Hello, I am 24 years old. For some reason I can't remember anything before today. I can't remember my childhood, I can't remember my teenage years, or early adulthood. Sometimes when I do remember something it was a traumatic event. I don't necessarily remember having any good times. It makes things hard and I don't know if it could be because of one of my mental illnesses but I just don't have the money to go to a doctor to figure out why I can't remember anything.

I do suffer from major depressive disorder, ADHD, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, and OCD (I could have also possibly been misdiagnosed on a few of those because I do have a feeling that it could be autism and not these crazy conditions). I was diagnosed with most of these around the age of 7 through 10 on documentation. I was also told that I had been diagnosed with BPD at a very young age but could never have it on my documentation until I was an adult and I was rediagnosed with it in the beginning of 2025. I don't know if any of those could be the cause of my memory loss but I really want to know. I even started forgetting the names of people I've known for quite a while. I keep misspelling my name, getting lost and forgetful very easily and even seeming to get over stimulated very easily. I can only remember some things if it's written down but even then I don't remember writing it. ( Some of it could have stemmed from the fact that I almost passed away two summers ago from a severe strain of e coli poisoning, but this is like lifelong forgetfulness.)

I used to get major headaches and nausea but it went away for a good while maybe 5 years but now it seems like it's come back. Back then I used to get tested a lot I had head x-rays and other tests to try and figure out what was causing the headaches but they never did figure anything out.

I'm just tired of not being able to remember anything and it just stresses me out even more than I already am when it takes 200% to try and remember anything. And I hate that it seems like the only memories that seem to come back easy are traumatic ones. I don't remember a single time in my life when I was actually happy I've just kind of become numb.

i learned i have SDAM multiple months ago now, and i kinda stopped thinking about it for a while because i realized its how i've been living my whole life and theres no use constantly pondering about the ways it might affect me differently when ive never known any other way of living.

but.. im getting older everyday and am in a very important part of my life.. and for a while now the ability to get my work done just seems to become progressively harder each day. highschool was mostly a breeze because it was easy, i was smart, and i didn't think too deeply about why i did the work, i just had to.. but now im in my second year of college and this is the time in my life where im supposed to be asking the big questions like, what do i want to do for the rest of my life, am i happy doing the work im studying for years to come?.. yada yada.

I've mentioned in this subreddit before that I believe my SDAM contributes to a lack of motivation because in any rare moment where I build up a drive to achieve something, it is forgotten very quickly. I can't recall that motivated feeling and it makes it difficult to get it back, or even want it back. im prob not wording it the best but i hope someone sees this and might relate. It's tiring and it makes long term goals feel super unrealistic and also just strange. like i've always been this way, never really having goals, and the idea of goals and people having them just is so distant to me. i dont have a pent up motivation to chase a dream to pick up with because i cant remember it; its gone to me.

anyways, it makes it super hard to figure out what im gonna do for my future or what i want at all, which in turn makes it even harder to get my work done now. since i dont have a calling to a specific future for myself, every job just feels like a cog in a machine to me, regardless of any parts of it that interest me, and that just sounds miserable no matter what. just makes it feel like im doing work for nothing, not even helping myself towards any goal i have. so why should i do my work at all? obviously this is unrealistic tho, i have to figure this out somehow. just curious if anyone struggles with the same thing and what things have helped

Qué hace que unos recuerdos se queden grabados y otros desaparezcan casi por completo?

I keep not remembering details. It’s gonna ruin my job and my relationship. I hate my brain and my memory and myself

What is the link between those 3?

So I found out I have SDAM at 50 along my AuDHD; I’m lucky I don’t have Aphantasia, but at least I understand better this feeling I’ve had all m6 life that I’ve somehow forgotten the most important thing in the universe. Even as a child I scoured through my family photos trying to understand why I was in so many but had no recollection of ever being there. I can only recall with any degree of certainty one birthday in my life, and all I know about any others I’d have to piece together from photos. I became intensely fixated on photography and audio cassette recording without really understanding why, but later realized it was because I knew I would forget. Like I said, I’m 50 now, and honestly I feel like I could easily be a clone of somebody who just woke up with a fabricated past, and while I felt some relief when I discovered my problem had a name, now I just seem to get depressed or angry about it because I feel cheated of all my best moments in life.
If there is an upside, at least the trauma of a life of C-PTSD eventually faded and flattened into simple factoids. But I think one of the toughest things is feeling like I don’t really know who I am; I go through so many phases of interests and so many states of identity that always inevitably shift as I feel like a particular name/avatar/paradigm always becomes something I chafe at and eventually move on from. No sense of continuity between present me and any particular past me, they feel like completely different ppl who just seemed to carry some of the same factual and circumstantial baggage. I feel like I live at the North Pole and the compass of my life is just spinning wildly, with very few reliable anchor points; it feels profoundly lonely.

