r/SDAM

First of all, I'm unsure if my question has anything to do with SDAM at all. It could also be autism related, a totally different issue with memory or just a personality quirk, who knows. As I find many questions about memory in general in this subreddit, I still thought it's worth discussing it here.

So what I mean by context-dependent memory in this case is that even the semantic facts about my own life events often are only available when there's an external trigger. Someone shares a story about themselves and suddenly my brain pulls up some memories because they are marked as relevant to the conversation. Of course, these memories don't bring any emotions or sense of reliving with them - that's what we know about SDAM. The point is that I really feel like I wouldn't have access to them without this specific context at all and they also get buried again pretty soon after the conversation ends. Whenever someone asks me to introduce myself, I don't know what to say and feel like nothing but an empty shell, but while trying to relate to someone else, I'm quite surprised about all the content of my life I wasn't aware of only moments ago. Or maybe I know something about myself in a conceptual way and during conversations, my brain is suddenly able to fill in some blanks and find proof for those concepts. It's almost overwhelming, because it's so different from my thought process when I'm alone.

I'm aware that this context-dependence is pretty normal to a degree and occurs in everyday life. I just feel like I'm far more "dependent" than average - which might be a misestimation though. I would just like to know if anyone relates!

I have now known for about two months that I have full multimodal aphantasia and SDAM in terms of no episodic memory.

I constantly figure out new things that I realise that other people can do that I have no concept of. I would be interested to know what your "favourites" are, just for fun.

For me the weirdest part about re-experiencing their past is some people who have said that they can "re-feel" and re-experience what they felt like or experienced as a child. And kind of "be that child" again. That sounds so absurd to me, even more absurd than them being able to relive something from two years ago or ten years ago. To actually somehow "feel and experience" the vulnerability of childhood again or "feeling small looking at the big adults around me" etc.

I do remember some things about my childhood semantically and some things even quite well. Yet not for one second do I have any ability to "be me as a child again" or actually to be me in any other part of my life either

Ok, I've now rambled enough. Interested in hearing what you think is the most absurd and weird ability most people seem to have

Hey everybody, I have SDAM and one thing I've been struggling with a lot lately is feeling like I can't understand my emotions beyond very broad strokes like "stressed" or "calm" because I have no ability to compare myself to past emotional states. I think it gets especially difficult because I usually can't remember when or why I exactly started feeling a certain way unless I really make note of it in the moment. It's almost like I don't have emotional object permanence.

For what it's worth, I also (probably) have autism and have pretty bad anxiety, which definitely could be a factor that makes it hard to properly parse my emotions. However just from an SDAM perspective, I was wondering if any of you relate to the feeling I've described, and if any of you have figured out ways to understand your emotions without needing to compare to another state of mind/past emotional state.

Here’s a question for fellow SDAMers:  Writing on SDAM often describes people who may have excellent memory of facts about past events (such as dates, names, and sequences of events) but can’t remember what the events felt like.  My episodic memory is very different, nearly the opposite.  I’m more likely to remember past emotional reactions (i.e., to remember what it felt like to be in a situation) without remembering facts about the events that triggered them.  I’ve described my autobiographical memory of any given past event as being like a jigsaw puzzle with the great majority of the pieces missing, and not always the same pieces.  Sometimes, I can access a quick glimpse of a visual impression.  Sometimes, I remember only the feeling and a vague sense of time and place.  E.g., I have a memory of walking across the street to avoid a bully after a session of a summer school class sometime in my teenage years, but I have no memory, semantic or episodic, of any summer school class I ever took.

Does this resonate with anyone?

haven't told anyone about SDAM, and it's not a popular enough neurodivergence for there to be a general opinion on it. However, I think most people would say it's a blessing to be able to forget things so easily. And that's partly true, but...

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‎I feel like people never consider what it's like to live with this in the long term, or even what it's like to have it since birth. That's why I want to share a short anecdote from my childhood.

