💬 “Sometimes I think I’ve been in the bath for a few minutes but I’ve been there for an hour,” says Maria Stebbing ⏱️ A person struggles with timekeeping and is unable to recognise how much time has passed with time blindness 🖋️ RebeccaJ
, it was as a young adult that she began to struggle with her perception of time. “Time blindness for me makes mornings particularly hard – as a teenager, I often stayed off school because I didn’t get ready in time and couldn’t face going in late.” It had an impact on work, too. “Jobs I didn’t care about as much were usually impacted, as I’d turn up late .”
Time blindness doesn’t just affect social engagements. It can also make Stebbing lose track of how long she’s spent doing enjoyable things. “I could be reading a book and think, oh, it’s only been 10 minutes, but no, it’s been three hours. Sometimes I think I’ve been in the bath for a few minutes but I’ve been there for an hour. I have to put a timer on for myself.”
With ADHD, the way in which the brain develops differently means that the parts of the brain that regulate ability to perceive time to estimate how long it takes to do a task or to visualise and plan for the future is dysregulated.