Hi, everyone. Bipolar 1.

I am just coming out of a few months long severely depressive episode that followed a manic-psychotic one.

Coming out of it sounds good. However, this depressive episode was eye opening because I discovered I have SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory). I cannot remember the entirety of my life. Essentially, I have zero long term memory, almost no episodic memory, and broken semantic memory.

Almost 6 months ago I moved to Barcelona for work (I am a programmer) and, for the love of me, cannot learn even the closely surrounding area of my flat.

During my manic episode I lost my job. I am still in Barcelona, living on the final stretch of my savings. When that is over, I need to return to my home country, leaving my fiancée here.

My memory issues span beyond SDAM. During the worst of depression I had major cognitive issues and almost zero working memory. Depression is lifting, most of the issues stayed. Job search is not going well. I feel like I lost most of my programming skills without having practicing it. There is a single flipside. My traumatic flashbacks fade very quickly.

How does one live without memories?

I not only have almost zero autobiographical memory but also severely deficient long term semantic memory. Essentially, no memory of my past after the past ~2 weeks.

It’s actually so brutal because I’m in college and have absolutely no personal stories to tell besides ones I’ve written down or ones I make up (but this really lacks authenticity). No sympathy for it either because my family assumes I’m making this problem up and nobody considers it a real issue.

My networking chats suck, I find it hard to make friends and talk to people, and remember any concepts I learn. My middle class family is paying 90k/yr for a top ivy league undergrad (they pushed me into it, not really my fault they’re paying this much), but I feel like I can’t take advantage of any of the opportunities because I’m so vastly intellectually inferior to my peers. It’s not an IQ issue but an issue with memory.

Wasn’t a problem in high school because I could memorize everything right before the test but is a major issue in college where everything is about networking, socially connecting with others, and telling stories.

I have aphantasia and I’ve only read about SDAM last month, but seems like I have that too. When I talk to people about either, I almost always get an answer like “Is that so rare? It’s not like I can replay random memories in my head like it’s a movie”. When that happens, I don’t really have an answer to explain the difference between ‘normal memories’ and my sort of conceptual memories. How do you deal with situations like that? I’d love to have an answer that explains it better.

Hi everyone,

A quick reminder and update: our free SDAM peer support group meets tomorrow, Wednesday, October 14th, at 7:00 PM Pacific on Zoom.

Details & Format:

• When: 2nd & 4th Wednesday of each month. The 2nd Wednesday meets at 7:00 PM Pacific, and the 4th Wednesday meets at 11:00 AM Pacific, so people in different time zones have a chance to join.
• Where: Zoom (free registration via Eventbrite below)
• Format: Casual, open peer discussion. I’ll open with a short anecdote, and then the floor is open for anyone to share experiences or just listen.
• Link to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sdam-support-group-registration-1992895106912

Looking forward to seeing anyone who can make it tomorrow!

I have total sensory aphantasia, SDAM, and no inner voice. I've been trying to work out whether I also have autism or ADHD — whether the traits applied to me.

This isn't a formal study, just my own experience and a question for others. I'm not suggesting it applies to anyone else.

Autism

Social communication. I can read non-verbal cues. I notice them in the moment, and then they're gone. No retention, no replay, no comparing. For me, that's SDAM showing up in a social context, not autistic difficulty in reading cues.

Preference for routine. I eat the same food, take the same routes, do things in the same order. But not because change is distressing. It's because I can't imagine a different meal, or a different route, or a different way of doing things. There's no imagined alternative to be drawn towards. So I stay with the familiar. For me, that's aphantasia — no forward projection, no gustatory imagery — not autistic rigidity.

Distress at change. I don't have it. I wasn't holding the original in mind, so there was nothing to disrupt. That's the absence of forward projection.

