Emotional Object Permanence: Why People Can Feel Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Hey everybody, Stephen here from the Truth About Dyslexia. Now, do you ever feel like if someone doesn't message you for a bit, it's like they've vanished from your world completely? Or you forget how much someone means to you until they pop back into your orbit? You know, that's not coldness. It's not you being broken. That's emotional object permanence.

And if you've got dyslexia, ADHD, or both, it's a real thing. So in this episode, we're going to break it down. We're going to talk a little bit about it, and it's going to be an aha moment for many of you. So let's dive in. Okay, so this is a topic we've spoken about a while back, and I wanted to do a more advanced and interesting, you know, deeper episode on it because this impacts so many neurodiverse people. It is not funny, and many of us don't even realize that it's connected to the neurodiverse mindset.

And what it is is emotional object permanence. Now, this was first actually brought up to me by a lady called Joy, who sometimes listens to this podcast, and mentioned it as something that she'd been working on and learning about. And that, you know, I'm great, I'm easy. Throw me a hook out there and I will chase it down and I will learn about it because, you know, you only learn what you hear about. And so, so what is it? You know, imagine it's like a toddler playing peekaboo.

If they can't see you, you don't exist. Okay, so have you ever had times in your life where, you know, when you, and I find this very much with close friends. I've got a really good friend in Denmark. If I don't see him, I don't really think about him much. But the minute I see him, it's like we've been talking every day for, you know, every hour. You know, we talk like we've never been away from each other.

We've had times we've been six months we haven't talked, you know, haven't spoken, and then the next day we're back together as friends, and it's literally like we were living together. It's that amazing. And so that's kind of like this emotional object permanence. It's kind of this emotional connection is so, you know, some might call it energy. You know, you're close to someone, there's energy. But it's more about, you know, the visual cue or the connection with that person.

You know, it's, and there's a few things we're going to talk about how to use this and improve this in your life, because it's very common, I find, with neurodiverse adults. And, you know, for many neurodiverse adults, you know, this doesn't go away emotionally. So the whole point of emotional object permanence is the emotional side, this connection. It's kind of the difference between object permanence. Object permanence is where if something's not in front of you, it doesn't exist. It's kind of why you see a lot of dyslexic and ADHD households being very messy with things everywhere, because they know if you put everything away in a closet or a cupboard, you wouldn't see it unless you'd never use it again.

You know, I see this in kids' rooms a lot, personally. And it's, so again, we're not talking about objects in this case. We're talking about people, emotions, relationships, and, you know, even goals, the emotional relationship to goals in your life. You know, those goals where when they're front of mind, and for me, health at the moment is really front of mind. And for like four, five months, I've worked my bum off with health. In the last week, it kind of, I don't want to say disappeared, but other things took a front seat, and I stopped looking at health, and I just watched some of my decisions, you know, go backwards.

Not terribly, not that I can't solve, but it was because I'd stopped putting it front of mind. So I've gone back to thinking about it every morning. I've got it on my whiteboard in front of me. I've, you know, had to make sure it is in front of me, or I know it'll disappear from my brain. Not because I don't want it, but because this is how emotional object permanence works. And for me, I'm so driven by my emotions, if I don't get the right stuff in front of me, I go down the wrong paths.

This is why this is such an important episode. So why does this happen, especially with ADHD and dyslexia? You know, working memory challenges. You know, you can't keep people or emotions in mind without consistent triggers or constant triggers. You know, that's something to be very aware of. Like, naturally, our working memories are not as good across the board, and so, you know, we can only, we usually seem to hold less stuff in our minds all at once.

It just seems to be a common trait. On the ADHD side, you know, ADHD often impacts the prefrontal cortex. Now, many people with dyslexia have some level of ADHD. Maybe it's enough to be diagnosed, maybe it's not, but, you know, that's the what matters right now part of the brain. You know, so that is very much, you know, can only hold so many things in it at once, and ADHD impacts it. For dyslexics, mental overload and cognitive fatigue can cause disconnection from feelings and relationships, you know, when they're not right in front of you.

If you've been working really hard, and, you know, with dyslexia, if you're reading a lot, if you're writing a lot, you know, even if you can do it, it takes a lot of mental energy, a heap of mental energy. So again, all of this puts more stress on the brain and your mind, and you can only do so much at once. And so that is why your brain, especially visually, relies on visual Visual cues more than anything. It can also mean, like, if you miss something that's really personal for somebody, like say it's a birthday or something, you're supposed to reach out and it didn't happen, you can feel really bad. You know, it's like you also sometimes find, I find with values, you know, I feel like I go against my own values sometimes, not because they don't value them, but because of this challenge with this emotional object permanence. Like I love my family, I care about them, but there are times where I get so busy I just, I forget to do something.

So for example, maybe I'm playing video games for what feels like 20 minutes, but it's actually two hours of me playing video games and I forget to do something I promised. Maybe it's take the bins out or to fulfill something. You know, I feel really bad, but it was because I was so hyper-focused and it was out of sight, out of mind. Like if I'd actually taken the bins and put them in my eyeline, I probably would have remembered them. That's a bit more of the object permanence, but I feel like that emotional connection does play a big part. You know, and I've heard similar from other people where I love my family deeply, but when I'm in work mode or deep hyper-focus mode, I literally forget to message them for days, especially when you're not living with them anymore.

