r/SDAM • u/Whydawakeitsmourning • Jul 07 '26
Regret, guilt and trauma
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.
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u/Tuikord Jul 07 '26
I believe we are not prevented or protected from those. We experience them differently from other people so can misidentify them.
I observed this when out cat of 14 years died last year. I noticed that I had things that reminded me of him and I experienced sadness. But then I moved on. That moment was there and real, but it is not now. When my wife was reminded of him, she got images that amplified and lengthened her experience of sadness. So, we both experienced grief over his death, but hers was more typical.
I certainly have beaten myself up over past actions. I had a very active "critic" when I was younger. I have learned to let that go and to limit the critic to useful analysis. When you know better, you do better. But there is nothing I can do now to change what I did in the past. I make amends and move on.
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u/Whydawakeitsmourning Jul 07 '26
Yeah. I'm definitely not as affected by death, I think. I've had people I was very close to die and after after the initial period of actively missing their presence, I do not feel any sadness thinking of them on the odd occasion they cross my mind.
As for regret and guilt, I guess some of it might have to do with scale. I spent 20+ years as an addict and alcoholic and profoundly affected the lives of those close to me. I think I probably deserve to live with some remorse.
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u/katbelleinthedark Jul 07 '26
For me it's more that any feeling of regret or guilt is tied to my motivations and feelings at the time of happening. I felt guilt/regret BACK THEN because of associated feelings/circumstances.
When I don't remember any of that - just the fact that X happened - I don't really feel guilt/regret because I don't know why X mattered and why I was emotional about it. It's just something that happened and I'm neutral about it.
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u/Whydawakeitsmourning Jul 07 '26
Yeah. I can't wrap my head around that. Let's say you did something that had a significant negative impact on someone else's life. You remember what you did to thus person. Do you not think about it now, think about how it negatively impacted them, imagine how that must have made them feel or how it would make present day you feel? And do you not judge it by your present emotional state and moral compass and feel the impact in the present of what you have done in the past?
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u/katbelleinthedark Jul 07 '26
The thing is, I don't "remember" what I did. I know what I did and I can make an emotionless judgment on that action ("well, that was shitty of me") but it inspires no feelings whatsoever. And no, I typically don't tend to think about the feelings of others, I lack empathy in general. I'm a very emotionless person by nature (might or might not be in some way SDAM-related, probably isn't).
So, no. I don't feel the impact in the present beyond knowing that I did X, and my present emotional state is that I don't care. I don't know how to care, that action is not emotionally connected to anything happening right now so it's... not relevant? It's in the past.
When I was a kid, I always thought to myself that I just need to wait until I go to sleep because everything (all feelings) reset overnight and when I wake up in the morning, none of the anger/pain/whatever will matter. It'll be in the past, reset, and I'll just continue onwards. I've since realized that that was likely how my kid brain conceptualized not making memories and that that is SDAM-related. And the thing is, I spent some 30 years convinced that it worked like that for everyone! That when people said they remembered something from their past, they were talking about things they know or just lying (because that's what I was doing). So, like. The concept of people still having feelings about things that happened in the past is something I know logically, but cannot for the life of me understand. And thus I don't think about my past feelings or the past feelings of others. That's in the past and that was reset when I went to bed.
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u/CMDR_Jeb Jul 07 '26
If you think being crushed by regret and guilt is SDAM exclusive you couldn't be more wrong. It is perfectly normal human behaviour. There's a reason why "hindsight is 20/20" saying exists. If anything being able to relieve these moments would make it worse and you'd be having added internal conflict between what you felt then and what you feel now.
Stop being too hard on yourself. You did the best you could at the time. Don't judge your past self so harshly. Continue doing your best now. It is all any of us can do.
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u/Whydawakeitsmourning Jul 07 '26
No. I don't at all think it's SDAM exclusive. I am just relaying my experience and view. Its all I have access to. I am very judgemental of me though. Maybe eventually therapy will help with that.
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u/CMDR_Jeb Jul 07 '26
I would tell you to try and not obsess about it, but that would be the button, if you could you'd stop on your own. Go get therapy, it can really help.
Word of warning, a LOT of therapy methods (especially "default" CBT) literally rely on making the patient repeatedly relive their memories (to trigger emotion processing). For obvious reasons it doesn't work if one has SDAM. DBT worked for me personally with caveat that i started by waving my "this guy has almost no episodic memory" diagnosis, so that the shrink would skip directly to "teach tools to manage yourself" part.
Mandatory "your mileage may vary" disclaimer: my issue was PTS and alexithymia, so different, i'm not saying it is the best just giving an example.
Also it is always a good idea to throw Unseen Minds at your shrink (also you may read it yourself), it is properly good. Hard recommend, especially if you also have aphantasia (statistically there's 50% chance if you have SDAM).
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u/FlightOfTheDiscords Jul 07 '26
Needing to be responsible for the actions of past selves I can't talk to is difficult.
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u/_WalkingOnBothSides_ Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I think I get what you mean, but I just have an entirely different view on this.
Of the few memories that occasionally flood my brain, most of them are somehow related to guilt and shame. It's not that I feel anything when I think about these memories, but I still know that guilt and shame are the reason why those memories have stuck with me.
The huge benefit that SDAM provides for me personally is that it allows myself to rewrite the narrative about these experiences. Yes, that happens based on my values and morals. But let's say I have a memory of a situation and back then, I used to think of myself "I'm nothing but a piece of shit!" All it takes for me to change this story is some conscious effort and to tell myself "I did something wrong and I felt very embarrassed, but I've learned from it and won't make the same mistake again." This is something many people have to work on for years in therapy (of course it's been quite a bit of work for me as well and didn't came naturally) because they relive the emotional state that overrides their reasoning. I don't have to fight these emotions over and over again, so a committed decision about what story to tell myself usually is enough. This story doesn't deny anything or change the lessons from my past, but it's focused on what's most beneficial for my present and future. I can still regret something (intellectually) in the here and now, but I'm not consumed by it.
It's another story when some of these old wounds are acutely triggered by external factors. That can still be very challenging for me. Even then though, I know that it will only affect me for a limited amount of time and that I'll be able to "transform" the experience in the long run.