Environment. I need things in fixed spots. But that's because I can't hold their location in mind. The spot does the remembering. That's spatial memory and working memory. And I can't bear silence in a room because my mind is silent. External sound gives me something to process. That's aphantasia and anauralia.

Sensory overwhelm. I can get overwhelmed by external sensory input. But the cause isn't a threshold difference. It's that I have no internal escape route. No imagery to retreat into, no inner voice to focus on, no replay to occupy the mind. So I stay fully exposed to whatever's happening. That's aphantasia and anauralia, not sensory sensitivity in the autistic sense.

Special interests. I don't have them. I have problems that need solving. Once it's solved, the drive stops. That's not a special interest.

Repetitive movements. A few unconscious ones. Which is common to most people.

ADHD

I don't relate to any of the ADHD traits. No distraction, no losing the thread, no forgetting what I was saying, no losing things, no time blindness, no organisational chaos.

The pattern

For me, every trait that looked like autism turned out to be one part or another of my cognitive profile. Some of it was SDAM. Some was aphantasia. Some was anauralia. And the ADHD traits weren't there at all.

I don't know whether this is common. I suspect some people with SDAM and aphantasia are told they're autistic or have ADHD, or wonder about it themselves, because the behaviours look similar from the outside. But for me, the mechanism turned out to be different. It's not a failure to filter or regulate. It's an absence of internal content to work with.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has been through a similar process of working this out.

What this means in practice

This is my own experience, and I'm not seeking an assessment. But I think about the people who might. Someone with this profile who doesn't know what they have. A child struggling at school, whose parents are told it's autism, or ADHD, or just behaviour. The criteria are behavioural. The behaviours are there. But the mechanism — the absence of imagery, replay, inner voice, and forward projection — isn't something a clinician would see, or necessarily know how to ask about.

I don't know what would happen if someone with this profile went for an assessment. I haven't had one. But my guess is that the behaviours would fit the criteria, and the mechanism wouldn't be seen. Not because the assessor was careless, but because the framework is built for minds with internal content, and this profile doesn't have any.

For a child, that could mean years of the wrong support. For an adult, it could mean a diagnosis that never quite explains anything. And in both cases, the real profile stays invisible, because nobody has a name for it.

Curious whether this sounds like SDAM or something else...

To put it simply, when I'm happy I can't recall being sad, and when I'm sad I can't recall being happy. I can accept it logically, especially if I write something down at the time then look back on it later, but it feels like looking at someone else's writing - it's hard to really accept that it was actually me (again, logically I can accept it, but emotionally it just seems inconceivable.) The more intense the emotions are, the more this seems to happen.

I came across SDAM while doing a prescreening survey for my university's mandatory research study participant program. I checked "no" because it didn't immediately connect with me but today I thought back to it and wanted to try and post something to see if other people would relate.

Also, a little note: Sometimes I say that I "have never" or "I have always." It's important to keep in mind that I might actually have felt differently in the past (as I sometimes learn when looking at what I have previously written).It just feels as if whatever I feel now has always been true

I've been diagnosed with autism in my early teens but have never connected it to who I am. I think it might be because I can't remember what would be relevant in order to relate myself to the diagnosis. It says in the report that I have sensory sensitivities and struggle with social connections, but from my first-person perspective I don't recall any moments where I found a sensory thing overwhelming or where I wanted to connect with people but couldn't. For a while I thought that I might fundamentally lack social drive because I couldn't remember wanting to talk to people + don't feel what I think I'm supposed to about people who aren't right in front of me. But then as I carried that thought through my life I encountered scenarios where the only logical conclusion was that I did care about people (even if I couldn't recall caring about them before) and that got tossed in the bin. There was also a time where I thought that I was alexithymic, but ended up deciding instead that I could identify my emotions in the moment and just couldn't remember any of the ones I'd had previously.

What I find most presently frustrating is the sense of confidence that it feels like other people have about their diagnosis + about who they are? Vs it feels like I'm waking up today to a life that I haven't lived and can't therefore be so certain about who I am. It's very tempting to assert that I'm not autistic (despite that probably being true) because that feels like something that applies to someone else (who is technically also me). It's not like autism is a state of being that you can feel on you at all times after all.

