Adults have busy lives, all of us do, if you don't understand that being consistently late impacts other lives you have no respect for others, I don't care what childhood trauma you had.

I know no serial "sorry for being late" that isn't deeply self-centered.

I have known at least one such person.

In addition, I think it's incorrect to conflate being on time with the effort put into being on time. I know people who do not even have a calendar because they can keep every single time commitment in their head, and show up on time to each one. I know other people who spend significant time, effort, and energy on keeping track of their appointments and still sometimes let some fall through the cracks.

Does the person who is nearly effortlessly on time respect people more than the person who puts significant effort into being on time but still ends up late?

I understand judging by outcomes because most effort is invisible, but the map is not the territory.

Some people have legitimate medical reasons - they exist. I’m not saying it’s the norm, but you are overgeneralizing. Few characterizations can be absolute.

> It can also be a sign of avoidant behavior — you don’t want to be there before the group is already assembled, because you’re anxious about the social situation.

Thank you for saying this here. I expect that for many people it might not seem like an obvious reason, but it can be certainly true.

For some people any social gatherings can be extremely serious and lead to a lot of overthinking, even if they seem fine when they’re already there.

Such persons need to learn about Cognitive Distortions and learn how to turn off that irrational negative fortune teller who simply will not shut up in their head.

Hi, I’m one of those people. None of the stuff I’ve read and precious few techniques have helped. It’s kind of the hallmark of these cognitive distortions that they’re irrational and we know they’re irrational and yet they persist.

There is a book, but you don't need to read much past the first few chapters, named "Feeling Good", by Dr. David Burns. He and another (I don't remember the other doctor's name) developed the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy school of psychology.

The gist is there is a simple list of questions one can ask themselves that expose self deception in one's self conversation. Once the deceptive self conversation is identified, the deception naturally becomes nullified. These deceptions are things one tells themselves that are not known, not true, but the self accepts the statements and internalized them - causing imposter syndrome and a huge number of related negative emotional cycles. The simple act of identifying these deceptions causes one's own mind to re-evaluate, and if the new evaluation contains more deceptions that same Cognitive Distortion checklist can be reviewed and used to discard these new comforting lies or negative projections.

Note that this is not a casual pursuit. This a a "debugging and reprogramming your core beliefs". In cases where one has never performed such a self audit, I suggest doing so with the support of a licensed therapist; it is not a casual event, to reevaluate one's entire world view in light of realizing one's level of self deception.

I have seen amazing results, and experienced them myself.

Thanks for making a specific recommendation and going into what makes it work. I also appreciate the note of caution; people seldom talk about the negative affects of self inquiry.

Until you wise up, and you start using your own behavioral analysis as the avoidance mechanism.