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‎It's awful to have the notion that something happened but lack any details about it. This happened so many times that it became wired in my mind as a fact. Even so, I thought maybe my childhood brain was exaggerating, until my relatives confirmed it happened exactlyI haven't told anyone about SDAM, and it's not a popular enough neurodivergence for there to be a general opinion on it. However, I think most people would say it's a blessing to be able to forget things so easily. And that's partly true, but...

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‎I feel like people never consider what it's like to live with this in the long term, or even what it's like to have it since birth. That's why I want to share a short anecdote from my childhood.

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‎It's awful to have the notion that something happened but lack any details about it. This happened so many times that it became wired in my mind as a fact. Even so, I thought maybe my childhood brain was exaggerating, until my relatives confirmed it happened exactly as I remembered.

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‎Basically, I lived in a neighborhood with only one girl my age, so she was my only friend. The problem was that she was abusive towards me. She would always pick on me, we would fight, and I'd end up telling her I would never play with her again, only to forgive her the next day or just a few hours later.

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‎I always felt stupid for it (and maybe I was). Honestly, it was so easy for me to forgive people; all resentment would instantly fade away, added to the fact that I didn't want to play alone. My anger and tears were never taken seriously by her. As a result, I ended up in a very unhealthy friendship.

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‎This is the only concrete example (and it doesn't even have many details) that I can recall, but I know it was something that happened a lot during my childhood, not just with her.

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‎Anyway, now I'm glad to know why I was like that.

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‎btw i'm a non-native speaker. And I made this account so I could post this, reddit shadowbanned my other account for no reason 😿

I’m not sure what I think about this, so I’m asking our community. How do you fellow SDAMers feel about this question:

Do you think our lack of ability to recall specific events of the past affects our ability to imagine specific events in the future?

I don’t mean planning for the future or setting goals etc., but visualizing and imagining specific events. Or creativity: Do you think it affects our ability to produce creative works? It’s so hard when we don’t have access to other people’s internal processes!

Just started reading this paper but was wondering if anyone here has any symptoms of Temporal Lobe Focal Aware seizures. Since we know that SDAM is related to the right hippocampus which is in the right temporal lobe, this would make sense and it tracks with my experiences. This is freaking me out a bit since I check all these boxes and my pdoc once said it was a possibility.

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Focal Aware Seizures (Auras)

These act as an early warning sign that the seizure is starting. They can be subtle and usually last just a few seconds: 

• Sensory changes: Odd or unusual tastes and smells.
• Cognitive feelings: A sudden sense of intense déjà vu (feeling like something has happened before) or jamais vu (feeling unfamiliar in a familiar place).
• Intense emotions: Sudden, unprovoked fear, panic, anxiety, anger, sadness, or joy.
• Physical sensations: A rising, "roller coaster" or sick feeling that starts in the stomach and moves up to the chest or throat.

 

Just saying hi.

Along with SDAM, I have Aspergers, OCD, and Bipolar Disorder. I also have Aphantasia which I did not know was so highly correlated with SDAM.

This is freaking me out a lot, no idea who I am because I have nothing to fall back on, and this explains it. It also explains a lot of the social issues I had in my life. People often got angry with me because I have no memories of our social interactions.

Hey Gang, hopefully not just rehashing existing questions.

Nearing 50 and have gone back to school a few months ago.  I’m loving most of it.  I am learning psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.

A lot of the “hands on” therapy we are learning involves reliving experiences, putting yourself back in the experience and noticing things to work out how to help yourself.  I spoke with a lecturer to try this out myself to help with generalised anxiety about coming to class.  He asked how it felt when I was anxious and to describe it, how did my chest feel, what was my breathing like?  I stared blankly.  I gave him some dot points.  I had anxiety.  I probably wanted to throw up and run away.  That’s all the recollection I have.

I found out through school I may have Aphantasia, visualising things for hypnosis is not possible however I am doing my best to get around it.  I am yet to successfully achieve a hypnotic state myself.  A post on the Aphantasia subreddit lead me here and it’s been super eye opening and aligning to my experience.  Perhaps SDAM is in play for me, perhaps not.  I’d always assumed I just had very poor recall.