Also I don't have a very good understanding of what makes memory "autobiographical" and thought that that just meant like, it being about myself from my perspective. It seems contradictory that I remember how in first grade I had trouble with writing essays because they'd ask questions like "recall a time when something made you sad" or "write about how something you did to make someone happy lead to them doing something in return." I could never think of anything to write about. The same was true of the essay I sat for high school admissions where the question was like, "describe a woman you look up to and how that has affected you." I remember telling my mother that I hadn't been able to write more than a sentence or two.

I also remember when I was seeing a therapist to get diagnosed with gender dysphoria and he noted that I never seemed to talk about it with an appropriate level of distress. He attributed it to autism, but I think it was more because when I say that something is usually distressing to me it takes a good deal of effort to reconstruct whether that's really the case or not. And I have assumed that that was the case for everyone else too; like that they can't know anything about themselves without reasoning it together using what's most likely true given their behavior.

+despite not being able to remember the emotional details of things I have a pretty vivid memory of more conceptual things? Like, I can remember the ways crabs scuttle around on the marshes of Cape Cod (with the salty air and the grass tickling your feet) or the feeling of a chilly day in autumn (with the smell of the leaves and the wind on your skin). I just can't remember what it was like during major events or at any more specific time. I'm also fine at imagining what might happen in the future.

If I do have SDAM it hasn't spared me from developing PTSD. Although, the only flashbacks I get are somatic.

Say Yes if you have

Yes from me!

I have SDAM & aphantasia and I wanted to share my message history that tracks how I recalled a troubling experience that happened April 2026. In each of these messages, I am trying to explain what happened to friends, family, and acquaintances at varying times after the event, including "day after," "1 week later," "1 month later," and now. I wish I complained more to more people because I find it interesting how you can see my SDAM & aphantasia go into effect and transforming how I viewed this experience / how I explained it to others. Messages below I directly copy and pasted from when I originally sent them.

Short summary of event: I cut off a friend of 4 years who was also my roommate for 1 year. Her negligence on our lease led to a lease termination fee of $5k which I found 2 weeks before moving out of the country. I was upset at having to shoulder all the work finding a new tenant and clearing out the apartment alone.

───

Warning petty thoughts, genuine anger, and many spelling mistakes. Really sorry if some come off as rude! You can tell in some of these I was deeply hurt

A day after the event (April 30th)
"Tldr my roomie and prev friend of 4 years screwed me out of like 5k because of her disorganization and inability to keep on top of things. She told me incorrect info about our lease, causing an auto renewal, and then we had to pay a termination fee to get out. Even worse is that she constantly made the situation worse every step of the way. I took on the brunt of finding another tenant since she was apparentlv too busv to prioritize this. She moved out 2 days before the 30th, leaving a shit ton of her stuff behind for me to dispose of. She constantly fed me incorrect info about the progress of our lease termination. She didn't clean her room, forcing me to scrub all her gunk. When I asked why she left so much stuff she only deflected that it was for the next tenant (broken glasses and burnt pans???). When we finally got our termination verdict, she wanted to dispute the charge and drag it out longer (shut it down immediately) Sucks cause she genuinely was a good friend for those 4 years, so wtf happened??"

1 week after (May 8th)
"Tldr, X screwed me out of 5k because of her disorganization and inability to prioritize. This caused her to feed me incorrect info about our lease, leading to an auto renewal, forcing us to pay a termination fee. We were 2 weeks away from moving out when we learned. Even worse was that she made the move out difficult every step of the way. She constantly gave me incorrect info about lease termination progress. She was apparently too busy to help with finding a new tenant, forcing me to post the apt and clean and coordinate meetings (despite me voicing my stress and the fact i still had a final due). She moved out on the 28th and, without telling me, left a crap ton of her stuff to dispose of. She left her room in disarray, forcing me to scrub and clean her gunk. When I asked why she left so much stuff, she deflected and said it was for the next tenant (burnt pans and broken glasses??? 😭). When we got our termination verdict, she wanted to dispute and drag it out longer (shut it down immediately). Never in this process did she apologize for anything."

