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A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

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Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia As someone with ADHD, this wildly misrepresents the actual disorder. ADHD itself has nothing to do with time, it has to do with executive function . Someone with ADHD can try to will themselves into doing something and simply not be able to. They'll try to make a command, and their body or brain will not listen to them. It will completely refuse to do what they t…

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This comment is extremely rude.

"Have you just tried not having ADHD?" is what I've been told thousands of times. Yeah man, I've tried. I am extremely fit, exercise all the time, have a great Vo2 max, lift weights, sleep 9 hours a night, and don't snore. I'm vegetarian and eat very little sugar (I've even done keto for five years with no change in symptoms).

If I was neurotypical, sleep and exercise would help a lot more. But I'm not. I instead have to use dozens of alarms on my phone, pair programming, hyperfocus training, and deadline panic to get through the work week. Home stuff remains in shambles, still haven't figured out how to do the dishes or put clothes away.

And I've got a pretty mild case.

Some of my friends are much much worse off.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#132
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With ADHD this is pretty much a thing. If you also get the “funzies” where you sometimes “relieve” a moment in a way that is so real that you end up speaking out loud in response to the relived memory, you should probably consider getting it looked into. Especially if your depression isn’t a “real” depression. What I mean by that isn’t to minimise it’s impact or how it feels, but I was once in a depression group wher…

> With ADHD this is pretty much a thing. If you also get the “funzies” where you sometimes “relieve” a moment in a way that is so real that you end up speaking out loud in response to the relived memory, you should probably consider getting it looked into. Is this really a sign of ADHD? I always thought I was just a bit out there. Honestly, I'd be relieved to attribute it to something relatively common like ADHD rath…

Rehearsing and replaying conversations is common with ADHD, as is the "relieving a moment in a way that is so real that you end up speaking out loud in response to the relived memory" part.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#133

ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia, and while I haven't met anyone who has described symptoms as bad as this and also know friends with ADHD who play music seemingly effortlessly, this article was still very interesting to me. I have understood and it also observed that meditation can help somewhat, and I wonder what else can help for people otherwise function well who struggle with time?

> ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia As someone with ADHD, this wildly misrepresents the actual disorder. ADHD itself has nothing to do with time, it has to do with executive function . Someone with ADHD can try to will themselves into doing something and simply not be able to. They'll try to make a command, and their body or brain will not listen to them. It will completely refuse to do what they t…

>As someone with ADHD, this wildly misrepresents the actual disorder. ADHD itself has nothing to do with time, it has to do with executive function. Someone with ADHD can try to will themselves into doing something and simply not be able to.

That's misleading. ADHD does involve executive function issues, as it does other issues, including sensory issues like noise and light sensitivity (that have nothing to do with executive function), issues with body balance/proprioception (also nothing to do with executive function), issues like rejection sensitivity, as well as time issues ("time blindness").

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#134
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether my work colleague has that issue. Every 20mins there are timers going off on his phone. On the other hand, he is a smoker, and I imagine that the nicotine dependency ought to act as sort of a replacement for that sense. Not a terribly precise one though.

No I think it's more likely that he is using the Pomodoro method.

Given how he often disrespects other people's efforts to stay focused, I doubt it. It might be a crude approximation of it though. And I don't 100% remember what they interval exactly is.

Be as that may, I find the Pomodoro method to be a wonderful tool to structure one's time!

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#135
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. Finding balance between the co…

> I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. All quite common in ADD/ADHD…

Self diagnoses (and diagnoses over the internet) are pretty harmful in a society where many people think they have every mental/physical disorder just because they have a few (of the many) symptoms associated with one (or many) disorders

One might even argue that the labeling aspect of a certain disorder (particularly a mental one) by a "professional" to not be particularly helpful too in addressing ones problems

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#136

This is the first time I've heard lupus cause severe brain damage. Is this a rare occurrence? Since it's inflammation, could this same scenario happen with meningitis?

