go to bed every night at the same time by X time in the evening. He begins to decline, quite obviously. His mental state suffers immensely, he can barely function, and he lies in bed for hours upon hours awake. Never complains though. This man wouldn't complain if someone hit him with a car and he was in pain nonstop.  So he's a night owl that also gets up early for work, and somehow that works for him.

[Cat of the Canals]

2) Say he was just going to lay down a sec CHECK
btw even if you accept that narcolepsy can do this, how does one not learn after the tenth or hundred millionth time that WHEN YOU LAY DOWN YOU FALL ASLEEP. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

AT THREE IN THE DAMN MORNING. Sir, if you "lay down" at 3 am, you are GOING TO BED. I don't even understand the notion of laying down that late and thinking, "But I'm not going to sleep just yet..."

Chuckled a little at the idea of you taking video of him sleeping. I've fantasized many times about the ways I might try to "prove" how insane their behavior is, and every time I think, "It wouldn't matter. They'd figure out a way to deny or twist it."

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It occurs to me that there may be another component here: OCD, or another aspect of anxiety.

H can spend great amounts of time on certain tasks. Maybe OCD is a factor (he is a checker). For example, lets say he has to call the pharmacy to check on a prescription. Even if you had to look up the number, most of us would be on the phone within a very short time of deciding to do it "now."

I don't know what my H does but it would probably take him at least 30 minutes to make that phone call. Not sure if he would have to check and recheck the number. He may write a script as to how to ask his question, not sure. He would certainly be stressed and yell at me if I crossed his path while he was spinning his wheels.

It's not literally everything that takes forever. He can make a cup of coffee in a normal amount of time. But many things take a bizarre amount. Making phone calls, even ones that don't involve any conflict (like making an appointment or asking a simple question). Writing a check took him nearly an hour last week, I was utterly shocked at this.

This is a huge component of what I mean when I say he is "nonfunctional" though I have to abridge that label as he does still have a job. He could not have an office type job anymore, though - if he had several tasks and had to choose one and work on it, and maybe get interrupted by a phone call or a coworker stopping by, he literally couldn't do it. He can only deal with the customer standing in front of him, no decision to make.

I realize this is not PD. But it sure is something. And it's very sad to see. He is a very intelligent man, this is about something else.

[Cat of the Canals]

I wonder if it's an ADHD executive dysfunction thing. Both my BIL and my husband have always had major issues with any task that requires multiple steps. Cooking, for example, totally freaks my husband out. He is smart enough, capable enough, detail-oriented enough. But when he looks at what it would take to complete the task: gathering equipment and ingredients, preparing ingredients, the physical steps of cooking... he says, "I can't." On some level he knows he COULD, but he avoids most things like this because he is overcome with anxiety at all the steps.

[Andeza]

Um, I'ma add Traumatic Brain Injury to the list of possible suspects, since that's what causes the majority of my DH's time and memory issues.

Cat following a recipe is something my DH struggles with as well, and frequently mixes up the steps. If I give him a recipe to follow I have to give him a step at a time from where I'm sitting so he can't see all the other points, otherwise... uh, it doesn't come out right. That traces back to the dyscalculia though. Order of operations type things mess him up. As far as I know, there's no ADHD in the picture, but it's very interesting to see how all these things overlap with each other.