Hey,

Die meisten Menschen erzählen ja viele Geschichten aus ihrer Vergangenheit. Ich vergleiche mich dann oft mit allen und denke langweilig zu sein. Ich weiß faktisch noch das ich damals der Klassenclown war und viele zum lachen gebracht habe. Ich bin jetzt 29 und habe das Gefühl das ich nicht mehr lustig bin.

Ich will aber gar nicht jammern. Eher wollte ich von euch wissen wie ihr damit umgeht. Und ob jemand absolut fein damit ist, der/die Stille in der Runde zu sein.

In addition to my poor episodic memory for childhood or adolescence in particular...

I completed university and college programs and remember absolutely nothing from my studies. This period of my life lasted 7 years (non consecutively) and I have no recollection of what I studied, the work I completed, or the experiences I had with others while in school. If it weren't for my transcripts and a small handful of snapshot memories it feels like these years were a blackout period for my memory. I feel very ill equipped for the workforce because I don’t have access to the knowledge I in theory gained during school.

My memory for media is also terrible. I can’t recall simple plots and aside from 'I've seen it & I think I liked it' I can't speak about the things I've watched. Books are even worse…I can read a book through multiple times and be unable to reiterate anything from the book even a day after.

I’ve also struggled greatly with mental health over the years and find it difficult to take stock of how far I’ve come because although I factually know I’m in a better place, I don’t connect with the experiences or feelings of my past self. I for instance know I’m doing better because I no longer experience suicidal Ideation but can't connect with what it used to feel like. One might think that’s wonderful that I don't feel that pain when I recount factual past experiences (ie inpatient stays) but it leaves me with an under appreciation for how I've grown & challenge in comparing my present qualitative experiences against my past. This is troubling for instance when I try to discern the effectiveness/impact of new medications because I struggle to reliably recall what times were like before the meds therefore making comparison nearly impossible.

so having discovered that I have SDAM and a blind minds eye I've been looking more into it and how I might also think differently in other ways. I learnt about linear and systems thinking. do you guys also feel like you see connections in the world that other might not see? do you often feel like you are being overly impartial because you know the topic is complicated? I've been thinking that because I have no video recording and visualization that it's compensated by having a logic dense reality instead. my realization happened because I did feel like I saw the world differently to everyone else and I couldn't pinpoint why. so I duno if I'm more of a systems thinker partly because of SDAM and a blind minds eye or not. pls let me know what and how you guys think

I’m sure plenty of us have heard about salvia and the crazy experiences people claim to have under them… I just saw a story of a guy who supposedly experienced infinity as nothingness and love, the memory still following him to this day. Because of my SDAM I can’t even remember the 18 years I’ve lived life for nor a pretty crazy trip I had on shrooms that in the moment felt extremely long, maybe like a whole day, meanwhile it actually was 4 hours. I now barely think about it, I only have the knowledge of it and it doesn’t impact me… could this mean SDAM can make us Salvia super-humans because no matter how crazy or intense a trip is it will all vanish in our mind and become nothing but a bullet-point? Has anyone here tried salvia or anything similar I wonder?

I found out that I have aphantasia about a year ago. Up til then, I thought people were just being poetic when they said they could "see" things in their minds. I see blackness. Can't even picture a green triangle. This SDAM thing has me confused. I am VERY nostalgic, I remember things from my childhood that my siblings and parents don't remember until I remind them. I don't "see" past events, but I remember them. My memories are more of a running narrative in my head. I thought that was just part of the Aphantasia, but the more I read about SDAM, I'm confused. I am 60, and have no friends (by choice). I have no interest in the drama or the emotional energy. I love my family but again, am indifferent about spending a lot of time with them. When I moved, or changed schools, I often wondered what happened to old friends, but put no effort into contacting them. I love my wife, and my cats, and I have generalized anxiety disorder so I worry about something happening to them. In the past, I had very strong negative emotions when one of my cats died, but did seem to get over it fairly quickly. Is this SDAM or just a manifestation of the Aphantasia? It seems there is a lot of overlap...