And then you feel horrible later, you know, because you promised something, but you just didn't do it. You just forgot, you know. And the same thing, like if my partner leaves for a week, I sometimes emotionally switch off, not on purpose. It's kind of like your heart goes into aeroplane mode. I really love that quote, you know, your heart goes into aeroplane mode. It's not that you don't love them, but it's like you've just started to focus on everything else around you.

And you can sometimes find, I find with ADHD and dyslexics, you know, even with me and my wife, like if we spend a day or two apart for whatever reason, or a night apart in different beds, it's kind of like your brain just switches and changes, and it's not,we don't enjoy it because, you know, it's just not the same, right? And so what do you do about this? You know, I love these podcasts being short, sharp, and to the point, but what do you actually do about emotional object permanence? You know, a lot of it's about reframing it. You know, this is the big thing. You're not a bad friend.

You are not emotionally detached, something I used to blame myself about. You're not selfish. You're wired differently. And now you can see what the wiring is doing, you can work with it. You know, this is the thing, like all about the self-awareness on the podcast and what I look at myself is the more self-awareness I can have, the more things I can alter, because I'm by no means a perfect human being, but if I can't see something, I can't change it. And this was a real aha moment because I was so like this.

I used to beat myself up and say, Oh, you just don't care. It must be something broken with you. But there's not. It's just the way my brain works, and I have to understand it. I have to give myself a bit of forgiveness before anybody else can. So here's a few tips for managing it.

Use visual or digital cues: photos, notes, apps. To remind you of people and emotions as well. You know, there's so many times, like I always remember doing NLP years ago, and this is kind of like an emotional, a real directly emotional example. I'd go to an NLP session, which is called neuro-linguistic programming, and I'd do some work with the lady there, and she'd ask me to remember a time where I felt a certain way. And I would sit there blank. I'd be like, I just can't raise those emotions in my body when they're not happening to me.

But when they're happening to me, it is literally like a flood of emotion. But to bring them into my mind, even using visuals, etc., I found it really tough. It took me a lot longer than I hoped, especially when I think everything in my life should be instant, which then frustrates me even more. But I found it really tough to do that. I had to work very, very hard, and I'm not sure how well it worked for me, if I'm honest, because I couldn't bring that emotion back.

If she'd have grabbed me at the moment of that emotion, and I sometimes find that works well for apps, because I can grab an app if I'm in that emotional state, that can work really well. The other thing is schedule emotional check-ins with loved ones, even if you don't feel in the mood. Like I do this with my grandmother occasionally. She's 92. She only has that much conversation. She's talking about how annoying my dad is.

So I hope he listens to this. He'll get it. And I was chatting to her recently, and again, I didn't really feel like it. I knew it would be 10 minutes of the same conversations, but by the end of it, I felt so much better, and it was a big check-in. Like, I know it made her feel better. I felt better.

You know, it's really important to make sure, even if you don't feel in the mood, that you still do it, because I don't always believe we can always trust our feelings. You know, our gut can be the most powerful thing in our lives, but it can also lie to us, in my opinion, in the neurodiverse brain and body. You know, also explain it to the people around you. You know, this is important. If your partner is not neurodiverse and you have these challenges, make sure they're aware of it. Get them to listen to this episode.

Tell them about it, because if they can't understand your programming, they're just going to get annoyed while the program isn't doing what they think it should do. Does that kind of make sense? I'd also, you know, I'd also go back to that first one again, visual or digital cues. Where can you put things up? Like I use the screensaver on my phone is huge, and I change it in and out quite a bit because if it stays the same for too long, you just blank on it. Same with the screensaver on my computer.

I always have my four big goals for the year, which is fantastic, and I try and change the visuals on that repeatedly just to freshen it up. And I use lots of whiteboards and try and, again, shift things around to stay front of mind. But if you're struggling with this problem, is make sure you make it visual and there for you, because that will make a difference. So this might be one of those things, you know, you've never had words for. Maybe this happens to you all the time, but you didn't even know this had something to do with dyslexia and/or ADHD. Think about what reminders can you set for yourself?

Who can you explain this to? You know, but let's start by stop blaming yourself for being broken. You know, instead, let's remember what matters even when our brains forget, and not to, as I say, don't beat yourself up about this. You know, sometimes you feel like you're emotionally ghosting people and even yourself. You feel, yeah, that emotional disconnection phrase that I've written down here stands out the truest to me, and it's painful. I really feel the pain around this one.

But now you kind of know more about it, give yourself a break. Hope you've enjoyed this episode, guys. I'm going to be trying to do an article on thetruthaboutdyslexia. com about this in more detail, so stay tuned. Thank you for those who followed me on TikTok under @truthaboutdyslexia. I'm starting to put more content out there as well, and have an epic rest of your day.

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