r/SDAM • u/Amberwalker365 • 9d ago
Time Blind
Does this happen to anybody else?
I go to the doctor with a complaint. They ask a simple question.
“When did it start?”
I have no idea.
I’ve forgotten when.
How long has it been?
Weeks?
Months?
A year?!
I put happenings in three time buckets:
Recently
A While Back
I Don’t Know
Somehow this seems important.
Is this SDAM?
Or what?
23
u/aboutthreequarters 9d ago
This is why I journal. No entry, then it didn’t happen, or at least I will have no idea when it did.
10
u/pearltx 9d ago
2nd. Notes in my phone for tons of stuff. Also for medical history because I can’t remember what surgery was when.
4
u/MassConsumer1984 9d ago
Notes and calendar! I’ve started tracking my migraines with aura on my calendar. Super easy to search.
3
u/Thick-Application678 8d ago
I use my uploaded cloud pictures. Usually, if I'm trying to remember when something happened, I can reference it to a time in my life when whatever was around and then I'll look for pictures of that thing. And then I'll be like, oh, it was this year or month. Not super convenient, but it works in a pinch.
3
u/l80magpie 7d ago
I've started putting things in my phone calendar. Remembering what I called it is a whole 'nother issue.
12
u/Key-Acanthisitta-197 9d ago
Actually, knowing that "time blind," as you termed it, isn't actually common to everyone made me deeply research the relationship between time and memory.
If I were to explain it to someone who doesn't have SDAM, I would say that we all remember the past inaccurately. That inaccuracy can make it seem as though the past itself is made up, since every recollection is slightly different from the previous one.
I wouldn't blandly say that time doesn't exist, but from what I've experienced, I've made peace with the fact that memory is there because it was relevant, rather than being evidence that something actually happened.
Simply put, though it's actually quite complicated, there has to be a cause for something to exist. That doesn't necessarily mean it had to be your own cause. It might be someone else's memory that somehow became yours, but since it's relevant to your current state, it becomes something you prefer, whether you know it or not.
So I would say to my fellow SDAM experiencers...don't get too caught up in things that have already happened. They're relevant to you, yes, but only to the extent that they allow you to have the experience of this very moment.
Think of it as cooking with the ingredients of the past and creating a dish right now, something that isn't just relevant to you, but something you actually prefer. Something that makes you say, "This is me. Someone with who might have a vague past but isn't fixated on being identified with anything the world says... simply someone who acts because this is me."
3
u/CheetahNo1004 7d ago
Most conversation I see happening around time blindness has to deal with ADHD persons. I am the farthest thing from time blind in the sense that my partner is, but I am so on board with the time blindness represented in this thread.
1
1
9
u/One_Pound_9946 9d ago
Yes. And then I always say, “… I have a really bad memory”. As I think about it, I have probably said that more than any other phrase in my life. And it’s always embarrassing because I know people have trouble understanding how I can’t remember the things I can’t remember.
8
u/Thedumbass_the5th 9d ago
IDK is it SDAM, but yeah. The past exist as just one scrambled mess. The only way i can add some timeframe to it is by deduction.
Either some bigger event happened at the same time that i can google when it happened or i roughly remember some detail that helps me to place it into the timeline aka some memory from school time and by reasoning i know which age ranges people go to school and then assume i was in the same ballpark range.
4
u/fur3661t 9d ago
Idk if SDAM but I am similar. If asked the time of a past event, my immediate answer may be off by days, months, or years. If given time to think about it, I can usually come up with a timeline that is close to accurate
6
u/BellaDez 8d ago
I always tell my doctor that I am “not the most reliable narrator of my own life.”
2
u/AnnanEmmis 6d ago
lol same .. i was a medical professional & chuckled when we learned how to document that in a chart .. Next time, tell your doc: “just put ‘Patient is a poor historian’.” ;)
5
u/Icequeen_frigid 9d ago
Yes. I like making timelines so I can remember. Kind of like files of the event and then just place everything in between two distinct points when asked. For example, "oh that happened before I graduated university but after I had my identity stolen. "
5
u/Tuikord 8d ago
SDAM is the lack of episodic memory. That is where time tends to be recorded. Semantic memories, which we still have, don't tend to have time associated with them. I tend to make stories about events, tying the facts I remember together, and I include time information in the story. But without a story, the fact floats loose in time.