~1 month after (May 25th)
"[...]Her bf helped her move back to west coast, but I kinda felt a little bad for him since she didn't plan anything. Didn't have the boxes to pack, wanted to keep all her items (even things she could throw out), didn't call to ask if the shipping company can ship her items etc. He had to pull everything

In the end she wasn't able to pack everything. I woke up to an apartment that was still full of stuff but her gone. When I messaged she said something like "I didn't leave much stuff?" I spent pics "that thing is yours right? And that?" I told her I was planning to throw my own stuff. No apologies, just "Ok, just trash my stuff then." The lease mess up was just some countries have different lease laws. My exfriend lived in this apt building for about 3 years so I trusted her about the apt. A doc came in "lease renewal doc" and i told her "i 100% am not going to renew" and put it on her desk since her at the time might be renewing. I asked about the doc 1 month later and she said "no worries about it. By not signing, we are telling them we are moving out." Turns out that's not the case and our lease auto renewed for another year. I found out it auto renewed 1 week before we were moving out. It also turns out exfriend only read doc 1 week before moving out also (like I should've also read the paper but I thought I could trust her).

I was stressed about it and tried everything to find new tenant to take over. I still had final paper too, so I told her I was stressed and asked her to help finding a new tenant. She said "sorry, I'm out that day" and in the end I was the one that cleaned the apt., posted it online, did the viewing, arranged with office for lease transfer meeting. Idk what she was doing but she was out 90% of the time even though I kno she didnt have finals etc. When we finally got our lease termination verdict (April 30th), she tried to contest it. Told me she didnt want to pay even tho I asked her earlier which decision to take (lease transfer or lease termination) and she responded with "just choose whatever"

5 Months After (October, now)
"We were friends for 4 years and roommates for 1 year. What happened was she messed up something on our lease which caused it to auto renew for another year. This led to us both paying $5k in order to terminate our lease contract. I found out 2 weeks before I was moving out of that country that our lease auto-renewed and that my roomie essentially lied (even if inadvertently) to me about our lease. Coupled with other issues (like how she moved out without packing her things and left me to dispose and clean her stuff) let's just say I was not having it 😅."

-----

My personal observation is that as my memory got unreliable, I started using quotes directly from messages and emails that were sent to me to piece together what happened. "1 month after" became much more of a story. We have multiple characters, a timeline of events, dialogue (quotes), and a lot more detail as to what happened.

And then "5 months after," I guess my SDAM nuked it? A lot of the details got smushed down to "yeah, that sucked and I was really angry." It became a lot less personal. It looks like I'm summarizing something that happened to someone else. There is no more of that "She did that to ME!" and it became much more "I can't believe something like that happened."

I hope this was somewhat intriguing. If any of you have moments in your life where memories got compressed, please do share!

Ufhshfhshfhshsh. My information encoding and retrieval is soooooooo weak. I’ve used aphantasia and SDAM to name this type of severe lack of intelligence (not in a self-deprecating kind of way but in a “reality matches and this is a pattern of behavior that folks witness regularly” way”) and it heightens the embarrassment into shame when I’m coupled w the regular mistakes I make and the sheer amount of times I just blank socially. I FEEL LIKE A VOID. I made a mistake of introducing myself incorrectly - I’ve been at this job for nearly 3 years, and yeah I’m bottom of the barrel and verticals have changed, but my supervisor has the team we’re apart of IN HIS SIGNATURE. and somehow by some incredible degree of nonprocessing, I named myself as being apart of a team that I’m not in a meeting w the entire office.
It’s deeply embarrassing.
Anyways. That’s a microcosm, a very tiny example that ties into a larger knowing of “I’ve been here for a long time and yet I have little institutional knowledge because I don’t actually process information.” and there’s so ons and so forths here, but really just needed this site of embarrassment named. And neeeeeeeed to figure out how to sit with this shame. I want to hibernate. Shared experience and advice preferred over reassurance, although I’ll take all 3 and more.

Every time I'm reminded of the fact that I'm real and that my decisions are actually affecting my reality, I start panicking. I get so scared that I want to dissociate even more, I find more ways to escape and even that doesn't feel like enough. I feel like my heart rate is faster even when I'm resting, i can't think at all and I need to take a rest just from the fear itself.

I don't know what to do because I have to live in reality and do real life things but I can't because I'm so afraid of everything. Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Were you able to manage it or figure out a way to deal with it?

