6 ms·

I'm sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right? https://www.sim

by Walf 1y ago

I'm sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right? https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html I don't watch TikTok videos, I don't use Instagram, but I have been plagued by these symptoms my entire life, and don't really care about others opinions on it. You probably don't have it if those symptoms don't resonate with you, but there are plenty of people who genuinely struggle, and there's likely some overlap with those who have undiagnosed ADHD.

peab 1y ago
“Time blindness” is not named anywhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013) nor in the DSM-5-TR (text-revision, 2022). It is not recognized as a stand-alone disorder or an official diagnostic criterion.
- rahimnathwani 1y ago
  Even if it were in DSM-5-*, would that mean it's a standalone disorder? I haven't read much psychology, but this article suggests a lot of psychological diagnoses are just labels for symptoms: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/02/06/the-mind-in-the-wheel-prologue-everybody-wants-a-rock/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/02/06/the-mind-in-the-whe... Imagine that your car breaks down and you bring it to a mechanic and he tells you, “Oh, your car has a case of broken-downness.” You’d know right away: this guy has no idea what he’s talking about. “Broken-downness” is an abstraction; it doesn’t refer to anything, and it’s not going to help you fix a car.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    FYI: SlimeMoldTimeMold has been heavily debunked across multiple topics. It was popular for a while in rationalist communities for the multi-part series claiming lithium in the water supply caused obesity, until everyone realized the author has a serious habit of misrepresenting sources, claiming citations say things they don’t, and omitting contradictory evidence.
    - rahimnathwani 1y ago
      Thanks. Any idea whether or not their characterization of psychological diagnoses is mostly correct?
      - bluefirebrand 1y ago
        I am not an expert on neurology or anything but for ADHD at least there is definitely a biological difference, it's not just a diagnosis of a bundle of psychological symptoms It is treated with stimulants, but if you give those same stimulants to a non-ADHD person you will see very different results
        AStonesThrow 1y ago
        [dead]
  - wat10000 1y ago
    What a terrible analogy. Diagnosing a car with “broken-downness” would be like a mental health professional diagnosing you with “bad.” Diagnosed aren’t always great, but they’re not that ridiculous. Still down a bit and you’ll find plenty of vagueness with mechanics. “You have a bad tie-rod end.” Ok, cool. What caused that, why did mine fail when my buddy’s didn’t, how can I avoid this? Shrug. Once you’ve got it down to a part, you just replace it with a new one. Can’t do that with mental health. “Your time management unit is bad, we can replace it with a manufacturer part for $2,000, or an aftermarket equivalent for $1,500.”
    - econ 1y ago
      Things can be that ridiculous and still be our best effort.
- Walf 1y ago
  Because that's a colloquial name given to a range of specific symptoms people experience, and it is in the DSM, covered by 1.e.: > Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (e.g., difficulty managing sequential tasks; difficulty keeping materials and belongings in order; messy, disorganized work; has poor time management; fails to meet deadlines). The DSM doesn't list all minutiae of every general problem.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    You’re conflating symptoms with conditions. Having a single symptom does not mean someone has the condition. The diagnostic criteria for the condition for which you took that quote (out of context) is more comprehensive. It’s not a simple matter of doing Ctrl+F on the DSM and seeing that something can be a symptom or something else. This is more obvious when you start thinking of other conditions: Feelings of sadness are a symptom of depression, but not everyone who has feelings of sadness has depression. The misuse and misinterpretation of the DSM has become commonplace in parallel with the use of therapy speak.
    - Walf 1y ago
      I'm really not, you've made an argument based on a semantic misunderstanding of my first response. I did not say "time blindness" was a condition, I said that people generally self-diagnose conditions, not just for those symptoms. I also described it as a set of symptoms in later comments.
    - dqv 1y ago
