Feeling the days blur or losing track of time? You may be living with time vertigo. These signs and daily practices can help you find your rhythm again.
Princess Diana would have celebrated her 64th birthday today, but it’s been nearly thirty years since she died. But if that feels like it only just happened, you’re not alone.
Have you ever paused, unsure before answering “what day is it?” Do weeks seem to slip by unseen? During the pandemic, this phenomenon became widespread, as traditional markers of time — work routines, commutes, social plans — dissolved overnight. But it’s not an experience limited to lockdown. Although not an official diagnosis, “time vertigo” captures the strange experience of time stretching and collapsing all at once.
This feeling is a common occurrence as we age; we’re less surprised by experiences, and markers like months and years, now make up significantly less of our entire lives compared to when we’re younger. (At age five, a year is 20 percent of our entire life; at 50 it’s just two percent.)
A UCI study found that altered time perception was “an understudied yet common psychological phenomenon and is a risk factor for mental health challenges” during the early months of the covid pandemic. Neuroscientist Ruth Ogden of Liverpool John Moores University told NPR she felt like “climbing a mountain that never ended…It dragged like a massive concrete block behind me,” yet in hindsight, “it seems like it didn’t really happen…seems quite short”.
For some, time vertigo feels like emotional jet lag. For others, it’s a quiet confusion that settles in the bones, like a feeling that the world is moving but they’re not quite moving with it. Psychologists suggest that when we’re unable to form coherent memories or place events within a meaningful narrative, it can disrupt our overall mental health and self-perception. Understanding the signs is often the first step in gently orienting ourselves again.
Here are eight signs you may be living with time vertigo — and five softly stated ways people find shape again.
You lose track of the date more often than you realize
It can seem like nothing: forgetting which day of the week it is, misjudging when the weekend ended, or checking the calendar twice before sending an email. But when these moments become routine, it may be a sign of deeper time distortion. One study found that disruptions to circadian rhythm — like those caused by remote work, travel, or lockdown — can severely impact time perception, leading individuals to lose their sense of sequencing and time passage.
Researchers at Baylor University, analyzing Gallup data, confirmed that the loss of traditional social and temporal anchors during the pandemic led to “multifaceted time disorientation” in a significant portion of the population. The study found this disorientation correlated with declines in self-reported well-being and emotional resilience. Without the regular cadence of commutes, face-to-face meetings, or even dressing differently for weekdays, people began to feel untethered in time.
When days are interchangeable, we lose those unique identifiers that give our week structure. Time vertigo, in this context, isn’t just a side effect of stress; it’s a neurological response to environmental monotony. Our brains are wired to recognize time through change. When routines become homogenous, so does our sense of passing time.
You start archiving moments to prove they happened
You might find yourself taking a photo of the same street every morning, saving random screenshots, or keeping a running note of daily feelings. These small actions are attempts to reestablish continuity or proof that time is unfolding. According to Jenny Odell, author of Saving Time, this impulse is common in people experiencing temporal dislocation. “[I]t’s very easy to feel squeezed between two aspects of time that seem deeply unrelated. One is: I’m working against the clock, and I’m running out of time, and I’m trying to be more productive. And the other is: You’re looking out the window, and the climate clock is getting more and more out of whack, and there’s a sense of time running out on that scale.”
Researchers have found that when the emotional intensity of events drops, as it often does during long periods of isolation or sameness, our recall of those events becomes weaker. Archiving small details, from breakfast to birdsong, becomes a way to signal to ourselves that time is in motion.
The brain’s hippocampus plays a key role here. It’s responsible for encoding episodic memory, but it relies on novel stimuli to do so. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.
You rewatch shows or movies, listen to the same music
Many people instinctively return to shows they’ve seen or music they’ve loved for years. While it may appear nostalgic, it’s often an unconscious effort to reclaim a sense of order. Cognitive psychologists argue that revisiting old content reduces decision fatigue and reinstates temporal control.
The brain perceives time differently based on novelty; new experiences slow time down, while repeated, familiar experiences make time feel compressed. That means when people rewatch a show, they may be doing so not to stretch time, but to reorient themselves — to reconnect with a period when time felt more linear, more coherent.
Last month and last year (or last decade!) can feel almost the same
You describe something as recent, only to realize it happened in 2021. This phenomenon, known as “temporal telescoping,” reflects the brain’s difficulty anchoring memory without clear external markers. Researchers have found that people under chronic stress are significantly more likely to misplace events in time, reporting both forward and backward shifts in memory.
Our brain uses significant events to map out time, and when we lose those unique milestones, everything else can become sort of blurred. This lack of distinct temporal landmarks can make weeks feel endless, yet whole years feel like they disappeared.
