One step forward, two steps back

Hi All.

It's been a while since ive posted here and there's been a lot going on.

There's been a few occassions lately where I've felt the need to check myself into the hospital but have been ok in the end so that's the good news.

Lately we have been doing well with time lapses/blanks. As in there have not been many time lapses lately but as I was noticing this improvement I became more forgetful again.

Example. I schduled 1 appointment each day this week.. I made the first two appointments on time/no problem. The third one/third day I got lost.

Everything was fine in the morning/I remembered I had this appointment, but i ran into a friend I wasnt expecting to see and we went for coffee and chatted for 2 hours then i go home to potter around the house and it hits me/I was on my way to an appointment when i ran into her, I didnt have time for coffee, I had somewhere to be. But seeing her must have triggered something because the memory/schdule just disappeared and It didnt come back to me until hours later.

This is probably one of my biggest problems lately, forgetting where i am supposed to be and when. How do you manage this? How do you apologize to people and services for standing them up for a third time? I have calandars and notes and alarms on my phone but still, I cant help it. I feel out of control and I get increasingly embarressed each time i have to explain myself.

Does this still qualify as a time lapse? I guess it would..

I know stress can be a bigger switch trigger but I dont feel stressed but I think the others have been stressed.. Personally I think 1 appointment a day is completely achievable. Maybe they dont? Advice on how to manage our schdule please. what has worked for you?

brockovich4321 wrote:Everything was fine in the morning/I remembered I had this appointment, but i ran into a friend I wasnt expecting to see and we went for coffee and chatted for 2 hours then i go home to potter around the house and it hits me/I was on my way to an appointment when i ran into her, I didnt have time for coffee, I had somewhere to be. But seeing her must have triggered something because the memory/schdule just disappeared and It didnt come back to me until hours later.

Aaagh, I've been right there too. This was until maybe a year ago such a big problem. So upsetting and embarrassing for us. We pride ourselves on being responsible and when this happened, well, there are only so many times you can come up with an excuse before it's just inexplicable.

Does this still qualify as a time lapse? I guess it would..

I don't think it's time loss unless you don't remember anything. Is time lapse a different term? We always remembered everything that happened but often not what caused us to forget so badly. Ultimately we realized it was switching from one co-conscious alter to another.

I know stress can be a bigger switch trigger but I dont feel stressed but I think the others have been stressed.. Personally I think 1 appointment a day is completely achievable. Maybe they dont? Advice on how to manage our schdule please. what has worked for you?

Ours weren't stress switches, they were situational and automatic. So we might have been, for example, Ryder doing concentrated, solitary work. Someone came along and Johnny, as always, would pop out to interact and the conversation might still be work-related. He may have meant to stop only momentarily but we were so scattered, priorities got hazy and forgotten, and we meandered onto something completely unrelated. And then onto to something else. It was not really ever Ryder's job to break back in and say, okay, time to stop socializing. But if the problem still were as bad now, we'd have to talk to both Ryder and Johnny to get new agreements.

For us, setting multiple phone alarms have worked -- for 30 mins before, 15 mins before, 5 mins before a meeting. If something is a month away, we'll set an alarm that goes off at that time every week to drive it home!

Also working has been telling other people that if they want to make sure we meet with them at a certain time, they must contact me that day, like text me 10 minutes beforehand. I've definitely told many people "do not tell me anything and expect me to remember. I promise you that I won't. Always, always, always, email me after you talk to me. If you don't it's on you. I'm going through a major problem with memory."

We've even told the people we report up to how to ensure certain things happen from us. A very uncomfortable hit to the pride for Johnny. But it took us finding ourselves in humiliating no-shows
or deer-in-the-headlights "I was supposed to have what ready right now?" too many times before we were able to do that.