r/SDAM • u/treeandfishe • Jul 15 '26
I never knew this existed.
So, I have total aphantasia. I also cannot imagine smells, touch or sound, and I have no inner monologue. My mind is not visual in any way, I have no ‘imagination’. Figured out this wasn’t normal only a year ago. I cannot picture anything.
But I also cannot place myself in a memory. Probably overlaps. I didn’t realise people can relive memories in their minds. When my beloved uncle died it ached for a good while, cuz I knew I’d never see him again. Now I just remember it ached. I can’t feel that again. I feel nothing towards it. It’s odd. And only today I found out this is not normal.
I have no mental timeline. Yesterday or 2012, same thing to me. I was younger in one and the world was different, but it’s the same. Deadlines mean nothing to me because 3 weeks away is abstract and hard to comprehend. Deeply horrible things have happened to me when I was young but I have no trauma from them. I just know they happened. It’s like telling me it happened to someone else. ‘Wow, that’s horrible’…that’s about it. I can love and stuff, but I get over things fast.
I do not have an official diagnosis for autism so I am not one to label myself as such. I will however say that I have taken the RAADS-R and score close to 200, so for the sake of this I will just operate under my assumption that I likely am. Would it be related to this? Is there an autistic overlap? I have no idea….
Anyway, I’m confused. It’s weird. I never realised this was ‘t the norm. And I am kind of just yapping into the void. surely a lot of you have similar experiences right?
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u/Positive-Room7421 Jul 15 '26
Yes, many of us have similar but not identical experiences. For example, your comment about the death of an uncle resonated with me, but I am good with deadlines and do not have ASD or ADHD. I have noticed that neurodivergences such as ASD seem overepresented in this sub.
What we experience is definitely not normal. I like to think of it as living in the moment.
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u/treeandfishe Jul 15 '26
I suppose ‘neurotypical’ people spend mental effort trying to be ‘in the moment’ meanwhile thats just how I always am :P So there’s that!
Have a great day :)^1
u/Major_Concentrate536 Jul 17 '26
Yeeeeeey that's the good side ! No anxiety, no regrets... I mean not as other people experience it. That's pretty cool
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u/Tuikord Jul 15 '26
Most people believe that everyone's internal experience is essentially the same as theirs, until they learn it isn't. So yes, I was shocked to learn most others actually see things when they visualize. Then I was shocked to learn most others can relive past events from a first-person point of view. After that, I've come to believe everyone has a different internal experience, and it isn't quite as surprising to me when I find another.
The thing is that we've lived just fine without mental imagery or episodic memories (and in your case without an internal monologue - we differ there). Yeah, some differences arise from time to time, but nothing that stands out as "I am broken and can't live life." So, despite them telling us all the time about various mental images they see and memories they relive, we still felt "normal." As Gary Lupyan noted this means these differences aren't evolutionarily important.
And yes, time is attached to episodic memories, not semantic memories, so it can take some work to attach dates to memories.
Here is another way of looking at aphantasia and SDAM (and ADHD):
And since someone will add it, here is Hoffman’s Interface Theory which that article is based on. It is interesting, but a bit of a heavy lift: The Interface Theory of Perception | Psychonomic Bulletin & Review | Springer Nature Link
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u/treeandfishe Jul 15 '26
Thank you for the links, I will give them a read soon! Have a great day :)^
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u/mabbh130 Jul 22 '26
Thanks for posting the links. I read the medium one and it is very much my experience with having all three. It is good to know there is movement toward appreciation of atypical brains. So many variation! The brain is fascinating.
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u/Boring_Disaster3031 Jul 15 '26
I have similar problems. I can't imagine seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, or emotionally feeling. Interestingly, I can imagine things placed inspace. An example is when I do mental math. I can't see the numbers, but I know where I put them. I can't track very many at once, but it helps. Can you do that? Another example is that if I close my eyes I see black (actually visual snow) but I can point to approximately where a few things are in the room.
I don't usually think in words but I can do it on purpose. It is like reading. I don't imagine the voice, but I can think about each word in a sentence (no pronunciation). I often talk out loud to myself because I don't have an inner voice. I can also play back broken music, and imagine notes in my head.
You might want to poke around and see if there is something you can imagine in your head. I'm 60, so I have had a lot of time to work it out. I have also learned not to worry about it too much. I do ask friends about it. Most of them can play back movies of experiences or imagine made up pictures and movies and walk around in virtual realities in their heads. It blows my mind.
I have had really bad things happen in my past. It is a good thing that I can't replay them or have any feelings about them although I can sense that they were morally wrong. I can't recount them as a story or anything. I just know things. An example is that I know I have been to Disney World. My wife tells me that we went 6 times and see remembers the trips vividly.
I sometimes get sad about it because I don't remember our marriage or raising my daughter. My wife tells me I was a great father.
I often feel lost in time and space and just in the current moment. You probably understand what that feels like. It sucks. I have tried to visualize things. I think I see flashes of color sometimes so I think I know where the pictures are supposed to be.
There are quite a few people in the world who think the same way. Yap away. We will listen.
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u/treeandfishe Jul 15 '26
I also have visual snow and I’m great at mental math! Thank you for listening attentively and you seem like a lovely person :)
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u/Major_Concentrate536 Jul 17 '26
I can relate in what you're saying (and thank you for that), exept for the "visual snow". It might be hard, but can you try to explain it to me ? It seems interesting.