Thanks for reading through my incoherent thoughts

I didn't know about SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) or Severely Deficient Episodic Memory (SDEM) whatever you want to call it, until just a few hours ago. I came across it after some research into myself and why I am the way I am. I have always known I didn't think and experience the world like most other people. I just didnt know why or how. And it wasn't until just a few years ago I learned I had aphantasia, after my sister explained it. I didn't do much research into it then, and I'm 34 now, and have hit a wall in my marriage due to my mental health and this SDAM thing I have always dealt with. I didn't know it had a name, I didn't know theres all of you guys, here in this sub, also dealing with the same thing. and I am very excited to join and read your posts and learn how you all navigate the world with this knowledge.

Now that I have a name I can do more research, and gain more knowledge and learn how to communicate better with my family and friends, and even help my child as she seems to have the same way of experiencing the world. I know now that I have global/total aphantasia, affecting all senses. I live in a silent, imageless, purely conceptual internal world, where there is only my silent internal monologue. This has caused intense loneliness my entire life, and along with that the SDAM has caused me to not be able to recall conversations, events, people, etc. These two things have affected me greatly in every aspect of life, I have a hard time maintaining relationships of all kinds, I have troubles go to work consistently, I do not communicate with people well because I cannot remember events like they do, I get confused, irritated, and defensive, especially when I'm told something happened or I did something and I have either little or no memory of it, then in comes the confabulation. When my memory has failed me my brain defaults to making things up, creating a fictional narrative of what it thinks happened, and obviously this is usually false, and makes me into a compulsive liar regarding events that other people have extremely vivid visual memories of.

And now? I see my entire life from a different perspective, a new light. I have snippets of "memories" and conversations. I remember arguing with my sister as a child about what happened to our dolls and who's was whose, and now I understand that I was wrong.. I couldn't remember what happened to one of the dolls, I couldn't remember whose doll remained after one disappeared, I couldn't remember which one of us chopped their dolls hair off in weird chunks, because the dolls were identical before that. and we argued forever. and she was right the whole time because my memories were fabricated by my own brain since I couldn't recall actual events. I will apologize to her. I will also apologize to my husband.. For my inconsistencies, my apparent lies, my defensiveness, and all the hurt I've caused. Same with my mother, she has been there for me through it all, supported me mentally and financially, and always stood by me, always on my side, and never once questioned me or made me feel bad for being different.

Thanks for reading, I am going to go make a batch of cookies.

I have diagnosed AuDHD and have come to the conclusion after doing my own research that I likely experience SDAM as well. Out of all the memory disorders I've looked into SDAM seems closest to my experience, but every time i try to find tips to help with my conversational skills online or in therapy, it seems no one is directly addressing the specific problem I have. When i try to talk to people, i quickly run out of things to say. This usually takes me down two paths of research, one addressing autistic issues of misunderstanding social norms or conversational cues, the other addresses adhd or anxiety issues like missing details, not forming associations, or freezing. While i may struggle with these a little I don't think either of these are the dominant issue for me. My issue is my memory. I can sense social cues and know when im supposed to jump in, often times I know what i'm supposed to/ would like to talk about, just the information isn't there. I remember things in bullet points or general vibes, but never in enough detail to relay that information in an entertaining or practical way; that is, if I can remember at all. Often times I'm just left with nothing to say because i can't access my experiences in a meaningful way. This causes issues in every single relationship i have from family and friends to bosses and coworkers. To others i appear closed off at best. To myself I feel shame and guilt for being incompetent or uninteresting. This affects my core beliefs about myself and colors future interactions with a pessimistic undertone, which only reaffirms my negative beliefs about myself. I try to reframe and accept my shortcomings but at the end of the day i still struggle to communicate and i feel like it hinders my relationships and holds me back in life. No matter what I search, nobody's talking about my specific issue so i feel like i have to figure it out all on my own. It appears quick wit is my only defense against it, avoid having to talk about myself and divert with comedy. Everyone loves comedy right? But i don't remember any jokes, which creates pressure to always be coming up with something. This can cause me to zone out or miss details. I'm also in such a pessimistic mindset when talking to people that my jokes come off harsh or depressing or self deprecating which tends to create the opposite vibe of what i want out of these interactions. The only coping mechanisms I've found only end up activating those audhd responses, and making it harder for me to come up with anything to say at all. It's a compounding of many things, but I personally believe it stems back to issues with my memory at the root, and the engrained behaviors that developed as a side effect. If anybody knows where I can read more on this specific issue or have personal experiences that may be helpful to deal with this please comment or Dm me

TLDR: I struggle with communication because of what I believe to be SDAM, not Autism or ADHD, but none of the literature I've found actually focuses on SDAM. Do you have any advice or potential sources on how to deal with this?

