After a severe anxiety episode earlier this year, I ended up forgetting all of February. Feels very strange when I recommend a cafe to a friend and he tells me we were just there together three days ago
I do not remember my life and it's fine
121–130 of 244 posts
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#122> "Write about a time during your university studies in which you faced a difficult problem, and what you did to overcome it." I assume these are difficult for anyone who hasn't prepared for them. I've always attributed this to the fact that we usually never categorize/conceptualize events in these terms in the first place.
Yeah, this is mostly an interview prep thing. It's not nearly as bad and soul-sucking as Leetcode, but they both mostly answer the question of, "How much time did you spend preparing for interviews?" For those of us who sometimes have trouble with "tell me about a time..." interview questions, but have no trouble recalling relevant examples when discussing an actual real-world question... I wonder whether part of the…
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Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#123This is exactly what I experience, and for me, this is a huge issue when it comes to 'selling myself', whether it is in an interview, or writing a self-assessment for a review. And just like the author, I couldn't answer questions about hard problems that I've solved, until someone pointed out a moment where I did something they would call an achievements. Now, at that moment I have the right references. It is still…
>This is exactly what I experience, and for me, this is a huge issue when it comes to 'selling myself', whether it is in an interview, or writing a self-assessment for a review. I wonder if this is genetic. I have had a significant number of interviews with people from a couple specific geographic regions that cant relay to me details of a situation where they did XYZ. But given the question simply tell me how they w…
This made me curious, I too have difficulty sharing experiences. What's the region?
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#124> "Write about a time during your university studies in which you faced a difficult problem, and what you did to overcome it." I assume these are difficult for anyone who hasn't prepared for them. I've always attributed this to the fact that we usually never categorize/conceptualize events in these terms in the first place.
I think what I find hardest about that kind of question in particular is that the first clause prompts me to think of problems that I didn't handle very well, but obviously I want to tell a story that makes me look good. Eventually I will probably think of the right story, after I throw out five or six of the wrong stories.
The ones you didn’t handle well are actually the most useful ones - it’s what you learned from that experience that the interviewer will find valuable. What did you change about your approach so that next time you face a difficult problem you’ll handle it well?
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean “hasn’t prepared for them”? Isn’t just living and thinking preparing for questions like this? They’re not that hard.
I don’t think about my life and experiences that way. It’s hard for me to just reach into my past and pick some specific instance of an arbitrary experience category in a portable story form. I have to prep, or otherwise just hope I don’t do bad enough that it damages my prospects.
I could do it really easily if I had 30 minutes to write it out. Doing it in a conversation, though? I might prefer being waterboarded. I'll remember a much better example less than an hour after the call ends, too.
I'm convinced neurotypical people just lie through their teeth in these STAR interviews. It'd be so easy to just tell them some bullshit story. It sure seems like they only want to hear some absolute bullshit.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#126I think I have a fairly similar experience to the author. Different in some respects, I'm not aphantasic, but I resonate strongly with the lack of autobiographical memory and feeling like an observer in my own history. I can't describe how many times someone's asked me what I did last weekend and I told them that I did just had a quiet one at home, then later I'm reminded I actually went skiing or something notable t…
This is uncanny, I was going to write almost this exact comment. I've been told mine is due to a deficiency in working memory, which can then lead to the brain not converting to long term memory. something that ADHDers present commonly with.
Depression causes similar memory impairments.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#127I have aphantasia, SDAM, and face blindness. Like the author i rely on mental models (I wrote a book called visual models for software requirements), Im good at getting to the heart of things and am constantly organizing information so I can remember the principle. I do get anxiety about not remembering people once they pass away. I might only remember a few things about them. But when I look at pictures I can often…
> I do get anxiety about not remembering people once they pass away.
Have you tried remembering how their presence felt/feels? Consciously identifying the feeling that a loved one "carried" was an important part of a recent grieving I went through.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#128Yes job interviews love those situational questions. Sure you can keep a diary of what you did every single day (pain in the ass as that is) but then you'll be assumed to be "reading notes" and "suspect they are lying". So this ends up being bias against people.
Those tire kickers are looking for any reason not to hire people. Trying to prepare for their mind-games is a fool's errand. They've almost always made up their mind when they see your face and decide whether you're fuckable or not.
Do you really want to work for people like that?
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#129While I wouldn't say "yeah I have SDAM" or whatever, yeah generally memory of life is a complete blur, always has been. You can still learn the lessons and make good in the world but not having to carry around a burden of trivial past history.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#130My experience is nearly identical to this, except that I’m not aphantasic. I’m not trying to minimize the effects of aphantasia, but I also don’t think the thrust of the article is about aphantasia nearly as much as it is about SDAM. The map view in Google photos / Apple photos is often my key to looking up the date of a memory. Well... really is that I know I’ve been to certain places, but have no actual memory of b…
What helped me when I was grieving is to remember the feeling of the loved one's presence. At first it's subtle, then as you start enjoying the visualization it becomes more pronounced. Like imagine you're sitting alone and then that person walks in, and that "changes the room", probably in a different way than if any other person walked in. That wonderful feeling that comes over you when you remember the person's presence allows you to maintain a connection even when the person is not there physically. Or, at least, it did for me. This developed in me the sense that the person is still with me and always will be.
I'm pleasantly surprised that this thread has multiple threads about loved ones and grieving.