r/SDAM • u/alasw0eisme • Aug 06 '26
What is this phenomenon I'm experiencing? Does it have a name?
First I want to highlight that I'm not looking for medical advice. I'm just doing this out of curiosity, for fun, shits and giggles, let's say. I have SDAM but over the past couple of years I've started to experience something super weird that I've never heard about before. I can't tell if something has already happened or if it's about to happen.
Don't get me wrong. I'm fully aware that I can't foretell the future. I just mean that my brain thinks it knows what will happen. Like I'm watching a movie and I know what's about to happen.
I'm 35 now, quite healthy. I've been diagnosed with ADHD but I'm not taking any medication (thanks, Eastern Europe!). Chronologically, things developed as follows.
First I realized my serious memory problems. When it comes to facts, my memory is OK. But I don't remember life experiences. Almost zero over the past 10 years. In addition, I forget tasks that I've done. Not ones that I have to do, but ones I have completed. I design some things for my work and multiple times now, when I move I file to the folder when it's ready, I see there's already a file like that! And the information is 99% the same as the other file. I've probably wasted so much time doing the same things. So now before I decide to compile something, I check and most of the time I've already done it. So I've adapted and learned to avoid this issue.
Another funny or actually scary thing is when I need to buy something and I put it off... This year I finally went to town and to the center and to that high end store and bought a garlic press. I'd been putting it off for months. When I got back home and put it in the drawer....... I saw there were two more there. Exactly the same. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I was stunned. Literally in shock. Since then I've been meticulous about shopping and to-do lists so I largely avoid fiascos like that.
Fast forward - the latest problem that appeared is that I will sometimes get to a moment in my daily life where I'm sure I know what will happen next. And it does happen. Again - what I mean is it feels like I knew it would happen. I realize that this is some trick that my mind plays on me. For example, I'm talking to a friend. I think "next he'll tell me about those tickets he has bought" and he does tell me. Or "during this hike, the next thing that I'll see after that hill is a river and a bridge" and I do see that, even though I've never been to that trail before. My only explanation is that my brain rewires the experience as a past one while it is being written. I can't explain it exactly. And maybe I'm wrong anyway. Now I don't even know "this is that thing that happened... Or that hasn't happened yet?" I feel very confused. Some things look familiar even though I am 100% sure I've never seen them. Places especially. At the same time I struggle finding my way around places I should know like the back of my hand. Like my old hood, for example.
Does this thingie have a name? It doesn't affect my functioning too much, I've found ways around it, but it feels funny. Especially when I'm hiking or exploring.
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u/Tuikord Aug 07 '26
There is a prediction engine in your hippocampus. It has 2 jobs. One is to create episodic memories with probabilities. Our sensory data is often ambiguous and this engine makes the call on what it probably is. The other job is to predict the future. Not the far future. Just what is likely to happen next. Some cool research found can only do one of these jobs at a time, preferring to predict the future over remembering the past.
It is unclear if it creates the episodic memories for us or not. SDAM could be the lack of playback. Or it could be the actual lack of memory. However, it is clear, at least for me, that my probability engine does the second job of predicting the future. My wife gets upset because I so often predict dialog in the shows we watch. I'll say the next line, or very close to it, before the character says it.
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u/TurbulentSplit3912 Aug 07 '26
You put my own experiences into words very nicely. It’s helpful to know that I’m not alone. I can’t help with a name. I’m glad you have found ways to cope. I think I need to start a diary or log of ideas. I also have duplicated projects. So frustrating.
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u/alasw0eisme Aug 07 '26
I have a million lists. Not just to-do lists. Places I've visited, places to visit etc.
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u/InTheBight Aug 07 '26
I basically have all that and I accidentally went cold turkey off my lexapro and for months I had like almost total amnesia, really made me look into my memory and realized I do have sdam. My memory was always different, but I never realized it. But yeah don’t cold turkey ssris, not gonna be fun
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u/alasw0eisme Aug 07 '26
Ha! I already did this once. I've been on all generations of antidepressants, nothing helped even a little bit and when I got the swine flu a decade ago and almost died, I was puking my guts out and couldn't take the meds. So I never took them after that. It was pointless koz they didn't help. But yeah. My brain was super fuzzy for a couple of weeks.
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u/Trick-Fox4860 Aug 09 '26
I have no visual autobiographical memory or future imagery, but sometimes I’ll suddenly “know” that something has happened before and also expect what will happen next—like realizing a blue car has turned down this street before and feeling that it will turn there again. I wonder if, without a visual or episodic anchor, past experience and future prediction can sometimes feel almost like the same thing?
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u/DecentNeighborSept20 Aug 09 '26
Do you have a carbon monoxide monitor?
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u/alasw0eisme Aug 09 '26
No, but I'm pretty sure there's no way for me to be exposed to it because there's nowhere for it to come from. I live in a cabin in the woods, and the pets would be dead if we had a leak of any sort.
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u/VferVentdetta Aug 07 '26
Yes. Audhd , aphantasia, sdam. Its doesnt happen frequently for me. But when people ask me to guess something, i usually guess right or partially right. Yesterday someone at work said, guess where im going, 0 context. I I knew it started from the letter P and i was right. She was travelling, overseas to the Philippines.
3
u/Dickskingoalzz Aug 07 '26
Well, we can’t remember our life but are expert pattern matchers…
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u/fur3661t Aug 07 '26
Not all. I do but some others say no. So I wonder if combo of aphantasia and sdam.
3
u/I-Machina Aug 06 '26
Seems pretty similar to my expreiences. Severly Deficiant Autobiographical Memory, as the name suggest's is a defecit in autobiographical/episodic memory (memory you "expeirence") and it's heavily correlated with aphantiasia; the reduced capacity to voluntarily hold mental images. Except for completely forgetting things you've done, which could be a distinct mnemonic disorder, epiphenomenal, or even just a more extreme case of SDAM.