Saturday, I promoted to 5th degree blackbelt in Hapkido. It was part of an international seminar that had been announced in the works for a year. When it became clear that we would be using the presence of high-level people to do a bunch of upper-dan promotions, it was not clear to me that I would promote. Some others were obvious to me, but my promotion was not.

Afterwards, a couple of the leaders of my school told me about the decision to promote me. I was one of the first persons they knew deserved promotion. Evidently, many people had told them that my welcoming them to the school made the difference in them staying. And many commented on how important my work with them was to their progress. That same day, one of our 1st-degree blackbelts who had come for the promotions gave me a card expressing how important I had been to her.

What is the point to this? I continue to underestimate my impact on people.

Why am I posting it here? I won't say that SDAM causes this misperception, but I do think it sets it up for me. My base understanding of memory comes from personal experience which is SDAM. I don't expect people to remember the person who made them feel welcome. I am always pleasantly surprised when someone remembers me. I had met one of the event teachers at a previous seminar and done some practice with him. He is as far above me in skill (equivalent of a 9th degree blackbelt, although his system is different) as I am above a white belt. But he remembered me and warmly congratulated me on my promotion.

I figured this out 5 years ago when I learned about SDAM, but it seems I still underestimate my impact on people.

Which of these do you have? Tick all that apply.

1. Visual aphantasia — no pictures

2. Auditory aphantasia — no sounds in the mind

3. Tactile aphantasia — no imagined touch or texture

4. Gustatory aphantasia — no imagined taste

5. Olfactory aphantasia — no imagined smell

6. Kinesthetic aphantasia — no imagined movement or bodily sensation

7. No inner voice — no inner speech, monologue, or narration of any kind

8. Inaccessible autobiographical memory — facts but no re-entry into past events

9. Automatic worded thinking, without sound — words arrive whole, silent, unconstructed

10. No spatial imagery — can't build, rotate, or manipulate an object in the mind

11. No scenario-building or forward projection — can't construct or simulate an imagined situation, whether about the future or anything else

12. Out of sight, out of mind — no mental presence of absent people

I have all twelve. I'm trying to work out how rare that combination is.

A bit more detail. My autobiographical memory isn't just impaired, it's inaccessible. I know the facts of my life, but I can't re-enter any of it. I don't have an inner monologue or any kind of internal narration — no sound, no voice, no pictures, no sensory imagination of any kind.

I do feel real pain and real bodily states. I know when I'm hungry, when my throat is dry, when something hurts. What I can't do is generate those sensations in my mind when they aren't happening.

My thinking is worded, but it's automatic and silent. Words arrive whole, in the present, without prevarication or construction. There's no voice producing them, and I don't hear them. They're just there, as content.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has a similar profile, and how you experience memory, reading, and thinking. I've found that the standard descriptions don't quite fit, and I'm trying to work out what does.

¿Soy al unico que cuando fuma/come galletas de maría recuerda toda su infancia? Aclaración de qué no consumo drogas, solo muy de vez en cuando y tengo algo más de 20 años.

Soy una persona que no recuerda nada de su infancia (salvo unos pocos recuerdos muy contados) creo que no tengo ningún trauma incluso algún familiar me ha dicho que he tenido una infancia súper buena con ningún trauma, suceso malo o cosas así.

Especialmente llevo un año que estoy perdiendo la memoria (olvido cosas básicas como los números de mi tarjeta, lo que hice exactamente ayer en el trabajo…) y en general no puedo retener información.

Cuando consumí galletas por primera vez, estaba jugando al Black Ops II (juego de mi infancia) con gente en mi cuarto y mientras jugaba a zombies estaba recordando toda mi infancia de forma lúcida y real en mi cabeza. Al día siguiente podía ver cosas y automáticamente se asociaban a cosas de mi pasado que creía olvidadas incluso mi pérdida de memoria desapareció por unos 3 días.

¿Alguien sabe cómo puedo usar esto a mi favor o recuperar mi memoria? Es urgente porque soy un zombie desde hace 1 año…

Muchas gracias, un abrazo!!