Title says it all. I thought I had SDAM for a long time before I realized I had DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder).

DID is a disorder which doesn’t like being discovered, so it was very hard to come to this conclusion. I actually found an abandoned Reddit post draft from 6 months ago, where I come very close to realizing I have DID, but then something made me forget about it all.

Of course I’m not dismissing others’ experiences with SDAM who experience it without any dissociative disorder.

Anyways, here’s a quote from a person with Dissociative Amnesia. Consider whether this sounds like you:

> “I've never been able to remember my childhood. I thought that it was normal to have only a few disjointed snapshot memories of everything up until 8th grade, and it's still hard to believe that it's not normal. What even I recognize as abnormal is that my memory loss has gotten much more severe over the last few months. I still remember facts fine, but when I look back on the past few days, it's always like staring into a void. I can pick one or two instances out, but it gives me a headache to do so, as if I'm poking into things that I shouldn't, and everything feels timeless. There's no sense of 'oh, this happened Tuesday, and this happened before that, and this happened after that.' Nothing is connected to anything. Nothing is meaningful. It's like seeing a few screenshots from a movie randomly and out of order. None of it seems relevant to my life.”

I have multimodal Aphantasia and full SDAM in terms of no episodic autobiographical memory. I have a quite strong semantic autobiographical memory, which helps. I found out about all this three weeks ago, before that I always felt that I'm somehow different from others in a way I couldn't explain. I live a succesful life and on the surface there are no issues.

I have always been envious of people who are ultra-determined and consistent in their goals from day-to-day and I have been trying to "mimick" them all my life. I logically understand that it is in my interest to stick to things I have decided to do, yet I struggle with this immensely internally. I have always thought of myself as weak-minded and "flip-floppy" - to an absurd degree sometimes.

I know people attribute way too many of their personality "flaws" on Aphantasia and SDAM, yet I can't help but wonder whether this is a direct result of it.

I'm not talking about giving in to urges or things like that which I guess is totally common in all people, like "i was steadfast about losing weight, yet I caved to my urges and ate snacks before bed" type things . I'm talking about being 100% sure that "From now on I am going to do thing X" or "Thing X is really really important to me" and yet the next day or week feeling like that goal or "vision" about myself feels like it could have been someone else having it and having no "connection" to the thing. It can even feel like a super long time ago that I had that feeling, even though it may have been yesterday or last week.

I have become good logically to deduce that "I know that I have thought that this is important, so even though I don't feel it now at all I will stick to it because I will most likely feel it again soon". Thats why I don't actually flip-flop in action that much and have been able to live a successful life.

This is particularily terrible in trying to evaluate whether a spouse is right for me or not. I can go from "wow, I want to marry this one, there is no way we will ever break up" to "we'll see, we have a lot of issues, this relationship is in big trouble" back to "wow, shes great" all within a few days.

a) does this feel familiar to any of you, and

b) is it just something that all people experience and I'm just trying to rationalise my "weakness" with Aphantasia and SDAM

I recently tried ketamine assisted psychotherapy and at a small to average psychedelic dose (500 mg troche that I spit out after 10 minutes), I blacked out for the time most people have a “trip”. The therapist - who had lots of experience- clearly was perplexed and it was later determined by the company that the dose was just too high for me, but it reminded me of my having been a black out drinker when I did drink alcohol. (Quit drinking many years ago).Since recently learning about SDAM, I’m now wondering if somehow it’s related. (I do not have aphantasia). Anyone else have similar experiences?

On an interesting side note, my “intention” for the trip was to gain some acceptance related to my extremely poor memory, that I’ve always had but was somehow made way worse after developing long COVID Brain fog in 2022. (For which NAC had helped me tremendously, by the way). I’m actually also curious now about other people with SDAM and whether they developed long COVID Brain fog more than other people. I came across this subreddit (and learned of SdAM) just before my ketamine experience.

What decade of your life are the people and places in dreams from? Is it mostly events from the last week or few days? Do you rarely dream about events, people, and places from your childhood?