      They did not bring the DSM into the conversation, someone else did. And the person you are responding to made no such conflation! They also made no such claim that "[having] a single symptom [means] someone has the condition." That might be how you decided to interpret what they said, but it is quite literally not what they said! They simply stated that time blindness is a real issue and linked to an article which acknowledges exactly what you are describing: "Many people with ADHD struggle with a lesser-known but deeply frustrating sign called time blindness." (emphasis mine)
Aurornis 1y ago
That article is not claiming that “time blindness” is a real standalone condition. As the other commenter already explained, it’s not among the conditions with actual diagnostic criteria and agreed-upon symptoms. The first sentence claims that it’s something people with ADHD might experience, not a specific condition. In other words, it’s just the therapy-speak way of saying “chronically late”. Note that the date on the article is also very recent: Only a few months old. This date is after the trend was popular on TikTok. It was likely written in response to the trend, as a way of capturing search engine traffic from people searching for it. This is representative of the issue I was describing: There’s a sense among some people that using the therapy-speak terminology for something transforms it into a different type of personality attribute, for which they can’t be held responsible. Saying “I have a problem with being on time” and “I have time blindness” are functionally equivalent, but some people want to believe they the therapy speak labeled version warrants different treatment.
- Walf 1y ago
  So because those people are ignorant of the nomenclature, they must not really experience those issues? I never asserted that it was a standalone condition, in fact I attributed it as related to undiagnosed conditions that do have names.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    Applying formal-sounding nomenclature does not transform accountability like you’re suggesting. Also, being able to Google a TikTok-famous phrase and get hits from SEO-targeted blog posts like this doesn’t really make it official nomenclature. They’re just trying to capture traffic with trending keywords. This is a very obvious SEO article. Saying “I have a problem with being on time” and “I have time blindness” are functionally equivalent. Applying therapy speak doesn’t change the situation. This is all very much missing the point, though. Someone who believes they have “time blindness” should recognize that they have a higher need for additional measures to address their issue, including more use of time keeping aids, alarms, and even accountability from external parties. Trying to use a labeled condition to escape accountability for one’s actions is not only unhelpful, it goes against the entire purpose of therapy. The problem becomes more clear when you imagine the same idea applied to other issues: If someone is constantly lashing out and yelling at people, they don’t get a free pass for saying they have “an anger issue”. They’re still accountable for the consequences of their actions, regardless of what name you put on it.
nomdep 1y ago
If you know you have time blindness and you still arrive late it is worse, because you knew it will happen and did nothing to prevent it
- Walf 1y ago
  Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what it's like to actually deal with this, at all. If I try to be on time to things, I will be stupidly early, or still think I have time to do tasks A & B before doing C, because they invariably take more or less time than I estimate. Or I start doing tasks X & Y, because I'm easily distracted, you know because it's a deficit in attention. Don't trivialise what you don't understand. Your advice is as ignorant as saying 'just do more fun things' to someone with depression.
  - osn9363739 1y ago
    You have to do something about it though. You either come up with strategies to work with the condition or what? Just give up?
    - Walf 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - osn9363739 1y ago
        So you agree with nomdep? If you know you have time blindness it's a good opportunity to do something about it. I tend to choose the be really early option because that works for me. But it can be stressful for sure. And I probably don't get as much done as someone that can organise their time better. That's just the way it goes.
        Walf 1y ago
        False dichotomy. You can both take measures to address an issue you have, and still know that won't always solve the problem. Being really early sometimes is the only option, but if you're always doing it, regardless of how critical it is, you're wasting a huge amount of waking life.
marsten 1y ago