I guess my question is for anyone who has successfully studied in a field that they cannot immerse in due to SDAM, what strategies did you use to adapt?  I’m struggling; I’ve spent the whole day avoiding the learning content.  I’m a very kinaesthetic learner.  My past career was successful in very niche computer programming, super hands on.

Have just sourced Outsmart Your Brain by Willingham so we read that when I can. 

Any replies would be wonderful, thank you; I appreciate your time 😄

I am not diagnosed with SDAM, but I do have severe memory issues. I am a junior in highscool and Im currently really stressed out over foretting my friends, because I barely remember anything of my friends in middle school or in my freshman and early sophmore years. Is there anyway I can prevent forgetting or eliviate my stress?

Whenever I tell people I have aphantasia, SDAM, their first question is who told you? I feel I have no answer to this question, what can I say? I told myself? I did a few times and the topic came back to the problems of self-diagnosis and that I should not do this, now it's a situation where I can't tell people why I am being like this and if I tell them it's them saying you are just self-diagnosing. A weird territory that can be only helped if I went to therapy I guess, sometimes even I think to myself do I even have it since I don't know if normal people when imagining do imagine an apple like I do behind a screen which I can not see but I know it is there or if they also live in the present moment entirely like or even if I live in the present moment and I am just saying it because it sounds good.

Howdy. I'm thankful Reddit's algorithm finally brought me to this sub. I'm a 30+ male who just last month realized that I may have aphantasia. Before long I stumbled upon articles talking about the potential relationship between SDAM and aphantasia. I used to be really skeptical about any kind of psychiatric self-diagnosis because I saw many people read a tiny portion of DSM-5 and immediately start tweeting rashly about all kinds of conditions, basically practicing astrology with a psychiatric flavor.

But the description of SDAM just catches the vague question that has lingered over my entire life, one I didn't have the words to describe until now. I can't help but think I'm probably on the spectrum. Maybe I'm overthinking it or overemphasizing its importance, but I feel both amazed and greatly unsettled by how much my way of viewing and interacting with the world has been potentially affected, or even defined, by SDAM for the last 30+ years without me clearly identifying its existence.

For example, I always thought people exaggerated the attractiveness of traveling. I used to complain to my friends and partner all the time that I deemed people passionate about traveling a bit untrustworthy; they seemed to have the bad habit of over romanticizing foreign cultures and scenery, while cooler-headed people like myself could see right through the romanticized filter and conclude that most travel may not be worth the cost. But now I'm thinking that maybe the whole concept of traveling is naturally of less value to me personally because I have a hard time reliving the experience and remembering it in vivid detail. Maybe I actually have no idea how other people perceive the experience, let alone how to judge their perception on its merit. Maybe people actually enjoy reminiscing their travel memories while I can only think of how much money and time it costs me without the remembering all the interesting places visited.

I suspect SDAM also contributes to the formation of my relatively nihilistic view of life, as I often feel detached from the world and the people in it. All the connections I form with others always seem a bit inconstant and fleeting and unreliable. I had a very difficult time socializing with peers in college, as I struggled to remain motivated to maintain relationships once the initial social event was over. Even to this day I can only maintain a very tiny social group (1~2 close friends), and I still sometimes feel like I don't know or trust these guys after a prolonged period of not meeting with them.

Moreover, a lack of detailed memory may result in a more acute and constant sense of an uncertain identity and meaninglessness. Sometimes I confused such feelings with emo nonsense (when I was a teenager) or an indication of depression (as an adult), but such feelings have persisted for so many years that nowadays they are just like a backdrop to my daily life.

Another thing that occurred to me today is that when I first read existentialist novels such as L'Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus or La Nausée (Nausea) by Sartre during my high school years, I felt that the protagonists and their emotionless, detached narratives were weirdly relatable. They are both uncertain or indifferent about whether their past actually exists, feel that their characters lack a story arc, and desperately try to seize or enjoy the present to the fullest to counter the void of their past. I suspect these characters may be (partially) inspired by experiences of or similar to SDAM.