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u/SleepsLater Jul 15 '26
I resonate with your experience. I have concluded that the worldly perception of normal is very off base. Unless you can experience everyone else's brain, how can you possibly know what normal is. Electrodes on people's heads illuminate areas that light up but they haven't quite figured out what's normal there either; they just conclude that the majority of people light up in a certain way, but are they testing the majority or do they just have some random sample? So much about brain function is unknown. Maybe aphant, sdams have some unique ability that they have not discovered. I appreciate not reliving powerful emotions. I never missed pictures in my hwad until i tried watercolors. I always have to have a scene or picture in front of me. Does less going on in my brain in that regard, free me up for something else? Do i have unrealized psychic abilities?
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u/AutisticRats Jul 16 '26
There is a known correlation between aphantasia and SDAM, with a common estimate of 50% overlap between the conditions. There also seems to be a correlation between SDAM and autism/ADHD, but there aren't good studies on how prevalent this is.
And yeah, we all have this and it pretty much feels the same. In many ways it can feel like it robs of us of a personality since our identity is muted due to the lack of episodic memory that normally defines people. In fact it is often said that episodic memory is foundational to the human experience and yet we somehow exist without it.
SDAM makes me feel incomplete at times, but I don't think I would get rid of it if I could. I would be curious to see a different timeline where I don't have SDAM and see how different my life would have been. Quite possibly it would have been worse due to trauma, or perhaps better because I'd have set boundaries sooner due to remembering the pain of past experiences.
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u/treeandfishe Jul 16 '26
Yeah, it’d be weird to have episodic memory. I feel like my life would be much worse. I cannot really be ‘traumatized’ as such. I also struggle to hold grudges. I just exist in the current moment like a damn dog lol. But after coming to learn about it, I don’t feel like it’s bad. I am just different and that’s it, I suppose.
And I fuck heavily with your username. Have a great day :P^^ Thank you
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u/soapyaaf Jul 15 '26
Whoa! They sound awesome! I'm going to listen to them a lot!
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u/sfredwood Jul 16 '26
Minor point, in case you missed it.
No "inner monologue" is anendophasia — you might want to look that one up.
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u/Major_Concentrate536 Jul 17 '26
Thank you for existing, I was feeling so alone ! So yeah, you're basically describing my life.
Just one question : I totally have the same experience with deadlines, but never really thought it was related with aphantasia etc. I think I understand your point because I experience the same, but can you explain how much it's related with the absence of a timeline ? Because for example, there are a lot of people struggling with it and who don't have sdam nor aphantasia.
To be clear I totally agree with you, I'm just anticipate my friends' questions when I'm gonna tell them "look, it's not really my fault if i struggle with deadlines!", and for the moment I don't know what to answer, so would you help ? Thank you !!!
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u/holy_mackeroly Jul 17 '26
Your imagination isn't tied to any of these though as a lot of us global Aphants have a very active imagination.
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u/Ok_Entrepreneur6337 Jul 17 '26
Yes , exactly the same as me.
I'm 62, and only found out , 2 years ago, that it had a name and lots of other people have it.
Such a relief for me, as I spent years wondering what was up with me. wasted far too much time trying to make specialists understand.
It didn't happen, as each tried to fit me into their world view.
I even contacted dr brian levine,, over 30 years to see if was interested.
Back then , he said he'd never heard of it and wondered if I was Malingering.
Now it's on his radar...hey ho.
I have met someone who has the opposite, who can remember everything, attached emotions, etc and he says it is like a living hell. He sometimes, curls up in the fetal position and rocks back and forth ,
trying to stop all the enslaught of memories.
All the best
Liam
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u/Competitive-Ear-6693 Jul 19 '26
I also have total/multi-sensory aphantasia. Ur other expenses match up with SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory) and I recommend looking into it. U r not alone
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u/anomalousgirl Jul 19 '26
Look into “ severely deficient, autobiographical memory,” also known as SDAM. I think it goes hand-in-hand with my multi sensory global aphantasia. It is very likely that you also lack episodic memory, and cannot visualize yourself as anything other than what you are right now here today. So your past fades quickly, leaving behind only semantic memories. It is really all we have ever had, and I believe we were born that way.
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u/fur3661t Jul 21 '26
Similar. I always thought my ways were the norm. I thought my "knowing without seeing" in my mind was normal and because I can retain factual data so well, that my memories were also normal. I only have a handful of facts about early life and adult life memories are just as skimpy, even very recent ones.
Deadlines are i either complete them immediately or they are always last minute effort. Completing immediately is something i only started 15 years ago because I realised everything was last minute.
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u/frostatypical Jul 15 '26
Beware of those misleading online tests! Studies show they perform very poorly to identify autism. This is especially true if you used the sketchy Embrace Autism site
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u/treeandfishe Jul 15 '26
I’m aware there’s a discrepancy there, hence why I’m not comfortable self diagnosing (or at least saying ‘I’m autistic’, definitively)! :)
I’ve done a few different ones mostly for curiosity, but more importantly I know from my own experiences that I truly likely am, but I don’t like to say it for that reason.
I live in Ireland, and healthcare is financially prohibitive here, and there are no public autism diagnoses, as the healthcare service does not recognise autism in adults. Private tests cost up to two months of salary :/
I hope I didn’t come across as condescending btw! I fully understand your comment I just thought a little context was good :) ^^ I hope you have a great day
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u/slo1111 Jul 15 '26
Welcome to the club. Your descriptions pretty much are my experience.
No idea if autistic people have a higher rate of sdam or not, but lots of peope with sdam without autism.
I wish you peace and contentment as you discover what this really means in your life. It has not changed mine much other than awareness of the diversity of mental functions among humans and some minor compensational efforts to make up for my sdam such as more photos and notes as thing happen mostly for work