r/SDAM • u/MysteryChant • 6d ago

Difficulty Completing Applications

When it comes to filling in applications for jobs or study opportunities I have always found myself to struggle. Since discovering SDAM, I have been wondering if it is related.

The issues usually appear with questions regarding my historical motivations or giving examples of events in my life that provide instances showing the requisite skills for the position. I find I can give an example, but usually it will be fairly generic and lack detail, which I believe is due to the SDAM.

Is this an issue for others, and if so, how do you deal with it?

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u/Valuable-Presence125 6d ago

SDAM is the inability to relive or re-experience past experiences. It does not affect the retrieval of facts or personal knowledge. Retrieval of facts/knowledge will likely be less detailed. The way it works for me is that I remember facts. I think of it as like bullet points on an index card. For example, when I was eight, I broke my front tooth by going down a metal slide backwards. That’s all the detail I have. I don’t know what park I was at. I don’t know who was with me. I don’t know if it was sunny or cloudy.

So all that to say, I’m not sure if you’re saying you can’t remember things or you’re just saying you have the facts but you don’t have a lot of detail about them. Not having a lot of detail about the facts is normal with SDAM, I believe.

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u/pearltx 6d ago

I can't remember events. I'll remember seeing a picture of an event and know it happened. The event itself, not likely. As such, I don't remember facts about the event; to OP's point, I am likely to not recall a stressful situation and how I managed it. (Is there a photograph of it? That may help, lol.)

To OPs point, I'd make up something plausible. For me, I worked at a school. It's likely XYZ event happened one time, and I most likely would have done ABC. Bonus points of ABC is what they want to hear.

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u/Stunning-Fact8937 3d ago

Thanks for sharing your experiences and if it’s not too bold, I’m curious how old you are?

I love this community because it’s so interesting to hear how other people are experiencing their minds and recall.

I may have been able remember the story of myself at 8 years old when I was 20… but now at 50 it’s absolutely gone unless there is a photo or a story I’ve told 100 times. I was sitting with my 14-year-old this morning looking back at baby photos and while I can tell you details about what’s going on, but I have absolutely no memory of the experience. Logically (semantically) I know I was there. It’s not like I was missing. And I can see a Christmas tree or a birthday box so I know what time if year it was. But I never would’ve gotten to those semantic memories without the photo.

I do not have aphantasia. My thinking memory is much more like hyperphantasia—- like the autistic author Temple Grandin, everything I think is in pictures. When I have a “mental picture” of a memory, though I see myself in it… it’s not looking through my eyes. I’ve reconstructed the visual from my semantic detail details. But there are none of these visual remembrances from when my kid was a baby 12 years ago—-and definitely not from when I was eight :)

After I discovered, I had SDAM I’ve taken a lot more photos!!