For people with executive functioning challenges, time doesn’t flow in neat bundles of minutes and hours

Racing Against Time

Hadassah Eventsur

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emima glances at her watch as she hops around her bedroom tugging at the shoe hanging from her foot. Her dentist appointment is in 60 minutes. If she leaves now, that should give her plenty of time to get there. She hobbles into the kitchen, other shoe in hand, and notices a work email from last week that she hasn’t answered yet. “This should only take a minute,” she reasons as she plops herself onto her kitchen chair.

Twenty minutes later, she rises from her seat. “Where did I put my keys?” she murmurs to herself, eyes darting around the room. Ten minutes pass until she locates them on the sink in her bathroom. Her eyes unwillingly land on her watch and inform her that she has 30 minutes to get there. “If I leave now, I can just make it.”

She darts out the door to her car. As she turns onto Main street, the Starbucks sign tantalizingly appears in her rearview mirror. She pulls into the drive-through, certain that this will only take a minute, even as she sees a string of cars lined up in front of her. Twelve minutes later she is on her way. Beads of sweat begin to form on her forehead as she increases the pressure on the gas pedal, says a kapitel of Tehillim, and wills her GPS to indicate that traffic has cleared (she hasn’t factored in time for traffic). To her utter dismay, she arrives 30 minutes late, is charged a hefty co-payment, and is asked to reschedule.

One of the hallmarks of executive functioning challenges so common to people with ADHD is difficulty noticing and feeling the passage of time. This phenomenon is known as time blindness, but can also be called time optimism. For people with executive functioning challenges, time doesn’t flow in neat bundles of minutes and hours. Everything seems to run together in an unpredictable, continuous flow, making it difficult to accurately gauge the passage of time.

People with executive functioning challenges prefer to live in an unconstrained flow of time, moving smoothly from one thing to another based on how they feel. In addition, working memory deficits, emotional regulation challenges, and the tendency to hyper-focus their attention further impacts on their ability to manage time.

We live in a world heavily time- and schedule-based. This phenomenon is more prevalent when living a Jewish lifestyle replete with zemanim for Shabbos and Yom Tov. Women who struggle with time management frequently find themselves racing against the clock, often showing up late and unprepared. The shame and judgment attached to these experiences can be crushing to the spirit, especially when they’re at a loss as to why they constantly find themselves in these predicaments.

If you struggle with time, the first step is to discard labels such as “Lazy” or “Don’t care” from your vocabulary. Executive functioning challenges have less to do with character and more to do with skills building. Second, if you find yourself having an internal dialogue about time, that is a cue to pause. This may sound like, “I definitely have enough time” or “It will only take a minute.” You can safely assume that you can’t trust your ability to accurately gauge how much time you have. Self-awareness without the judgment is the foundational skill to build on when working on time management.

In future articles, we’ll further break down the contributing factors that affect time management and provide practical strategies to manage it more effectively.

Hadassah Eventsur, MS,OTR/L is an occupational therapist and a Certified Life Coach in the Baltimore area. She is the founder of MindfullyYou, a program that supports frum women who struggle with executive functioning.

Strengthen Your Core Self

Sara Eisemann

“Weights don’t get lighter in the gym; our muscles get stronger. Life doesn’t get easier to handle, our mind becomes more equipped to cope with challenges.” — Anonymous

Often, clients come to therapy with a wish to change their life circumstances. They hope to learn new ways of engaging in the world that will prevent them from constantly getting hurt the way they are now. What they learn is that this is not always possible. We can’t actually create a life that guarantees we won’t get hurt. What we can do is build up our inner self such that when we inevitably get hurt, it doesn’t decimate us.

The more capacity we build, the more we are able to absorb the blows life sends our way. When our core is weak, we can be easily bowled over by a punch to our esteem. If our sense of self is fragile, any threat to it can quickly incapacitate us. But as we strengthen our core and weave threads around it, our center remains grounded and more impervious to outside forces.

The most potent way to grow that impenetrable sense of self is by accessing our identity as a cheilek Eloka mima’al. When we see who we really are at our core, we begin to understand that our inherent worth is nonnegotiable and constant. Any attack on our personhood quickly becomes a challenge to deal with, but it does not have the power to knock us out. The blow may sting, but we remain standing.

When we grow our toolbox to include more nuanced, fluid thinking, our mind becomes stronger and more adept at holding the paradoxes of life. When we flex our positivity muscles, we can better handle the frustration and irritation that comes our way.

These mental and spiritual exercises strengthen our core so when life demands some heavy lifting, we’re up to the task.

Sara Eisemann, LMSW, ACSW, is a licensed therapist, Directed Dating coach, and certified Core Mentor.

Schedule It

Abby Delouya

People communicate differently. No spouse is exactly alike in his/her preferences and needs in terms of communication. For some, words of affirmation go straight to the heart. For others, actions like bringing a spouse a cup of tea speak louder than words.

We often get caught up in our own patterns and ways of being and acting so that we sometimes lose sight of how our spouse best hears and feels our love. A small trick? Put it in your calendar. Scheduling in “Compliment Shmueli” or “Call Tzippy to let her know I’m on the way home,” may feel unnatural or disingenuous at first, but over time, what’s meaningful for your spouse can become second nature and make close, consistent, and connected communication so much more attainable.

Abby Delouya RMFT-CCC, CPTT is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice, specializing in trauma and addiction. Abby is also the COO and Director of Intake of Ray of Hope.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 904)