I’ve been diagnosed by my former therapist but I feel things are getting worse these days.
I mean, I have my vape in my hand, and one second later it’s nowhere to be found. Maybe it’s in the bedroom where I swear I haven’t been in the last 5 hours. Maybe in a bathroom cabinet. Maybe on the table but I wouldn’t tell because my fuckin brain is incapable to discern any object in the middle of clutter.
Is there a strategy to remember where I’ve put something I was holding? It’s gotten to the point that I’m getting preemptively mad when something I’m looking for is not where it’s supposed to be because I know I’ll have to turn the flat upside down just to find it, just to lose it again a few minutes later and/or do the same song and dance for the next thing I need.
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The best thing I did for myself is to make a place for all important things like my keys, watch, medicine, moisturiser etc. if I catch myself putting it down somewhere that isn’t the right place then I make the effort to put it in the right spot. For example: my keys, they have a hook by my door and one pocket they live in. They are never anywhere but those two places or in my hand and if I ever go to put them down and think to myself “Ill remember to move them later” I say to myself “of course you won’t remember, move them now”.
It’s helped massively and now I’m used to it it’s not hard to do. Of course I don’t always catch myself and do lose stuff but it happens less now.
Also trying to keep on top of clutter on sides, that way it’s easier to spot the thing that I’ve put down. Don’t get me wrong I have piles and piles of clutter that I will about once a year go through and have a clear out but I keep that stuff on shelves etc, not somewhere I would put down my phone for example
Yeah this helps a ton. I have a bowl that I keep my keys, wallet, inhaler, etc in. Also keep certain items on my night stand.
Also, just get into the habit of asking yourself, “Am I gonna remember putting this thing here?” I am still not 100% good about this, but I’ve gotten much better. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step.
Ok the trick seems to be able to realize I’ve absentmindedly put something down to do something else and catch myself before I forget. I’m gonna try and consciously paying attention to it.
I’ve had some success with this, but mostly with things I keep in my pockets. Unless I’m sleeping or bathing, it’s very rare for me not to have my keys, wallet, phone, etc. on me and in the specific pockets I’ve assigned them to. I sometimes see other people with a more relaxed attitude towards items like that and think maybe I should chill out a little, but I know if I go down that path it’ll just lead to me losing things.
The best way to combat this is everything has a spot. It doesn’t matter how inconvenient it feels, everything has a spot. The spot can move over time but it still has a spot. It does t matter how messy or unorganized it is, it still has a spot.
I suffer from this a lot, but drilling it into myself that everything has a spot has been the best way to fight it.I agree. Have a basket for keys and wallet and stuff you take out in one place. Have a spot for your vape or headphones in say a computer desk drawer. It’s the only thing that works for me and even then I struggle.
I just lost the fork I was stirring pasta with. I’m eating it with a different fork now. I didn’t leave the room, I don’t have a fucking clue where fork #1 went
Try the soulbound spell until the devs fix the lag spikes and inventory bugs.
Oh shit, wrong sub.
Get rid of the clutter, which means you periodically get a trashbag and throw out the stuff you don’t need, or donate it if you think someone else will actually be able to use it.
Those tennis shoes you thought you might use for yard work 3 pairs ago? Toss them, no one is going to use them, not even you.
The leftover craft supplies from the time you thought painting would be a relaxing hobby 5 years ago, donate it.
It all goes out the door and into the dumpster or donation facility that day, no hanging on to piles to take another day.
The problem is in the spaces I don’t control. My wife is messy, my infant daughter even worse 😓
Start small with important things, like your keys and your phone, and create a contextual place for them. In the home they are always in the same place. The location should be convenient a table or a shelf is great. The important part is that you never set them down anywhere else.
When you are out, they are on your person but always in the same place. Never set your phone or keys down while you are outside of your home. They are in your hand or in your pocket. There are no other places to put them.
My phone is always either in my pocket, on the arm of my big chair, or on my desk on or next to the charger. I try to never put it down anywhere else. My phone is almost never lost. My keys are similar. They are either in my hand, in a keyhole, or in my pocket. I never put them anywhere else and I refuse to put them down anywhere but my pocket.
Get in the habit of refusing to put important things down unless you can put them away properly and they will get harder to lose track of. Once those habits are strong, slowly expand to more things having a specific place in your world and you will find that things go missing less often.
Pockets, or never let it go. Thus is the only way for me.
I just want to stop things from being imperceivable while in my hand or after just being put in my pocket.
The other day I frantically looked for my car keys while they were sticking out of the pocket of my clean pants I had just put on. I could have looked down and seen them, but instead I tore my room apart looking for them because they weren’t in the same spot I always store them.
Hasn’t vaping been recently associated with memory loss? I know it might be hard, but maybe cut back on that and see if it improves. If it doesn’t it might be environmental like mold, sleep disturbances (like apnea), carbon monoxide, etc. I’d start by changing things in your environment one by one and see if it helps.
Id like to see the study ;)
The problem with my vape is not memory loss, I have a reasonably good memory, it’s that it’s too big and heavy to be comfortably carried in my pocket like my phone, so I have to carry it by hand from place to place and when I get distracted, that’s when things disappear.
no
how amenable are you to meditation
I have no idea. Why? To control anger?
The problem you are experiencing is likely a direct result of not being present. You are effectively absent, elsewhere in your thoughts as you mindlessly sabotage your thirty-seconds-from-now-self by leaving your pen beside the other thing you “just needed to check really quick”. Consider the times when you have gotten home but struggled to remember how.
Mindfulness is basically the opposite: as you are doing dishes, try to think only about doing the dishes; when you are going upstairs to get something, think about going up the stairs, not what you’re going to say to someone you expect to talk to later. This might seem inefficient, but in my experience, our perpetual ‘multitasking’ is false economy at best. First, we can only focus on one task at a time, so it means we’re constantly fucking up or forgetting parts of everything we do, all of the time.
Sometimes splitting our attention like this is acceptable, but it shouldn’t be our default pattern and it really shouldn’t be our only pattern. As someone who also spends a lot of time looking for things I just had thirty seconds ago, our efficiency baseline is probably not something we need to protect. :)
Meditation is like going to the gym, for mindfulness. If you can spend fifteen minutes with no objectives beyond attempting to notice what you are thinking about and how you are feeling (ideally without labelling or judging as good or bad), it will become a bit easier to stay in the moment throughout the day when you aren’t meditating. As with going to the gym, it’s easy for mediation to take on a life of its own, but this definitely isn’t necessary. Consider someone who works a very physical job - they may not need to spend a lot of time at the gym. Likewise, if you are able to practice mindfulness throughout the day and feel you do reasonably well with being present through even challenging situations, you may not need to prioritize dedicated meditation time as much.
*crickets*
Tried. The crickets disappeared, too.
At least they have a built-in location device
I was hoping to get meds after my neuro psych testing to help with this.
I am going to take a different tack here that might not be popular, there likely isn’t a way you can stop this tendency from meaningfully impacting your life in a stressful way.
You can, as you have mentioned, notice the emotional hardship that happens from experiencing this cycle over and over again. The grief and exhaustion that transmutes into anger in the moment you realize you can’t find something and finding it is going to be another wild goose chase can really hurt you over time, it is important to validate those emotions and give them their own space so that they don’t become intertwined with your basic mental cycle of trying to find things.
