Wait... so those with SDAM are never subject to intrusive thoughts about some hideously embarrassing event that happened decades ago, and that only they would have remembered?
What a blessing.
I do not remember my life and it's fine
81–90 of 244 posts
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
What in biology isn’t a continuum?
Many medical conditions, especially inherited ones, e.g, Down Syndrome.
I don’t know much about it, but a source used by Wikipedia says:
“It is also possible for a non-disjunction to happen after fertilization (about a 1-2% chance). In this case, some of the patient's cells are normal and some contain the extra chromosome. This is called mosaicism. Patients with this type of Down syndrome have milder symptoms.”
https://www.medschool.lsuhsc.edu/genetics/down_syndrome.aspx
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#83This 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 would deal with it.
It made me super curious, because you could see in their job history that they definitely had those experiences but could not recall them.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#84I have this too, or something similar at least. I have the same issues around visual memory and first person memory. I noticed it specifically when talking to my wife about remembering feelings and emotions. I have a lack of empathy (different to sympathy) and when looking back at past events I struggle to feel the emotions I was feeling at the time. I can recreate them using facts and things I understand but it's di…
[deleted]
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#85This 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…
Ask people you worked with who have a good impression of you for a list. Better yet, book an hour of video chat and talk through it with them. They will have a lot of examples. Write them down.
I mostly blundered my way through this through this recent round of tons of interviews, and by the end of it, my "Tell me about a time when…" doc is actually what it should/could have been at the start!
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> will be counted heavily against you.
Yes, that's the problem
Though, as someone who's done a number of those interviews over the years, I'd replace the word truthful with manner that the interviewer regards as truthful
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#87> "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.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think this really has much to do with fidelity/clarity, so much as accuracy. One could have an extremely high fidelity visual of a bike that is incorrect and you wouldn’t say they had aphantasia as a result. I have aphantasia, I have no voluntary visual component to my mind as far as I can tell. I also have quite a good memory. If I were to draw a bike from memory I suspect I would make similar mistakes as th…
I think I have aphantasia, and there's two interesting things about this to me. One, I couldn't tell you what sound a ball makes when it bounces on a table. I've never thought about absence of other senses but, thinking about it a bit, I can't really think of what a glass feels like or a fire smells like either. I have descriptions for all of them, like a glass is hard or a fire smells like.. smoke? Not really the be…
I also have aphantasia, and find it really interesting to hear about people thinking of things in a similar way to me! Thinking about the ball in terms of the parabola it makes it exactly what I do too. Similarly, the ball doesn't exist as a physical "ball", but rather the knowledge of the concept of a sphere (which doesn't then have size or colour). The table, not a physical table, but the concept of a plane (with no thickness, size, colour (or legs)) - just the 'concept' of the important properties.
Despite aphantasia I have always been able to conceptualise spatial relationships, but it feels much less like trying to visualise it, and much more like "understanding" the fundamental properties connecting each thing.
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#89This 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…
If you don’t mind me asking, what was the situation between your parents?
Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine
#90I have aphantasia, and today I learned that I also have SDAM. There are benefits. For example, I find that I have no issue forgiving people. It's more work for me to harbor a grudge. I don't relive the burden of that initial pain of betrayal when someone close to me harms me, so it's easy to forgive and literally forget. Fun fact: My dreams are very rarely visual.
How about the pain of reliving old memories? I could do with a little less of that right now.
I also have aphantasia and I do believe I have SDAM, too. I also had a traumatic childhood and am a combat veteran. I think I've always been this way but that's a hard question for me to truly answer and is one that I grapple with a lot, actually.
> How about the pain of reliving old memories? I could do with a little less of that right now.
I don't relive the past the way it seems most people do. I know what it's like to feel hurt or feel stuck but I don't generally feel emotions about things in my past. That's good because I've endured a lot of bad shit but also sucks because my wedding day is kind of like any other day to me, as was the birth of our kids. I guess I know all of the good and all of the bad things that have happened to me -- though I don't really carry them with me the way some people seem to, they're part of me but I don't spend much if any time ever thinking about them -- but I don't feel any particular way about any of it. I know that I love my wife and kids more than life itself, I know these facts and I know the timelines but there's not much else there. I know these things but there's no emotional weight to them.