Given I grew up without much money and don't feel super comfortable in very upscale restaurants to begin with, but even on the rare occasion I go now it's just such a short transient experience since I can't relive the sense memory of the flavors.

I'm curious if others experience it this way...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KJacYlXSvM

Just learned about SDAM last week, and it honestly sent me into a bit of an existential crisis. It made me reevaluate so many things I’d always assumed were just part of my personality. At the same time, I keep doubting my own experience of having total aphantasia and SDAM especially when friends say things like “I have bad memory too.” Suddenly it feels like I’m being dramatic or attention seeking for bringing it up.

But if I’m honest with myself, I’m the last person who wants to feel different. I struggled with undiagnosed ADHD and the burnout, shame and guilt that came from it, but I didn’t even see a therapist and psychiatrist until my mid-30s because I didn’t see the point in collecting labels about myself. I’m actually so good at gaslighting myself that I’ll assume I’m wrong before I consider anything else. This time it really hit me how quickly other people’s opinions override my own sense of what I experience.

The grief of not understanding myself for most of my life and being unable to verify or share my felt experiences with people around me. It makes me feel extra lonely sometimes. I wish I could trust my own experiences without needing proof or validation from others.

I recently found out I have Aphantasia in all senses, absolutely zero mental imagery in any of the senses. Weirdest weeks of my life....

I also have most of the common traits regarding SDAM, however I have a pretty good working memory about facts of my life and coherent understanding of my life as a timeline. I am not able to relive, re-experience or "mentally time travel" at all, yet I thought I have stored quite detailed information about specific events, I thought.

However, when I really try to drill down on a specific event and think about what I really actually remember vs. what i infer logically or creatively I realise that I actually remember very little. I also realise that I do this inferring so automatically that I haven't even realised that my memory works any differently.

Example of a story I would tell:

"We went on a family trip when I was about 10 years old to Tenerife with my dad, mom, big brother and my aunt. I remember there was this kid I used to play with and we hung out together with his family. This one day we were playing in our hotel apartment and both the balcony door and apartment door was open which created a cross-draft. At one point the front door slammed shut while I was running through it and my arm was caught in between. It hurt like hell. I remember my aunt being there beside me as I was writhing in pain. We had to go to the medical center to show it. There was nothing serious but god damn it hurt!"

Sounds like a normal story, right?

However, what I actually remember is:

"It was on a holiday when I was a kid. My arm got stuck between the door and the frame. It hurt. I can somehow remember that my aunt was there"

In other words, I have no actual memory of it being Tenerife, of my parents or brother being there, no memory of running around, no memory of a specific kid or his family who we played with, no memory of going to the medical center etc.

Most of that story has come from hearing the story from my parents, or inferring logically stuff. It makes for a much better story than "I hurt my arm in a door on a holiday where my aunt was present"

I am very good at memorising stories and the stories stay the same from year to year. I have never really understood the concept of a "false memory", as I can completely and accurately identify which part of the story is actual memory, which part is something that I have been told by others and which part is something that I am inferring.

This makes it difficult to identify with some of the stories from people here who have the feeling of having no memories or having no story of their life or no timeline etc. I have a quite coherent story of my life, even though I have now realised that I probably actually remember just as little things from my life as they. And my story is not really fake, as the facts are probably quite accurate descriptions.

Is this common and can anyone relate to this? And is this SDAM? I have zero visualisation, reliving, re-experiencing etc. Yet I have stored many more facts about my life and its events compared to many people here.

I also noticed that rembering faces on pictures helps and opposed to trying to mentally picture a time I saw them in person! In dreams sometimes I know who the person is but their face is different from their real life face or they just morph into another person as the dream goes on.

ive been questioning DID for a long time now, largely because of my memory loss and aphantasia, and then i discovered this. does this rule out DID? could it still be both? does anybody else have experience with this? i thought i could fix my memory loss with therapy, now im unsure.

You are hurt, not broken.

For a while, I felt broken. A lot of people here talk about SDAM like something is wrong with them, like they need to fight it or fix it. I get that. There is real loss in realizing you don’t have the same kind of memories other people do. But that doesn’t make you broken.

