Problems with understanding time, day and seasons.

Post Reply New Topic

Do any of you have problems with really understand the day and the seasons? I mean I know that the seasons will change and that the day have different parts (morning, day, evening, night) but I still can't really get it. For me the day is all the same, it's a like a mass. The same with the year and when I see that a new season has come I get anxious 'cause I didn't expect it, even though I know we have four seasons.
It's the same with the time. I have difficulties understanding time itself.
How much time that have gone by.
How much time I need to do stuff.
When stuff happens, like if I first get a thing I should do 15:00 and then one 13:00 and I write the 15:00-appointment first then I don't think about that the 13:00-appointment actually is first.
I should be able to do this, I'm an young adult and have an IQ above normal.
So why is this so difficult?

Because different areas of the brain are responsible for the perception of time. I don't have a problem with daylight and seasons, but I have a terrible, awful problem with the perception of time itself. I can't tell what a minute or like, or five, or even a few hours to half a day. I have some sense of it, but it's severely distorted if it's there at all. I have almost no perception of the passage of years, and end up distraught at the confusion. No one understands this.

Fifteen years ago feels like a few months, or even right back in the moment as its happening. I can't remember every amount of detail. The passage of time horrifies me because it's so ingrained and important in our cultures. Being "x" number of years old, for example. The accumulation of years petrifies me because I don't feel a sense of building or of time passing. And I'm panicked to death about it.

I get anxious/depressed about seasons changing too. A new one always comes before I'm ready... cause generally I don't want time to move on because that means things are happening that can't be reversed, which to me is the worst thing imaginable, irreversibility.

It's the same for me.

Hmm....telling the time used to take ages for me. I still have problems doing maths that involves calendars.

I have trouble moving from moment to moment. It's like I get stuck. I only know what I am experiencing right now. I know the seasons will change, and that night will fall, but it's a shock to me every time.

I sometimes get myself muddled up when I'm setting an alarm on my phone for the morning. Say if I was to put ''quarter to eight'', in figures it is ''7:45'', but I always put ''8:45'', since I'm thinking of the time 8 o'clock, if you know what I mean. But I think that's common in most people to make that mistake.

Otherwise....no, I've never had issues with understanding this sort of thing. In fact I find it interesting. When I watch TV programmes I can even tell what time of the day it is there just by looking at how the shadows are.

Time doesn't really mean all that much to me and never has, but I do make an effort occasionally acquiesce to its request that I get my ass out of bed sometime before the second coming.

Do any of you feel alone about this? I sure do. I thought I was the only person who was this way. Nobody "got it" - everyone would tell me "focus on the future" etc. It's not a perspective problem, it's something to do with...well.....if I knew the mechanism I'd be one step closer to feeling better.
It's not a question of not being able to accept growing older either. It's not culturally oriented. It's something deep and distorted and perceptual. Like a blind spot in time.

Atempus or dystempus (too close to dystemper). I don't know what else to call it or if it even has a name. It's very isolating though. And it's even anxiety provoking to try to describe the indescribable.

I get anxious when the seasons change but i am aware it is happening and understand it. I understand morning, afternoon, and evening. But time itself doesn't mean much to me. Although I remember dates and years, one unit of time doesn't mean something different from another unit of time. So a year could be like a minute? I don't know if I explained that well.

I can relate to the shock 1000% (not a typo). I experience that level of "dysphoria"/"time blindness" (if that's what it is) on a macro-sense. But the shock is the same,

If you' want to answer, what are the passage of years like to you? (I have no "sense" of them, and only cultural references serve as year-number cues, and it shocks me to the core every time. In fact, it feels like mentally drowning and the more years that pass, the worse it gets. 8(

I know that "stuck"ness too. Could it have a memory encoding or consciousness component?

I've always found it difficult.
I regularly miss appointments or turn up days early, sometimes the more I try to get it right, the more wrong I am.
People think I'm just not bothered, like they have gone to trouble to be somewhere at a certain time or day and I'm being inconsiderate by not keeping the appointment. I really do try, but now I try not to make appointments unless I have to, because I hate letting people down.
I am slowly getting into a routine of wrining all appointments in a diary, but even then I sometimes put them in the wrong day by mistake, I have to tripple check everything. sometimes I forget to check my diary too.
I find it hard to switch between 24 hour clock and 12 hour clock too.
I'd say this is probably one of the most difficult things in my life. Other people used to be the biggest problem, but now I try to avoid other people, so that is less of a problem.

I find cultural references like holidays artificial. I don't know why one is supposed to feel a certain way because it's a "special" day or a certain time of year - I just feel the way I feel.
I don't really feel the passage of years, just an accumulation of memories. The older I get the more memories I have and they fill my head as if they are happening now. It does feel like mentally drowning.
I have trouble thinking in terms of the future. If I feel a certain way, in that moment, I'm convinced I'll always feel that way.

I completely rely to this. I feel like time has forgotten about me and sometimes I would like to push a "pause-button" that the world would stand still for a moment and I get time to adapt to it; I have each day the feeling, I have to start from zero and "wait, I am not there yet"...and it gets worse year by year because I see other people "developping" (work, money, children and so on).