The problem isn't that time blindness is a fake issue. The problem is that many people incorrectly self-diagnose as suffering from conditions like time blindness. Which they do for a variety of reasons: To externalize accountability for why they're late, to feel special, and so on. A comparison is the large number of people who claim "gluten sensitivity" and maintain special diets. Now there are serious medical conditions like celiac disease that require one to avoid gluten. But the vast majority of self-diagnosed "gluten sensitives" do not have such conditions. Researchers conclude that for many of them there is no physical basis for their self-diagnosis. Among other things this phenomenon makes it harder for people with actual conditions to be taken seriously, because there are so many impostors.
- Walf 1y ago
  That's half my point, which is why I lead with agreement on that very problem, i.e. people self-diagnosing when they shouldn't. The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend.
  - jl6 1y ago
    Most wacky things start with a kernel of truth, so yes, the real tragedy here is people with a genuine psychological issue getting drowned out by a wave of trenders. The trenders denounce medical gatekeeping as exclusionary, but it’s also what protects resources for the genuinely needy, and what protects them from unnecessary medicalization.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend. I think the only source of disagreement is in the way you chose to frame it in absolutes, i.e., "all such people" instead of "people". Framing anything in absolutes counts as a strawman argument, because all you need to do to refute it is find a single case, no matter how isolated it is, where it doesn't apply.
    - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lll-o-lll 1y ago
Yeah, but if you have it you need to compensate for it. It’s what calendars, reminders, todo’s etc etc are for. Speaking as one with a huge challenge in this space. No one is going to go “oh, you have ADHD, well, I guess you don’t need to fulfil that expectation…”
- Walf 1y ago
  Which is why I use those tools extensively. I never said these people shouldn't try to compensate for any deficit, my point is that what people describe as "time blindness" is a real problem, and should not be so easily dismissed.
  - lll-o-lll 1y ago
    Yeah, but the parent is moaning about people shirking their responsibilities because of a self diagnosis. That might be a projection; just a punctual person peeved off with the chronically late; but I was just adding the point that being challenged in this area isn’t an excuse. I’m on-time for work stuff; I’ve figured out how to compensate. Personal life, ok, different story, but the responsibility has always rested with me.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
sailorganymede 1y ago
Use a timer like the rest of us. There are solutions to the problem
- Walf 1y ago
  Omfg. A timer, for everything! Why didn't I think of that? And I'd set this timer for getting dressed, and showering, and making coffee, and conversing with my children. "Sorry, son, I can't help you any further with practising shoelace-tying this morning, I only allotted 90 seconds for that." I should probably set a timer for setting timers, too. Don't want to take too long doing that. Undoubtedly, this will also solve the distraction issue because the proximity of a time measuring device to my neurons will rewire them all to be "normal". You're so ignorant.
motorest 1y ago
> Im sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right? So is Munchausen syndrome, but somehow people don't self diagnose that one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...
- Walf 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - motorest 1y ago
    > Did you even search for anything before making that idiotic comment? You acknowledged the fact that "there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition". I, in turn, added to the fact that you pointed out that not only are there "those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition" but there is also a complex mental disorder where individuals play the role of a sick patient to receive some form of psychological validation. This somehow triggered in you an emotional reaction. Why was that?
    - Walf 1y ago
      You can't see how, in response to a comment that was primarily about whether "time blindness" is real, which you quoted directly, your comment comes across as dismissing any self-diagnosis as Munchausen syndrome? Did you read about that either? >Patients with FDIS intentionally falsify or induce signs and symptoms of illness, trauma, or abuse to assume this role. These actions are performed consciously, though the patient may be unaware of the motivations driving their behaviors. I'm not convinced 'I have that!' statements quite meet the criteria for that. You may be thinking of malingering.