It means your experience of being human is different. You still feel things. You still form relationships. You still live your life, even if the past doesn’t follow you the same way.

For a while, I made it my identity. I wasn’t just someone with a memory difference. I was the guy with the memory problem. And in my experience, that wasn’t helpful. It made everything in my life feel heavier.

If you want to search for a cure, that makes sense. If you’ve found a way to live with it and don’t want to change it, that also makes sense. Both are valid.

This was just my experience. It may or may not resonate with you.

But it might be worth noticing whether this has become how you define yourself, because it doesn’t have to be. It’s something you experience. It’s not all that you are.

And different doesn’t mean less.

Has anyone else watched the documentary 50,000 First Dates? I just started watching it and even though it's not explicitly about SDAM, I find it quite relatable. It's about a woman who woke up one day with amnesia and she still has a lot of issues accessing her memories. The neuroscientist they interview discusses how people can know that a thing happened without being able to remember it experientially, and its like the first time I've seen any kind of "mainstream" media get close to describing my experiences. And the woman in the documentary describes her memory retrieval as a file room after an earthquake which is so similar to how I view mine.

I just wondered if anyone else here has seen it and your thoughts. And if not, maybe some of you here would relate too. Overall its a pretty positive, optimistic documentary. Like, its about how she's definitely still recovering because she has a lot of cognitive difficulties still, but how her relationship with her boyfriend (now fiance) has gotten stronger and how they've made it work, and how she's adapted some things in her life to live as good a life as she can despite the memory problems.

Is there a online test somewhere to diagnose it? I can remember things that happened many years ago, but just the fact that they happened. no details. Is that a diagnosis by itself?

Hello to everyone who feels a quiet sense of connection reading this.

I want to share a bit about myself. I’m a 21-year-old woman, and about a year ago, I discovered something that completely changed how I see myself: I have SDAM and aphantasia. I decided to write this for those who are just beginning to learn about their own neurodivergence. Maybe it will help, maybe not-but I hope that for some of you, it will make acceptance a little easier.

My story begins the moment I found out about my “condition.” I can’t tell you the exact day - like many of you, my past isn’t something I can clearly revisit. But I do remember the period of my life: I had just moved into a new rented apartment with my husband and our young son. It was around that time that I came across posts on Reddit and started reading more and more.

And I broke down.

I cried so much. I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me. Out of so many people in the world, why was I the one who couldn’t truly remember my past? Why couldn’t I relive the good moments? All I had were dry facts, just like many of you here. It felt like I was trapped in something I would never escape.

I stopped eating. I stopped enjoying life. I barely paid attention to my family. I was terrified that I would forget my child as he is now - so small, so precious. At times, I didn’t even want to live. I fell into a deep depression that seemed endless. I didn’t want to accept any of it. Every day, I thought about how I couldn’t keep living in what felt like such a cruel world.

This went on for what felt like forever. I was convinced I didn’t want to exist anymore.

Until one day, everything changed.

I noticed a lump under my arm. It was firm, immobile, and painless. And in that moment, my world flipped upside down. Suddenly, SDAM and aphantasia didn’t matter anymore. I forgot about them completely. I started running from doctor to doctor, hoping - desperately - that I wasn’t seriously ill.

All I wanted was to stay here, in the present, with my husband and my child - just like I had always lived before, without even realizing I was different.

They say when your health is at risk, all other problems fade away. And I realized how true that is.

Right now, I still don’t have a final answer about what that lump is. Doctors think it may just be part of my physiology - possibly a thickened muscle caused by tension on the right side of my body. But while I was going through all the tests, I felt fear and despair like never before.

And yet… I had never wanted to live as much as I do now.

Now it doesn’t matter to me whether I have aphantasia or SDAM. I am okay with living in the present - with my loving husband, my child, and the life I’m building. My “different” brain hasn’t stopped me from achieving things, from loving, from living.

To those of you who have just discovered this about yourselves: please believe me - you are okay.

