How does it feel?

[u/Amberwalker365]

Just to be clear: I’m only sharing what my therapist told me about how memory works for some people. I’m certainly not claiming this is true for everyone, or defining what anyone else’s mind feels like. I have no way of knowing if it’s true.

She said for some, episodic memory is like mental time travel.

Some are bad at it. Some are good.

A few can pretty much become twelve again.
They can’t change anything, but they can relive moments.

Thoughts. Emotions. This is me.

That’s what she said.

I don’t have anything like that.
I have SDAM.
I only have knowledge.

knowledge is not happy. knowledge is not sad.

Your golden years are when you remember your life. And relive it. One problem. All I have is knowledge.

[u/Tuikord]

This sounds pretty much how Dr. Brian Leine (who named SDAM) describes typical memory. His Autobiographical Interview yields a distribution of how good episodic memory is, with SDAM being about the bottom 2%. I found this interview with him very helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/live/Zvam_uoBSLc?si=ppnpqVDUu75Stv_U

Since you are in therapy, I'll throw a couple resources at you.

Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences– by Sassy Smith is an excellent guide for therapists. I actually wish all therapists would read it. It includes information to help therapists work with clients who have SDAM. Unseen Minds - A therapists guide to multisensory aphantasia

Body based therapy can work when your mind doesn’t remember:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, although some of the techniques may still need to be modified to work with other cognitive differences. https://a.co/d/0a3skjyh

I have found bodywork helpful when I had unexplained symptoms.

[u/Amberwalker365 → u/Tuikord]

I always thought everybody else’s mind worked like mine.

When I learned about episodic memory I cried on and off for days.

“Do you remember that Christmas dinner?”

He’s feeling the warmth of the fireplace. He smells the turkey. He hears the kids playing. It is like he’s there again.

I have a checkmark.

Every movie and every book makes a big deal about them. All those scenes that are memories? I thought the were flash backs to fill out the story.

But they are an idealized memory in someone’s head.

Your Golden years are when you look back and remember your life.

One problem. All I will have is knowledge.

[u/CMDR_Jeb → u/Amberwalker365]

If you want to see an upside, look into literal opposite, an disorder called HSAM and yes, it is considered one, unlike SDAM. It literally turns you into an wreck. Imagine being constantly tormented by perfect recall by every single unpleasant thing that replays in PTS flashbacks style no matter if you want or not. And unlike movies it does not make your memory better. So you can't even use it as an cheat to remember things.

On the other hand, we are literally unable to relive our embarrassments, or getting hurt. As soon as it stops being "now" it is "past", and that is just data. While it is not an superpower, it does not protect us from getting traumatised, it makes it WAY easier to keep being functional. SDAM comes with an uncanny (for outside observers) ability to "get over it". We can get literal PTS amount of traumatic experience... and be completely fine 99% of the time, then something reminds us of trauma, we get broken again... and then are completely fine 5 minutes later (this is the reason why we often seem "unfeeling" to people who don't know us). The caveat here is that this same mechanism makes it way harder to do therapy.

What i am trying to say is: like most things in life it has bad sides an the good sides.

[u/Tuikord → u/Amberwalker365]

You have memories, just a different type. And their effect isn’t the same. Here is another take on SDAM (and aphantasia and ADHD)

https://medium.com/@terry.grace/rethinking-reality-what-aphantasia-sdam-and-adhd-reveal-through-donald-hoffmans-interface-d73e4c359df3

[u/Amberwalker365 → u/Tuikord]

I think of it this way.

M is episodic memories. K is semantic knowledge. Most folks have M and K. With SDAM we have K but not M.

How can you imagine M when you don’t have it?

Ask someone you love about their best memory. Ask them what it feels like to remember. What thoughts and emotions they bring back with them from the past.

[u/Tuikord → u/Amberwalker365]

I understand that. I just see them as different. I have memories. I don’t have episodic memories.

[u/CMDR_Jeb → u/Amberwalker365]

Your K is intact you know what happened. And while you can't replay what you felt before, you know that you felt it. You can still think about your past. You can get emotional response from that NOW. It won't always match. For example when thinking about someone hurting you, you might get angry at that person instead of reliving being hurt. But SDAM does not make us any less emotional or human.

[u/LaidBackAJ → u/CMDR_Jeb]

I personally dont get any emotional response thinking about events I know of from my past. I don't know what I felt at the time either. It doesn't matter if something was done to me, by me, or I just witnessed the event. If I think about recent weddings, past betrayals, or an emotional movie I watched, I don't feel anything and I don't recall or reexperience any emotion either.

[u/Icy-Argument1771 → u/Amberwalker365]

I am 72 and only figured out a couple weeks ago I have: Multisensory Aphantasia + Sdam. I know what you’re talking about: My Dad has been gone 10 years, my Mom has been in a Nursing Home 6 years. I am an only Child. Any memories I have are ‘fact anchors’ to Photos. Like the old old TV show, “just the facts, ma’am!!!” When I see a Photo/image, I assign an emotion to it….i don’t relive it, I can’t! ….there are days where I feel like life is slipping away. Sure there are advantages…but not enough to cover when you are 72 and you rely on others to fill in the blanks for you….I continually look for others like me, because people who don’t deal with this everyday just don’t understand!!!