by Walf 1y ago

peab 1y ago

“Time blindness” is not named anywhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013) nor in the DSM-5-TR (text-revision, 2022). It is not recognized as a stand-alone disorder or an official diagnostic criterion.

rahimnathwani 1y ago
Even if it were in DSM-5-*, would that mean it's a standalone disorder? I haven't read much psychology, but this article suggests a lot of psychological diagnoses are just labels for symptoms: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/02/06/the-mind-in-the-wheel-prologue-everybody-wants-a-rock/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/02/06/the-mind-in-the-whe... Imagine that your car breaks down and you bring it to a mechanic and he tells you, “Oh, your car has a case of broken-downness.” You’d know right away: this guy has no idea what he’s talking about. “Broken-downness” is an abstraction; it doesn’t refer to anything, and it’s not going to help you fix a car.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  FYI: SlimeMoldTimeMold has been heavily debunked across multiple topics. It was popular for a while in rationalist communities for the multi-part series claiming lithium in the water supply caused obesity, until everyone realized the author has a serious habit of misrepresenting sources, claiming citations say things they don’t, and omitting contradictory evidence.
  - rahimnathwani 1y ago
    Thanks. Any idea whether or not their characterization of psychological diagnoses is mostly correct?
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      I am not an expert on neurology or anything but for ADHD at least there is definitely a biological difference, it's not just a diagnosis of a bundle of psychological symptoms It is treated with stimulants, but if you give those same stimulants to a non-ADHD person you will see very different results
      - AStonesThrow 1y ago
        [dead]
- wat10000 1y ago
  What a terrible analogy. Diagnosing a car with “broken-downness” would be like a mental health professional diagnosing you with “bad.” Diagnosed aren’t always great, but they’re not that ridiculous. Still down a bit and you’ll find plenty of vagueness with mechanics. “You have a bad tie-rod end.” Ok, cool. What caused that, why did mine fail when my buddy’s didn’t, how can I avoid this? Shrug. Once you’ve got it down to a part, you just replace it with a new one. Can’t do that with mental health. “Your time management unit is bad, we can replace it with a manufacturer part for $2,000, or an aftermarket equivalent for $1,500.”
  - econ 1y ago
    Things can be that ridiculous and still be our best effort.
Walf 1y ago
Because that's a colloquial name given to a range of specific symptoms people experience, and it is in the DSM, covered by 1.e.: > Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (e.g., difficulty managing sequential tasks; difficulty keeping materials and belongings in order; messy, disorganized work; has poor time management; fails to meet deadlines). The DSM doesn't list all minutiae of every general problem.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  You’re conflating symptoms with conditions. Having a single symptom does not mean someone has the condition. The diagnostic criteria for the condition for which you took that quote (out of context) is more comprehensive. It’s not a simple matter of doing Ctrl+F on the DSM and seeing that something can be a symptom or something else. This is more obvious when you start thinking of other conditions: Feelings of sadness are a symptom of depression, but not everyone who has feelings of sadness has depression. The misuse and misinterpretation of the DSM has become commonplace in parallel with the use of therapy speak.
  - Walf 1y ago
    I'm really not, you've made an argument based on a semantic misunderstanding of my first response. I did not say "time blindness" was a condition, I said that people generally self-diagnose conditions, not just for those symptoms. I also described it as a set of symptoms in later comments.
  - dqv 1y ago
    They did not bring the DSM into the conversation, someone else did. And the person you are responding to made no such conflation! They also made no such claim that "[having] a single symptom [means] someone has the condition." That might be how you decided to interpret what they said, but it is quite literally not what they said! They simply stated that time blindness is a real issue and linked to an article which acknowledges exactly what you are describing: "Many people with ADHD struggle with a lesser-known but deeply frustrating sign called time blindness." (emphasis mine)

Aurornis 1y ago

That article is not claiming that “time blindness” is a real standalone condition. As the other commenter already explained, it’s not among the conditions with actual diagnostic criteria and agreed-upon symptoms. The first sentence claims that it’s something people with ADHD might experience, not a specific condition. In other words, it’s just the therapy-speak way of saying “chronically late”. Note that the date on the article is also very recent: Only a few months old. This date is after the trend was popular on TikTok. It was likely written in response to the trend, as a way of capturing search engine traffic from people searching for it. This is representative of the issue I was describing: There’s a sense among some people that using the therapy-speak terminology for something transforms it into a different type of personality attribute, for which they can’t be held responsible. Saying “I have a problem with being on time” and “I have time blindness” are functionally equivalent, but some people want to believe they the therapy speak labeled version warrants different treatment.

Walf 1y ago
So because those people are ignorant of the nomenclature, they must not really experience those issues? I never asserted that it was a standalone condition, in fact I attributed it as related to undiagnosed conditions that do have names.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  Applying formal-sounding nomenclature does not transform accountability like you’re suggesting. Also, being able to Google a TikTok-famous phrase and get hits from SEO-targeted blog posts like this doesn’t really make it official nomenclature. They’re just trying to capture traffic with trending keywords. This is a very obvious SEO article. Saying “I have a problem with being on time” and “I have time blindness” are functionally equivalent. Applying therapy speak doesn’t change the situation. This is all very much missing the point, though. Someone who believes they have “time blindness” should recognize that they have a higher need for additional measures to address their issue, including more use of time keeping aids, alarms, and even accountability from external parties. Trying to use a labeled condition to escape accountability for one’s actions is not only unhelpful, it goes against the entire purpose of therapy. The problem becomes more clear when you imagine the same idea applied to other issues: If someone is constantly lashing out and yelling at people, they don’t get a free pass for saying they have “an anger issue”. They’re still accountable for the consequences of their actions, regardless of what name you put on it.

nomdep 1y ago

If you know you have time blindness and you still arrive late it is worse, because you knew it will happen and did nothing to prevent it