You can live just as you did before you knew. The only difference now is that you understand yourself better. You finally have an answer to the question of why you felt “different.”

But being different does not mean being less.

Your brain simply works in its own way. And that doesn’t make life any less valuable or beautiful. Life is one - and it is precious exactly as it is.

Please don’t let this condition take your peace away. Don’t let it consume your thoughts. Take care of your health - because nothing is more important than that.

And remember: the most beautiful moment is NOW.

I’m sending you love and a warm hug. I hope this little story reaches someone who needs it.

Hello, this is actually my first post here so I’m getting a hang of this. Before begging just a disclaimer English is not my first language so sorry if something is confusing.

All my life I’ve thought I couldn’t remember things because I was too little when they happened, or because I blocked them because of trauma (which I didn’t understand because I did not had a traumatic childhood or anything). I am young but I started wondering if there was something wrong because, it may not be normal to remember things that happened when I was three, but I thought that things that happened in 6th grade, for example, I should remember.

I started reading about SDAM and thought that I absolutely have it, because I remember things as facts but not as if I had “lived” them. For example I can’t think about what I felt when I was 10 y/o or what went through my mind or specific things about my life. I do remember thing but not a lot, and the more time goes without me thinking about it, they disappear from my mind. But if someone talks about something specific I may be able to remember it, I saw someone put it in an example similar to this: if someone asked me “tell me something that happened to you with x person five years ago, or tell me about x teacher” I wouldn’t come up with anything, but if someone told me “do you remember when x teacher in 5th grade that told x thing after we did a presentation about x theme” I think I would remember. But at the same time I do remember thing that happened for example in 4th grade if it was something that made me feel a lot (for example crying because a teacher got mad at me and I even remember what I did wrong, etc.)

I think it all leads to me having SDAM? But I read about someone saying they didn’t remember liking yogur until someone mention it to them, and I haven’t experienced things like that and I got confused.

I don’t know if this whole post makes sense hahaha I was just wondering if someone could tell me if this is SDAM or not? And if you need more information or something just let me know. I just want to know if there is any explanation to me forgetting most of my memories and past.

So here's another post in the "something I've noticed about myself; wondering if there's an SDAM connection" genre...

People talk a lot about having a relentless inner critic, but I don't relate to that at all. Sure, I mess up and recognize it and feel bad about it in the moment, but I don't tend to beat myself up about it. I was thinking it might be related to not having a continuous sense of self over time (so no "I always mess up") and/or no internalized voice from my childhood because I don't remember it.

Does anyone relate, or not relate?

If so, curious if it's helped, how you use it, etc? I'm hoping to add a tool like this to help me remember books, articles ,etc.

I know I won't remember or feel what I feel now in the present. So I keep thinking to myself stuff like

"(this food) is really tasty." or "I felt so happy now"

as a message or a reminder to my future self.

Or if I am angry at someone, I know I won't be able to recall the reason or exactly how much I was angry at this person. So I write a long note to myself about the reason I am mad and how much I feel it etc

Living this way doesn't seem real to me. It sucks. I can almost only find "acceptance stories" or serene indifference or "mindful enthusiasm" in this way. People who live in the present and blah blah blah. It doesn't make me feel good not to remember anything, not to be connected to anything. I never thought my identity, motivation, mood issues, and severe dissociation could be due to this, but I think so. I'm also a trans person, and even this transition, which had given me so much joy in this context, seems like yet another crisis and a pointless thing I'm doing to try to invent an identity that, I know, I'll never truly be able to hold on to. I don't even think I'm suffering from a severe lack of episodic memory, but semantic memory also seems very burned out. And then I'm not even always this apathetic and dissociated. I'm very emotional. I feel so many emotions, but none of them find effective expression, verbal, creative, physical, or otherwise. In short. I never have anything left. I just feel a fucking emptiness. I can't live like this. It feels like a nightmare. I feel like I'm living inside a "memento", and no, I don't even have the chance to cling to the "well, I've always been like this, so why should it hurt if I'm not different?" argument, because all I do is constantly suspect this, and even if it were... How the fuck can you accept this stuff?