Are the chronically late mentally ill?

Always being tardy suggests a problem that might require psychotherapy, writes TESSA CUNNINGHAM

POSING for her wedding photos, Claire Cox suddenly became aware of a chill breeze blowing up her back. Shivering, she reached round to check what was going on, only to discover that her dress was gaping open to the elements. She’d been running so late for her wedding last month, she’d literally run out of time to fasten her dress properly. Now the zip had worked its way undone and her strapless gown was threatening to burst open.

“I was mortified,” says Cox, 40. “I made my excuses then dashed back inside the hotel where my aunty managed to zip me again. But even securely fastened, I’d become so flustered that I felt clammy and stressed.

“Worst of all. I had no excuse and no one to blame but myself. My husband Johnathan and I had married in a local hotel and the registrar had drummed it into me for months that I needed to be on time, as she had other weddings.

“I promised myself I’d glide serenely up the aisle. Instead, I arrived half-dressed, stressed, sweaty and riddled with guilt because I’d let everyone down – again.”

Sadly, Cox’s appearance wasn’t the only thing that suffered on her wedding day. She arrived 10 minutes late to find her poor husband-to-be biting his lip in nervous dread that she’d changed her mind.

The video photographer – a family friend – spent the ceremony twiddling his thumbs unable to capture a single precious moment. In her blind panic as she’d rushed to get ready, Cox had forgotten to bring the vital video card he needed to film the proceedings.

Of course, as a busy mother to three children – the youngest of whom is just four months old – Cox’s not unusual in finding punctuality a problem. But is there more to her pathological lousy time-keeping than that?

Some experts suggest that, if you can’t be on time however hard you try, you may have a deep-seated psychological problem. Chronic tardiness, they suggest, may be a mental illness.

Sufferers are late so predictably and so spectacularly, wreaking havoc on their own lives and those around them, it’s almost a form of self-sabotage.

These people arrive everywhere late and in a flurry of excuses. Yet, however guilty they feel, they find it impossible to change.

“When you can’t even be on time for an important event like your wedding, it suggests a problem,” says consultant psychiatrist Dr Lars Davidsson. “We all occasionally do things that aren’t in our best interests. But being chronically late and beating yourself up about it suggests a neurosis — or mild mental illness.

“For example, if your father was a stickler for punctuality, you may have been so desperate to please him that it left you panicking about being late and consequently incapable of being on time. Or his obsession may have driven you to rebel.

“The result is a deep-seated pattern of behaviour and for which you may need psychotherapy”’

It’s a scenario which rings true for Cox, who is currently on maternity leave from her job as an office administrator.

Her late father, Cliff, was obsessive about timekeeping.

Add to that Cox’s inability to delegate – she was up until 1am on her wedding day finishing off table decorations – and it’s a certain recipe for tardiness.

“Whenever we were going out as a family, dad would be pacing up and down like a caged lion, threatening all sorts if we were late,” says Cox. “It made me flustered and so frightened of being late that I would panic.

“Mum was the opposite. She was a chronically bad timekeeper, too. I still cringe when I remember the humiliation of arriving for school assembly late. The double doors would swing open and mum would push me inside, while the teachers looked daggers at me.”

Yet as much as Cox has been determined never to inflict the same pain on her children, she just can’t help herself. As she runs from one task to the next – as well as caring for a new baby, she looks after her mother, June, 82, who suffers from dementia – she gets increasingly flustered.

“I panic that I’m late. Then I go into headless-chicken mode,” says Cox. “I am always late to collect the children from school. We even arrived 30 minutes late for my daughter’s 18th birthday party dinner. She had to ring the angry restaurant manager and beg him to hold the table.”

And even though Johnathan, 42, a logistics manager, is driven almost to the brink of despair by her incorrigible tardiness, she still can’t change.

“I was 25 minutes late for our first date,” recalls Cox. “Johnathan was smiling through gritted teeth. Six months in he said he loved me, but he couldn’t abide my being late.

“I’ve promised to try to change. He’s bought me an old-fashioned diary so I can write down appointments. But the truth is as much as I hate myself, the habit’s so deep-seated I always underestimate how long things are going to take.”

Cox’s predicament is so typical of the chronically tardy that US science writer Tim Urban has even coined a term: Clip (Chronically Late Insane People.) Urban, who suffers from poor timekeeping himself, believes that lateness is so destructive, it’s a mental illness.

He explains: “Clips have a bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves – some deep inner drive to inexplicably miss the beginning of movies, endure psychotic stress running to catch the train, crush their reputation at work etc. As much as they hurt others, they hurt themselves more.”

Raised by a mother who always arrived late, Urban can’t stop himself repeating the same pattern. “I’ve been a Clip my whole life,” he admits. “I’ve made friends mad at me. I’ve embarrassed myself again and again, and I’ve run cumulative marathons through airport terminals.”

Urban says although Clips are “insane”, sufferers often have trouble understanding how time works and underestimate how long tasks take.

Psychologists suspect that this inability to keep track of time originates in the same part of the brain that affects sufferers from ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.)

Davidsson says time is an abstract concept. “So if you struggle to gauge how long a task will take or how much time it takes to get somewhere, you may want to look into whether you have ADHD.”

The sensation of time disappearing is all too familiar to Kirstin Bell. She has missed flights because she was still packing her suitcase as the taxi driver arrived.

Bell, 41, a university administrator, who lives in Bradford with her husband, Michael, 50, an engineer and their son, Thomas, eight, says: “I’ve recently been diagnosed with mild dyslexia. One reason why I suspected I might have a problem is that I’m so very bad at timekeeping.”

Luckily, Bell works flexi-time, which means her timekeeping doesn’t inconvenience her employers. “But I see Thomas’s little face when he’s the last one in the playground and my heart breaks. How often can I keep telling him that I’ve been kept at work when the truth is that I make myself late?”

In fact, Bell is convinced that, beyond her hazy concept of time, this is the fundamental reason why she’s always late.

Irrational as it may sound, she admits getting a kick out of being late. “I’m addicted to the adrenalin rush,” she says. – Daily Mail

PICTURE: REUTERS Some people struggle to be on time – even for their own wedding. The writer has some tips to get you out of the time warp.