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Aphantastic people of HN. Do you struggle remembering things in detail? My gfs family is all aohantastic and they just realized that it’s why they tell stories

Aphantastic people of HN. Do you struggle remembering things in detail? My gfs family is all aohantastic and they just realized that it’s why they tell stories that are all a bit inaccurate. They remember the story but when placement, colors, shapes, etc come up, they can’t really tell you what it was. Comes up in weird ways

j_bum 17d ago
Yes. It’s called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM). I suffer from it quite badly. I can remember broad and important details, but struggle to remember even moderate details from anything beyond the past 2-3 months, with sharp falloff after that. Once I started using Immich and was able to see my old photos from across adulthood and childhood (I used to just dump them onto HDDs), I experienced a sharp reconnection with myself and my past. Maybe they could find something similar (Apple Photos, Google Photos, Immich, etc.)!
rhdunn 17d ago
My internal thoughts are verbal and don't see pictures as a normal part of my inner though process. When someone says "imagine a pink elephant in the room" I don't see a pink elephant, but instead have an inner dialogue to the effect of "ok, so there's a pink elephant in the corner." I may also recall an image of an elephant, but it's not pink and it's not really in the room. When there is a concrete thing that I have a memory of ("picture a squirrel", specific things from holidays, etc.) I can see flashes of still images from those. I don't see a generic squirrel, but a specific image/memory of a squirrel I have seen. I have general placement/shape awareness but not so much colours or other specific details. I can infer things like colour from context, or have a thought to the effect of "that building was white" but I don't really see the building as white.
nodoodles 17d ago
Yup, I consider it just bad (narrative) memory compounded by aphantasia. Can watch a film or read a book and barely remember what was there the next day. Same for life events, with exception of very strong emotional triggers, or very well-connected systems - ie could describe better some system I was building 15 years ago than what last christmas was like (i assume it happened, there are pictures). For me, recall is bad, but recognition is OK - things 'come back' easily with hints or photos. But I guess that's how memory tends to work, and motivation to plenty of pictures/videos.
teunispeters 15d ago
I can only remember a colour if it's a key in the story. Ditto anything spacial - unless it matters, it's gone. Don't ask me what a colour is either, I can only tell if there's something in front of me of that colour, otherwise no idea. I mean I have a map of "colour relationships" in my head which helps me remember the words and how they might correlate to reality. But according to people who have this giant library of colours in their head, I often get the associations wrong or wrong-ish, because my ability to even care about colours is pretty low.

j_bum 17d ago

Yes. It’s called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM). I suffer from it quite badly. I can remember broad and important details, but struggle to remember even moderate details from anything beyond the past 2-3 months, with sharp falloff after that. Once I started using Immich and was able to see my old photos from across adulthood and childhood (I used to just dump them onto HDDs), I experienced a sharp reconnection with myself and my past. Maybe they could find something similar (Apple Photos, Google Photos, Immich, etc.)!

rhdunn 17d ago

My internal thoughts are verbal and don't see pictures as a normal part of my inner though process. When someone says "imagine a pink elephant in the room" I don't see a pink elephant, but instead have an inner dialogue to the effect of "ok, so there's a pink elephant in the corner." I may also recall an image of an elephant, but it's not pink and it's not really in the room. When there is a concrete thing that I have a memory of ("picture a squirrel", specific things from holidays, etc.) I can see flashes of still images from those. I don't see a generic squirrel, but a specific image/memory of a squirrel I have seen. I have general placement/shape awareness but not so much colours or other specific details. I can infer things like colour from context, or have a thought to the effect of "that building was white" but I don't really see the building as white.

nodoodles 17d ago

Yup, I consider it just bad (narrative) memory compounded by aphantasia. Can watch a film or read a book and barely remember what was there the next day. Same for life events, with exception of very strong emotional triggers, or very well-connected systems - ie could describe better some system I was building 15 years ago than what last christmas was like (i assume it happened, there are pictures). For me, recall is bad, but recognition is OK - things 'come back' easily with hints or photos. But I guess that's how memory tends to work, and motivation to plenty of pictures/videos.

teunispeters 15d ago

I can only remember a colour if it's a key in the story. Ditto anything spacial - unless it matters, it's gone. Don't ask me what a colour is either, I can only tell if there's something in front of me of that colour, otherwise no idea. I mean I have a map of "colour relationships" in my head which helps me remember the words and how they might correlate to reality. But according to people who have this giant library of colours in their head, I often get the associations wrong or wrong-ish, because my ability to even care about colours is pretty low.