Psychosis is a potential symptom of lupus, albeit uncommon. Some people with lupus have been misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia, and more generally there are signs of immune dysfunction in many cases of Schizophrenia. I'm not sure about this particular scenario, but psychosis is also a potential symptom of meningitis, and brain inflammation can definitely cause weird behaviors (e.g. the account in the book Brain on Fire). It's not "severe damage" in the traditional sense, but depending on illness and treatment timeline there can be irreversible life-altering psychiatric consequences from brain inflammation.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#137
post #114

On very high doses of DXM it felt like I was in hell for eternity. It sucked, would not recommend.

I remember reading stories about people who took a substance (can't remember which) and lived entire imaginary lives in a fantasy world in real-time: that is for years, they go to school, have kids, go to work, etc., until they wake up and it would have been only 15 minutes in actual life.

Rick and Morty's Roy: A Life Well Lived is the only one reference I ever heard of. But its unsurprising - near-death experience produces some wild reactions and our minds love tripping around for some reason

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#138
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. All quite common in ADD/ADHD…

Self diagnoses (and diagnoses over the internet) are pretty harmful in a society where many people think they have every mental/physical disorder just because they have a few (of the many) symptoms associated with one (or many) disorders One might even argue that the labeling aspect of a certain disorder (particularly a mental one) by a "professional" to not be particularly helpful too in addressing ones problems

>Self diagnoses (and diagnoses over the internet) are pretty harmful

Self-diagnoses can be legitimate or not - depends on the person doing them. They are often a necessity, in an environment where a professional diagnosis takes thousands of dollars or years in waiting (and is often done badly, by ill-informed professionals, like the many-decades prevailing myth that women/girls "can't be autistic", or that "ADD and autism can't coincide").

As (in this case) they are also based not on bloodwork or some physical indicators, but on a subjective assessment of a person's way of thinking, the person having the actual experience is often more qualified than the professional. Same to how you don't really need a doctor to tell you you're gay.

>One might even argue that the labeling aspect of a certain disorder (particularly a mental one) by a "professional" to not be particularly helpful too in addressing ones problems

One might argue that the false dichotomy between professionals and laymen, where the former is supposed to hold all the keys to knowledge and the latter to passively consult and follow the advice of the former, is a problem in itself.

And a little outdated in modern societies where the "laymen" are not some mud dwelling peasants who never went to school and only know farm work, but univercity-educated (even over-educated) in their own right, and libraries are not confined to the rich or the scholars, but every book ever written is a click away.

In any case, a self-diagnosis doesn't give you the required paperwork to get drugs, or to get benefits, or specific accomondations, or anything like that. So it's not like it hurts society by taking resources from "legitimate" diagnoses.

Last, but not least, pointing that X symptoms is "quite common to ADD/ADHD" is not self-diagnosis, it's not even diagnosing. It's a suggestion hinting to a possible condition. It could very well be used for seeking a professional diagnosis.

Or do you think people with ADD/ADHD just go to the doctor to get diagnosed out of the blue, and not because of some similar suspicion, spotting some unexplained symptoms or themselves, or identification with some symptoms they've read about?

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#139
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a book by Oliver Sacks that covers people affected by strange neurological disorders and it is fascinating [0]. I can't recall any of them being viewed in a positive light, but it's still worth a read. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63697.The_Man_Who_Mistoo...

One of the more terrifying books ever written, if nothing else for the fact it opens one to the possibility we may all have such disorders on a species-wide level. What if there are things none of us allow ourselves to perceive?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e...

> What if there are things none of us allow ourselves to perceive?

What if? There are plenty of topics that people cannot discuss in detail (they're typically referred to as "culture war" topics) and HN enforces such things (to the degree that it does, to be accurate) like most social media platforms...doing otherwise would be ~"inappropriate", etc...culture + the nature of evolved and culturalized consciousness sees to that.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#140
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the more terrifying books ever written, if nothing else for the fact it opens one to the possibility we may all have such disorders on a species-wide level. What if there are things none of us allow ourselves to perceive?

How would that be terrifying? After learning it, it would still be the same exact world as was before we learned about it.

That would require "learning it" to have zero persistence in any form would it not? How might one know such a thing?
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