After reading about SDAM, I started wondering: while all these existentialist philosophers try to establish their worldviews based on concrete and universally understandable rationale, how much of their philosophy is actually the result of their uniquely configured minds and experiences that aren't shared by the majority of people? Such thoughts deeply unsettle me because I can't help but wonder whether such a realization makes those schools of thought less credible or valuable, as they are trying to rationalize something that is actually intrinsic to a very specific type of human and not rationalizable for others...

Sorry that I'm basically rambling here. Finding a therapist with knowledge of aphantasia and SDAM doesn't seem like an easy task; for now I can only rely on information and discussion on the internet to try to learn more about these conditions. I don't necessarily think they are as severe as other life-altering disabilities, but I don't know what the long term implications of having SDAM are, and in the meantime I suspect many of my core personality traits or beliefs were heavily affected by the experience configured by these conditions without me knowing them for the past 30+ years, so I feel a bit uneasy. However this could also be a key to more effective therapy or self reflection in the future, so I'm hopeful but also kind of scared and unsettled right now.

Do any of you feel like SDAM has a direct link to, or acts as a direct cause of your life view, philosophy, or religious/atheistic beliefs? Does that kind of thought recontextualize how you see yourself?

SDAM seemed to fit, then I read the post saying SDAM may be disguising something like structural dissociation.
How do you know if it’s SDAM or something else like this?
Do people with SDAM always feel like their personality and identity is cohesive? What does a cohesive sense of self feel like?

For almost 30 years I was suffering when trying to find the right words to describe how I feel and how I remember. I always told people that I don't remember the scenes, but I remember facts about these scenes. Like, I don't remember being in England as a child, but judging by what I know, I've been there 3 times.

And it always pained me that I could remember events that should have been important to me. How I first met my husband and how we had our first date, how I got a cat I dreamed of, how I got my degree - nothing, simply nothing.

I have short pictures in my head sometimes, but always the scenery, not the people in it. And it's like one photo, not a scene or something. I just don't remember what I felt, how I felt at all. I usually have a short summary of what happened in my head, so I think I know what I should have felt, but that's it.

And now, all of this has a name. From one hand, I am heartbroken to find out that I can't "fix" my memory and things which are lost are most likely lost forever. But now that I know the name, I think I can try to look at the tools which helped someone else, and maybe in the end, I'll stop feeling like a stranger in my own life.

I never knew I needed a name this much. But now at least I don't feel that lonely anymore.

Hi everyone,

I’m new to Reddit, so I wanted to introduce myself properly rather than quietly lurking in the background.

I’m Sassy Smith. I live with aphantasia, SDAM and related cognitive differences, and I’ve spent the last few years writing, teaching and speaking about the gap between how many of us experience our inner world and what therapy, coaching, education and personal development often assume.

Earlier this year, I published Unseen Minds: A Therapist’s Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences. It has a full chapter on SDAM. Although it was written primarily for therapists, counsellors, coaches and support professionals, it is very much rooted in lived experience.

I also wanted to say thank you. I’ve already seen some incredibly thoughtful posts and comments from people who have read Unseen Minds, shared it, recommended it, or reflected on what it brought up for them. That has meant more to me than I can properly put into words.

One of the reasons I wrote it is because I’ve heard so many stories from people who haven’t been believed, have been misunderstood, or have been made to feel as though they were the problem because standard approaches didn’t work for them in the expected way.

My view is simple: we’re not broken. A lot of the tools just weren’t designed with minds like ours in mind.

I’m not here to diagnose anyone or speak over anyone else’s experience. I’m here to listen, learn, contribute where I can, and hopefully help bridge the gap between lived experience and professional understanding.

I’d love to know:

What’s one thing you wish therapists, teachers, coaches, partners or family members understood better about your experience?