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I do not remember my life and it's fine

aethermug.com

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Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#61
post #45

> For example, I think I may also have mild face-blindness, the difficulty in recognizing faces and linking them with names. Usually, it doesn't cause major issues, and with some effort and repetition, I can learn to recognize people. But the face-blindness really rears its head when I meet someone not-so-familiar in an unexpected place, like random encounters on a train. Since I don't have the usual contextual cues…

[flagged]

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#62
I’m realized years ago I have full blown aphantasia. But I don’t suffer from autobiographical memory deficiencies. For me it’s akin to what happens when you close your eyes for a moment then open them again. I’m not shocked by everything in the room “appearing” suddenly. I knew it was all there, but not because I visualized it while my eyes were closed. So when I remember past events, it’s with that same sensation of being there but just having closed my eyes to it. I do dream with full imagery.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#63
post #61
post #45

> For example, I think I may also have mild face-blindness, the difficulty in recognizing faces and linking them with names. Usually, it doesn't cause major issues, and with some effort and repetition, I can learn to recognize people. But the face-blindness really rears its head when I meet someone not-so-familiar in an unexpected place, like random encounters on a train. Since I don't have the usual contextual cues…

[flagged]

I often cannot recognize people I know mildly well, especially if I lack context clues. This is not due to carelessness: trying harder does not help. But I do not have complete face-blindness.

Whether this means that you are wrong about when prosopagnosia is a continuum, or whether it means we should characterize how things work for me in terms separate from prosopagnosia (and thus perhaps in terms separate from face-blindness), I do not think it is productive for you to basically insult me and everyone like me by attributing our behavior to not trying hard enough. I've tried quite hard.

It's very socially bad not to be able to recognize people. I pay high costs for this inability and I would love to eliminate it if I could. I think (as the OP suggests) being aphantasiac might make it difficult for me to remedy this inability, because having a visual memory might be the best (the only?) way to record features of faces well enough to recognize people you know mildly well. I am aphantasiac and that too is something I cannot remedy. I would appreciate not being lumped in with assholes.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#65
post #25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the time when people describe aphantasia, I want to say something like "you realize that most people don't 'see' things in their mind as clear as open eye visuals, right?" but I keep quiet because I know that the worst thing you can do with something like this is make them feel as though you've invalidated something that has become a core pillar of their identity by that point.

That's the thing, some people do see things in their mind that clearly. It's about as rare as full aphantasia, but it's absolutely a spectrum.

There's really no way to know this, as it's all based on subjective experiences in which two people could easily describe the same sensation differently.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#66
post #61
post #45

> For example, I think I may also have mild face-blindness, the difficulty in recognizing faces and linking them with names. Usually, it doesn't cause major issues, and with some effort and repetition, I can learn to recognize people. But the face-blindness really rears its head when I meet someone not-so-familiar in an unexpected place, like random encounters on a train. Since I don't have the usual contextual cues…

[flagged]

What in biology isn’t a continuum?

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#67
post #61
post #45

> For example, I think I may also have mild face-blindness, the difficulty in recognizing faces and linking them with names. Usually, it doesn't cause major issues, and with some effort and repetition, I can learn to recognize people. But the face-blindness really rears its head when I meet someone not-so-familiar in an unexpected place, like random encounters on a train. Since I don't have the usual contextual cues…

[flagged]

Developmental prosopagnosia affect as many as 2.5% of the population and it's on an continuum¹

1- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5398751/

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#68

I'd love to see a study of correlations between aphantasia and other properties of the mind. 1. schizophrenia? (blind people never seem to be schizophrenic) 2. artistic skill 3. alzheimers and dementia 4. empathy - the ability to see yourself in other's shoes

[deleted]

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#69
I’ve gone through periods of life where I didn’t recall dreaming for years at a time, and others where I have frequent, vibrant dreams. I’ve had sleep paralysis many times when I was younger, a handful of extremely lucid dreams, times when I close my eyes and see nothing, and times when I can close my eyes and visualize clear, fully-actualized images.

I bring this up for two reasons: I wonder how fluid this sort of thing is, and I wonder what factors can dial up and down the intensity. Nicotine, patches in particular, absolutely supercharged my dreams to be bright, vivid, insane, bizarre hallucinations.

In general, my memory of novel events / odd connections / hilariously specific details is quite good, going back many years. I can also forget what I’m supposed to be doing right now within minutes. I can often remember when/where/how I read/saw something but not WHAT I read, so I have to retrace my steps to get to where I know the information is that I’m seeking.

It all seems to oscillate and shift and it’s fascinating.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're hard for me because the events that a lot of people consider achievements don't really stand out in my memory. Often I tend to forget they happened. I've solved some programming problems that I considered quite mundane and unremarkable, yet others think it was some great achievement. While it might have been hard at the time, in hindsight the events seem unremarkable and just me doing my routine duties. > "Wr…

This I am finding a problem. If you are a senior developer you are leading every day and doing senior things but it is like walking. I don't remember each step I took. In the performance review you now need to say "On this Tuesday I needed to get from the salon to the baker so I initiated by motor neurone and walked out of the salon. This made me get there in 5 minutes which had the impact of my mum getting her cinna…

in a job interview

"Tell me about a time when you tripped over while commuting."

"Tell me about a time when your feet touched each other during a walk."

"Tell me about a time when you were facing north-east and a bus passed in front of you." [follow-up question] "What type of bus was it? [suburban, long distance, etc] You say you saw it, so walk me by your visual experience."

If you have lived your life as a walking person, as you seem to imply by your comment, you surely have done these things multiple times, right? Failing to respond in a truthful and satisfactory manner will be counted heavily against you.

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