u/Whydawakeitsmourning

I've been thinking about SDAM as it relates to Derek Parfit's surgery thought experiment. The thought experiment basically asks if you could choose to be someone who had an extremely painful 10 hour long surgery yesterday, for which no anesthesia could be administered, but were given a drug directly afterward that completely erased it from your memory, or a person who was going to experience an extremely painful 1 hour long surgery tomorrow, for which no anesthesia could be administered, but you would be given a drug to erase it from your memory directly afterward, which would you choose?

People greatly prefer the first option, which involves a lot more experienced pain, as would I. This is how I already experience life, in a way, though. Past pains, emotional and physical, don't carry any present weight. This seems a great benefit when considered in limited scope.

However, there are also a lot of negatives. For one, it removes the ability for me to calibrate expectations. Not knowing how things felt in the past makes it so I can't predict how they will feel in the future and though I can tell myself I experienced X in the past and it wasn't that bad I have no frame of reference for what not that bad means. This can lead to a lot of dread around things like medical procedures or expected emotional stressors.

The thought experiment also makes me question, if the surgery is in the past and there is no memory of it, what does it mean to say you experienced it? It is functionally no different than it not having happened at all. This leads me to wonder what I can claim to have experienced. Have I lived 58 years of life with no valid experiences? Because, as I sit in my apartment alone, I don't know what it feels like to experience reciprocal love, have I functionally never been loved? What does it mean to know something has happened but not be able to know how it felt? It is like Mary in her black and white room, knowing every scientific fact about the color red but never having seen it. Can she say she has experienced the color red?

I've seen a lot of others comment that they see having SDAM as, in a way, shielding them from these experiences. For me this does not seem to be the case and I don't really understand how it is for anyone.

Even without any recall of the feel or sensory experience of a past event or action, there is still the fact of it. And given this, when I recall something negative I've done or has happened to me in the past, I still am forced to view it through my current state and feel whatever it evokes in the person I am now. In some ways I think this can make shame, guilt, or regret worse as it leaves no ability to consider the thoughts or emotional state that was the impetus for the act in the first place. It is only a fact that has to be reconciled as viewed through the lens of one's present state. Without being able to put past acts into the context of the time at which they occurred, I most often find them inexcusable where those with a more typical recall might be able to ease these emotions by considering how their past self rationalized a regrettable decision.

For the past couple of years my life has become what feels like a series of periods of waiting punctuated by events that bring no fulfillment. I have a strict daily routine I follow but it mainly consists of waiting for time to go to work, work and waiting for time to sleep. I have played golf on the weekends for years and always feel some level of desire for the weekend to arrive so I can play, so my entire week feels like waiting for the weekend. I then spend the weekend waiting for time to go to the course, play a round, feel disappointed by it, and then wait for work to start Monday morning.

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Time is passing so fast and I feel I have nothing to show from its passing. But I don't know what else there is supposed to be.

of the country Autistralia (a new society built by autistic people) what is one law you would enact to make it a better place, for its autistic citizenry, than society as it exists today?

How have those that are late diagnosed initiated any type of mental health process? Or, for that matter, any medical help at all?

I don't go to doctors unless I'm in a full blown death panic. Unless I'm convinced death is imminent, I'm ignoring it. The problem is doctors steal my self determination. As experts I feel like I'm completely under their control. I can't stand that feeling. They force me to accept negative physical sensations, which I avoid whenever possible and always catastrophise when thinking about them. And because I'm not a medical expert the whole ordeal of the office or hospital is a continuous series of unpredictable events. All these things paralyze me the moment I consider making an appointment.

I think the problem with seeing a mental health professional is similar. I do not know what to expect. From initial contact to making an appointment to the first session, it is a series of unknown variables I can't prepare for. I don't, at this point in time, have any need for a diagnosis, but executive function issues, sleep pattern issues and a growing dependence on and desire to do nothing but perform stims and decompression rituals and follow my routines, have me thinking intervention may be required. It's to the point where, when I'm doing anything else, including sleeping, I worry that I'm missing the opportunity to lay on my couch twist my hair and watch golf videos with my headphones on. But I can't make myself pull the trigger and initiate the process. The unknowns and requirements involved in interactions feel insurmountable.

Has anyone experienced thus and overcome it? If so, how?