People have experienced many forms of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis. For this study, we collected a rich corpus of reports on the multifaceted experiences of disorientation during the pandemic. In this paper, we study the resulting corpus using a descriptive approach. We identify six emerging themes: temporal rift; temporal vertigo; impoverished time; tunnel vision; spatial and social scaffolding of time; suspended time. We offer a phenomenological analysis of each of the themes. Based on the phenomenological analysis, we draw a key distinction between episodic and existential forms of temporal disorientation, and we argue that the Covid-19 crisis is best conceptualised as a period of suspended time.

Time dilation was experienced in most countries and across the several years of the Covid-19 crisis: the passage of time was deemed slower than before the pandemic, and the distance to the beginning of the pandemic seemed longer than it really was. An outstanding question is how these two aspects of time judgements relate to other temporal, social and affective disturbances. We developed and validated a 59-item questionnaire to explore these questions. 3306 participants completed the questionnaire in France in May and June 2021. Here, we analyse group differences and find that both slow passage of time and long distance judgements were associated with larger disturbances across all domains under study. These included temporal disruptions—the aptness to project oneself into the future, the sense of a rift between pre-pandemic and pandemic time, the ability to locate oneself in time, the capacity to recall the order of past events—, as well as an overall sense of social disorientation, and trauma-specific disturbances. In contrast, both fast passage of time and short distance judgements were associated with beneficial effects across all of the mentioned domains. Our results indicate that perceived passage of time and temporal distance judgements are key indicators of social and temporal disorientation.

We developed a quantitative Instrument for measuring Temporal and Social Disorientation (ITSD), aimed at major crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Disorientation has been identified as one of the central elements of the psychological impact of the Covid-19 era on the general public, but so far, the question has only been approached qualitatively. This paper offers an empirical, quantitative approach to the multi-faceted disorientation of the Covid-19 pandemic by operationalising the issue with the help of the ITSD. The ITSD was developed through multiple stages involving a preliminary open-ended questionnaire followed by a coder-based thematic analysis. This paper establishes the reliability and validity of the resulting ITSD using a 3-step validation process on a sample size of 3306.