Feeling "half-conscious" during the second part of

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I'm a high school student, and when I come to school in the morning (around 9 AM), I feel OK, and I can perceive everything without a problem. Then, after around 1 PM, I start feeling as if I can see things, but I can't really process them as objects. I don't really know how to explain this, but it feels like my mind is blacked out, and I see things without my mind analyzing them and transferring them to concrete mental concepts.

When I'm in such a state, I would walk in the classroom and not actually have the classroom conceptualized, except for the immediately necessary details which are required, such as where I sit.

Once again, this doesn't happen before around 1 - 1:30 PM, and when it does, the effects of this 'problem' keep increasing exponentially, so that during the final class I'm almost unable to navigate, I feel lost and overwhelmed.

Can anybody else relate? And what do you think could be causing this strange problem?

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Not strange at all. I think you're just getting tired--mentally tired, likely, rather than physically tired. A person can only concentrate for so long, and some people have more endurance than others.

That it's right after lunch doesn't help any. You're full from lunch, your body's sending blood to your stomach and intestine, rather than to your brain.

You're probably zoning out because you've reached your endurance limit. It happens to me all the time. Can you find a way to kick back and relax during lunch break and get your second wind?

I can relate to your post. Sounds like cognitive shutdown. I feel similar to how you described, plus as though I am in a haze and I stop focussing my eyes at all. For me the magic hour is 2pm and then my functioning goes downhill fast. And I usually need to sleep to "reset".

I recently reduced my hours at work in an attempt to see if I could stop this happening everyday. Now instead of 4 or 5 times a week it happens only 1 or 2. I finish work now at 2pm permanently because it has made such a clear difference. My ability to be in a space that was draining my reserves (through social and sensory issues) has a real time limit, even when I can't identify clearly that something is distressing me.

I noticed that you are undiagnosed, so I'm not sure exactly what you could do. If it were me (and if i had my time again at high school knowing that i had AS) I would look into if you are able to have some accommodations put into place. Maybe you can spend part of your school hours in private study or even attend part time. Or maybe you can identify some of the issues that are causing you to shutdown and work on adjusting those. The biggest thing is to talk to someone about the possibility of getting a diagnosis (and help), don't go through it alone, high school is hard enough.

Ohh I forgot to add, make sure you are eating regularly and healthy- massive consciousness stabilizer.

Maybe you lack vitamin C. For me, it was as stupid as that. If you are not used to eat oranges or things like that, try to eat 500 mg of vitamins each morning. You can buy pills of vitamin C made from plants.

This happens to me when I don't get enough sleep.

i sometimes get a feeling similar to what you describe too. although not at any particular or regular time of day

I've had (and still do have) similar things happen to me. Unfortunately I'm not terribly good at fixing it, but often what helps for me is making sure I don't overwork/exhaust etc. myself.

Doing as Callista said sounds helpful:
[quote= "Callista"]Can you find a way to kick back and relax during lunch break and get your second wind?[/quote]

What also helps for me is caffeine.

a quite normal occurence; i can also only take in some 3-4 hours of lecture a day.
following a combination of spoken and written information, while trying totake ntes and ignoring all the environmental sounds (roads nearby, air conditioning, other students taking notes...) takes up a lot of energy, which is why after those 3-4 hours, i just shut down and become unable to remember anything happening after that, since i'm spent.

there is only one way i have been able to work around this: not going to a lecture unless it's obligatory or critical, and doing the rest at home with email contact to the teacher.

yes, i realise this is not possible for high school, as all classes are obligatory, but shutting yourself down for a bit and doing more work at home also helped me in that time.

you might waht to learn some meditation techniques; there are some that let you shut down everything and use subconcious perception to follow the lessons, ot will let you miss some details, but it beats spending all your energy in half a day; in my case, the subconcious perception kicks into memory when i reread the material at home following a class, allowing me to make the best of my time...

Do you have people in class that you can get notes from? That way your grades can be based on whether you know your stuff, rather than whether the class happened in the afternoon when you were tired. And it's a good back-up. I dunno if you're like this, but when I'm tired, my notes become pretty much incomprehensible.

It's quite normal for people in general to have that mid-afternoon slump, because we're naturally meant to take a nap or at least rest in the heat of the day; we don't do that anymore now, but during our past we most likely did.

Did you check out OK at your last physical? There are some illnesses that cause tiredness. I know one girl who was tired all the time, and it turned out she was anemic. She takes medication for it now, and gets her blood checked every now and then. There are apparently lots of minor medical problems like that which can make you tired for no apparent reason. If this is a new thing, and/or if it's severe (like you're falling asleep right there in your seat), get a checkup.