Walf 1y ago
Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what it's like to actually deal with this, at all. If I try to be on time to things, I will be stupidly early, or still think I have time to do tasks A & B before doing C, because they invariably take more or less time than I estimate. Or I start doing tasks X & Y, because I'm easily distracted, you know because it's a deficit in attention. Don't trivialise what you don't understand. Your advice is as ignorant as saying 'just do more fun things' to someone with depression.
- osn9363739 1y ago
  You have to do something about it though. You either come up with strategies to work with the condition or what? Just give up?
  - Walf 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - osn9363739 1y ago
      So you agree with nomdep? If you know you have time blindness it's a good opportunity to do something about it. I tend to choose the be really early option because that works for me. But it can be stressful for sure. And I probably don't get as much done as someone that can organise their time better. That's just the way it goes.
      - Walf 1y ago
        False dichotomy. You can both take measures to address an issue you have, and still know that won't always solve the problem. Being really early sometimes is the only option, but if you're always doing it, regardless of how critical it is, you're wasting a huge amount of waking life.

marsten 1y ago

The problem isn't that time blindness is a fake issue. The problem is that many people incorrectly self-diagnose as suffering from conditions like time blindness. Which they do for a variety of reasons: To externalize accountability for why they're late, to feel special, and so on. A comparison is the large number of people who claim "gluten sensitivity" and maintain special diets. Now there are serious medical conditions like celiac disease that require one to avoid gluten. But the vast majority of self-diagnosed "gluten sensitives" do not have such conditions. Researchers conclude that for many of them there is no physical basis for their self-diagnosis. Among other things this phenomenon makes it harder for people with actual conditions to be taken seriously, because there are so many impostors.

Walf 1y ago
That's half my point, which is why I lead with agreement on that very problem, i.e. people self-diagnosing when they shouldn't. The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend.
- jl6 1y ago
  Most wacky things start with a kernel of truth, so yes, the real tragedy here is people with a genuine psychological issue getting drowned out by a wave of trenders. The trenders denounce medical gatekeeping as exclusionary, but it’s also what protects resources for the genuinely needy, and what protects them from unnecessary medicalization.
- motorest 1y ago
  > The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend. I think the only source of disagreement is in the way you chose to frame it in absolutes, i.e., "all such people" instead of "people". Framing anything in absolutes counts as a strawman argument, because all you need to do to refute it is find a single case, no matter how isolated it is, where it doesn't apply.
  - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

lll-o-lll 1y ago

Yeah, but if you have it you need to compensate for it. It’s what calendars, reminders, todo’s etc etc are for. Speaking as one with a huge challenge in this space. No one is going to go “oh, you have ADHD, well, I guess you don’t need to fulfil that expectation…”

Walf 1y ago
Which is why I use those tools extensively. I never said these people shouldn't try to compensate for any deficit, my point is that what people describe as "time blindness" is a real problem, and should not be so easily dismissed.
- lll-o-lll 1y ago
  Yeah, but the parent is moaning about people shirking their responsibilities because of a self diagnosis. That might be a projection; just a punctual person peeved off with the chronically late; but I was just adding the point that being challenged in this area isn’t an excuse. I’m on-time for work stuff; I’ve figured out how to compensate. Personal life, ok, different story, but the responsibility has always rested with me.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

sailorganymede 1y ago

Use a timer like the rest of us. There are solutions to the problem

Walf 1y ago
Omfg. A timer, for everything! Why didn't I think of that? And I'd set this timer for getting dressed, and showering, and making coffee, and conversing with my children. "Sorry, son, I can't help you any further with practising shoelace-tying this morning, I only allotted 90 seconds for that." I should probably set a timer for setting timers, too. Don't want to take too long doing that. Undoubtedly, this will also solve the distraction issue because the proximity of a time measuring device to my neurons will rewire them all to be "normal". You're so ignorant.

motorest 1y ago

> Im sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right? So is Munchausen syndrome, but somehow people don't self diagnose that one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...

Walf 1y ago
[flagged]
- motorest 1y ago
  > Did you even search for anything before making that idiotic comment? You acknowledged the fact that "there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition". I, in turn, added to the fact that you pointed out that not only are there "those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition" but there is also a complex mental disorder where individuals play the role of a sick patient to receive some form of psychological validation. This somehow triggered in you an emotional reaction. Why was that?
  - Walf 1y ago
    You can't see how, in response to a comment that was primarily about whether "time blindness" is real, which you quoted directly, your comment comes across as dismissing any self-diagnosis as Munchausen syndrome? Did you read about that either? >Patients with FDIS intentionally falsify or induce signs and symptoms of illness, trauma, or abuse to assume this role. These actions are performed consciously, though the patient may be unaware of the motivations driving their behaviors. I'm not convinced 'I have that!' statements quite meet the criteria for that. You may be thinking of malingering.