As a creative arts psychotherapist, I consider myself bilingual: I communicate both verbally and non-verbally. Verbal language comes later in our development. Our first language – our maternal language – is non-verbal. Long before we speak, we vocalize, gesture, move, and emote.
As sensory beings, we construct meaning through associations and experiences shaped by our senses. With growth and maturity, we develop higher cognitive functions – we think, analyze, interpret, and learn.
Impressive, isn’t it?
So how do we explain that more and more, we find it difficult to think clearly, communicate effectively, and, most of all, make sense of what’s happening?
The answer lies in the fact that the very mechanisms we depend on to understand ourselves – biologically, psychologically, intellectually, socially, and spiritually – are under strain. Since October 7, 2023, our ability to focus, process, and adapt has been disrupted by a reality that challenges our most basic sense-making capacities.
This four-part series, Adaptation and Time: Two Factors for Sustaining Mental Health, is my attempt to address this ongoing crisis. It explores how we can regain clarity, reconnect with ourselves and one another, and begin to rebuild a shared sense of meaning – a common sense – in the aftermath of trauma.
Adaptation and Time
Part One: Introduction
Definition: 1. Adaptation is the process by which an organism becomes better suited to its environment; survival refers to an organism’s ability to stay alive. 2. An adaptation is a modification or change in the organism’s body or behavior that helps it to survive.
This is the core to biological survival. What makes it a complex matter for us humans is that human experience, how we form meanings, determines how successful we are in surviving.
We are sensory beings
We start our life in our first sensory environment, the womb, submerged in a better sound conductor than water, the amniotic fluid. We hear, taste, smell, and feel touch in the womb. At birth, we can differentiate our mother’s voice from other voices and sounds. We grow, develop, and adapt. We learn to make sense of how we relate to our world, others, and ourselves. We form associations and meanings.
Time is one of our senses
Over the last few years, time has taken its rightful place among our other senses. Because time has been defined and studied by every field, such as physics, biology, psychology, philosophy, and the arts, we are not aware of time or associate it with being one of our other senses, such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch. One of the reasons is that time doesn’t act the same way as our other senses do. For example, some neurobiologists suggest that time is not a separate sense but may reprocess information into senses and actions.
Research by neuroscientists shows that “real time” is “just a convention foisted upon us by our brains. In any given millisecond, all manner of information – sight, sound, touch – pours into our brains at different speeds and is reprocessed as hearing, speech, and action.” – “Time: The Sixth Sense,” by reporter Alan Burdick in Discover magazine.
A commonly held definition of a “sense” is: “any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to an external stimulus and which corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted.” In this way, time is a sense.
Claudia Hammond states: “Time perception matters because it is the experience of time that roots us in our mental reality. Time is not only at the heart of the way we organize life, but the way we experience it.” – Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. What is happening for me when I experience time slowing down, speeding up, or standing still?
For example: Am I with others or alone? Am I inside or outside? Am I moving or staying in one place?
2. When do I feel in sync, and when do I feel out of sync?
For example: During what part of the day am I feeling in or out of sync; morning, afternoon, evening, or night? Am I eating, reading, speaking, alert, or daydreaming?
3. Which of my senses is most dominant when I am aware of time?
For example: Am I watching/looking, or listening? Am I working on something with my hands? Am I engaged in an activity that is physically exerting? Am I aware of a particular scent that I just smelled?
4. Which is my dominant time: the present, past, or future?
For example: When I am spending time with someone I care about, am I comfortable being with this person, or am I thinking of everything I want or need to do with that person because I will not be seeing that person for a while? When I am given a new project to do, am I thinking of the project being presented to me or the projects in the past that were similar?
The answers to these, and other sensory-related questions, begin to form our sensory styles. With awareness, we can navigate time. We can adapt.
Time: Manage or control?
I used to half-jokingly say that I would take time management courses if I only had the time. No doubt about it, time is a common factor when it comes to productivity and efficiency. We organize it and manage it, and mainly, we try to live with it.
Time is measured, and so we have an objective way to mark the passing of time. The irony is that time is a sensory, subjective experience. We sense and perceive time. Perception is defined as “the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.” As such, our relationship with time is personal:
We are pressed for time. – Time is money.
Time is precious. – Time flies.
There are not enough hours in a day. – We try to take things one day at a time.
Be in the moment. – Marking time.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” – Albert Einstein
“Multi-tasking” has given focusing a bad name. It’s neurologically impossible to multi-task. Our brain can only take care of one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is more based on speed; moving one’s attention from one thing to another and back again, rather than on the ability to attend to various tasks at the same time. Focusing on one thing at a time and giving it your full attention is time well spent.
Once the sense of time, or lack of it, overtakes us, it starts a downward spiral. Losing focus means losing control. Being out of control is a waste of time.
Perceiving time can be intense
“There are no secrets that time does not reveal.” – Jean Racine
In the past, my nieces and nephew teased me that my favorite word is “intense.” True, I have this idiosyncrasy to have a word that I like become my word of the month, and I tend to use it until it gives way to another. But the word “intense” has stayed with me over time. Recently, I realized that the word “tense” is also used as a noun, “as a category of verbal inflection that serves chiefly to specify the time of the action or state expressed by the verb.”
As verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, “tense,” “intense,” “intensity,” “intensify,” and “tension” are all defined in relation to extreme force, degree, strength, stress, strain, tightness, taut, and stretched. Then among all these, you find the noun “tense” about time and action expressed by a verb.
As words, we have the language, the means, to communicate our experiences. Complex experiences that occur in the matter of milliseconds. The perceptions that get stored to be used in other situations, and so on.
Although we do sense time, to date no singular mechanism has been found that allows us to perceive time. Experience and memory play crucial roles in how we sense and perceive time.
“Time perception matters because it is the experience of time that roots us in our mental reality. Time is not only at the heart of the way we organize life, but the way we experience it.” – Claudia Hammond: Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception
Time for the takeaway
Adaptation is at the core of biological survival. Time is the factor that influences adaptation.
The circadian system is the human body’s internal timekeeping system. It’s often referred to as the body’s “biological clock.” This system helps synchronize internal bodily functions with the external environment.
Most living organisms, which includes animals, plants, and microorganisms, have internal timekeeping systems similar to the human circadian system. These systems help organisms to adapt.
Not all organisms, however, perceive time in the same way. Smaller, faster-moving animals tend to perceive time as if it’s moving in slow motion compared to larger animals. This difference in time perception is thought to be a key factor in how different organisms interact with others and the environment.
When it comes to us humans, we not only relate to others and the environment, but we also relate to ourselves. We are a self-reflective species. Our perception is not only influenced by biological factors such as light, temperature, speed, and perceiving a threat from a predator, but we are also influenced by the meaning we give to our perceptions. Meanings are formed by our experiences.
From Einstein: “An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.”
To Dr. Seuss: “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?”■
Sara Jacobovici is a 30-year veteran in the health and mental health fields as a creative arts psychotherapist. She lives and works in Ra’anana.