From a neuroscience perspective, this is tied to the way we store episodic memory. The less differentiated our days are, the less distinct our memory encoding. This is why many people recall the early pandemic not by month or season, but by vibe — “the sourdough phase” or “the Tiger King weeks.” When people say time feels like it both flew and dragged, they’re not exaggerating. They’re describing a neurological disorientation that occurs when time loses its emotional and spatial context.
You retreat into sensory rituals that ground you
You start brewing your morning coffee more slowly, taking a mid-day walk around the block, or lighting a candle at sunset. These aren’t just eccentric whims; they’re ritual anchors. Sensory rituals, like hand-brewing tea or daily walks, offer tangible markers of time, restoring rhythm and presence in environments that lack external cues.
Jenny Odell, in her work Saving Time, notes that bodies keep time in ways clocks cannot. Research has also shown that interoception — our awareness of internal bodily states — helps orient us in time. These rituals enhance interoception, pulling us back into the moment and reinforcing our position in the day. When traditional time markers disappear, these sensory cues become essential.
People living with time vertigo often develop their own versions of this: a particular mug in the morning, watering plants at a certain hour, or listening to birds at dusk. These are more than habits; they’re acts of temporal self-preservation.
You scroll to feel oriented, but end up more disoriented
You open your phone to check the time, and ten minutes later (an hour?), you’re deep in a stranger’s vacation archive or watching a looping video of someone folding laundry in perfect rhythm. What began as a search for grounding morphs into a dissociative spiral.
Excessive screen time during the pandemic was associated with “time fragmentation,” a term researchers used to describe the scattered perception of one’s day into incoherent bits that don’t consolidate into memory. This digital drift — often referred to as “doomscrolling” or “comfort scrolling” — offers the illusion of time structure, with timestamps and feeds, but in reality, it blurs temporal markers.
When we use our devices in fragmented ways, we disrupt the ability of the brain to form a cohesive narrative across time. Even short, frequent check-ins can dislodge our sense of continuity, creating a loop where we scroll to orient, but the scrolling itself makes time feel more fractured.
You crave seasonal signals, even if they don’t match the calendar
As the boundaries of the calendar blurred, many people turned to seasonal rituals to regain a sense of grounding. Craving a fall candle in spring or pulling out winter layers early isn’t just a mood — it’s a subconscious attempt to anchor time to something physical. Seasonal transitions can help the brain establish temporal context, especially in the absence of regular social structure.
Research has noted that people with disrupted schedules often compensate by leaning into seasonal behaviors. Pumpkin bread in July, beach reads in March — it isn’t about defying the calendar. It’s about recreating an internal one. These behaviors, while seemingly out of sync, served as psychological anchors.
Seasonal eating, dressing, and even playlist rotations became subtle cues that a new chapter had begun. We need contrast and transition to perceive time. Seasonal rituals can provide both.
You talk about time like It’s a mood
You describe a day as “off” or say a week feels like a month. This emotional vocabulary isn’t just poetic; it reflects how mood and perception of time are deeply intertwined. Individuals experiencing anxiety or depression often perceive time as dragging, while those in a more positive state report time flying by.
Neurobiologically, this links back to the brain’s dopaminergic system. Dopamine plays a critical role in interval timing, or our ability to estimate durations. Low dopamine, which is common in depressive states, can elongate subjective time. High dopamine, often spurred by novelty or joy, contracts it.
When we say “this week was weird,” what we often mean is that we lost our internal sync. Naming time as a vibe reflects a sensory-emotional reading of the calendar that may be more intuitive than any app.
Gentle practices that help time feel real again
Time vertigo doesn’t require fixing. But it does call for noticing. And from that noticing, a new sense of time may begin to take shape — not perfectly, but gently.
Use your body as a clock
Stretch at the same hour. Walk after lunch. Let your body feel the repetition. Studies on circadian regulation show that physical movement and exposure to light are two of the most effective ways to reset internal clocks.
Keep a one-sentence daily log
Jot down one thing that marked your day — a taste, a thought, a color. This micro-journaling technique, supported by cognitive behavioral therapists, helps reinforce memory encoding and emotional awareness.
Revisit past you with kindness
Scroll through your camera roll. Read an old message. These aren’t indulgences, they’re part of temporal orientation. Recognizing change over time rebuilds continuity.
Name the season you’re in
It doesn’t need to be literal. Call it your “quiet work season” or “the month of long walks.” Naming emotional seasons gives time back its rhythm.
Say the day out loud
Whether correct or not, speaking the day aloud reconnects you to linear time. Orientation, as therapists remind us, begins with naming.
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