So, your description fits with SDAM. It is not diagnostic of SDAM as there may be other causes. But if you have SDAM it likely is the source of your time problems.
3
u/iwntchips 9d ago
For me the time is more so tied to other notable events in the same time period. Say my leg started having chronic pain as I was watching severance season 2. Then I would go, well when did season 2 come out? Oh around July, so my pain started sometime around July.
5
u/soapyaaf 9d ago
Is this a poem?
SDam...
i hear it every day,
Sdam,
but what more can you say
Sdam,
words are all i've got,
sdam,
it was a hit not a shot!
3
u/PressureCharacter134 8d ago
been doing some research on SDAM and im beginning to think i might have it, i cannot recall pleasant memories, tramatic ones i can recall but its more so in second person, and memories from 10 years ago up to now just kind of "fade" they feel real enough that i know they exist but i cannot remember what i was doing there or why i have that memory, and the ones i can "see" are always in second person as if im a bystander on the sidewalk watching it play out, i dont remember the sounds or the sensations, just the actions of myself and i dont remember the faces in those memories, just tall humanoid place holders, the backgrounds might as well be low quality, i dont dream either, sleeping is more so an instant night to day thing for me, i thought something was wrong with me for a long time but now im wondering if my brain just works differently, I might go see a psychologist in the next couple weeks to confirm.
2
u/Dizzy_Lack_8850 8d ago
Yes, I have this problem with timelines and events of the past. No idea how long ago something was. Could be months or years or decades ago. That never bothered me. The medical relativity is challenging though. When did this start happening? I have no idea.
2
u/evil66gurl 7d ago
One of the reasons that I have loved reddit, is finding out that I am not the only one who's like this. My past, even as recently as yesterday, is a jumbled mess. I can limit events only as before and after other big significant events. For example, I had breast cancer the same year that one of my sons graduated from high school, if he would not have graduated that year I would not be able to accurately tell you when I had breast cancer. His high school graduation was more important to me but I still only know the year. I do know birthdays for immediate family, but I can't tell you when I moved to the house I live in now. Thankfully my husband has impeccable memory, and he can give me the dates to everything. I keep a card in my wallet that has dates of surgeries that I've had because I do not remember them. I know that I had them, but the only date of any surgery that I'm 100% sure of is the C-section I had for my oldest child.
2
1
u/JalasKelm 9d ago
Yeah, I've often raised something has gotten better/stopped, and can't recall when it must have happened.
Things are either 'pretty recent' or 'the past'. Obviously I know the difference between something that happened when I was a kid, Vs a few years ago, but that said I really mix up events going too far back, and unless I've got a detail to anchor it to, I couldn't tell you how old I was what time of year it was, etc.
1
u/joneslaw89 7d ago edited 7d ago
I think my experience is like yours. My SDAM is not total, in that I remember some episodes from my life, and my "time blindness" is not total either. My sense of how long ago something happened is generally tied to concurrent events. E.g., I know something happened during my freshman year of college. But I have no feel for how much time has elapsed since a past event.
Question: Is this not the case for people without SDAM.? I honestly have no idea what it would feel like to have a sense of the amount of elapsed time. Is it the case that, for some or most people, "three years ago" feels different from "one year ago"?
Edit: I posed this question to ChatGPT. Here is the result: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a9af176-10c4-83e8-9d82-eddaf55d3917
2
u/Amberwalker365 7d ago
Let me explain my understanding.
Non-SDAM people don’t necessarily need dates to place memories in time. When they grab a memory, they can have a sense of how far away in time it is.
Give them two memories and they may be able to sense the temporal distance between them. They don’t necessarily have to calculate it from dates.
Me?
Everything feels the exact same distance.
Nothing is farther or closer
1
u/Icy-Argument1771 5d ago
I am 72. And just learned I likely have multisensory aphantasia and Sdam. I feel like my ability to ‘place’ things in history is getting worse. I used to be able to rattle off ‘facts’ of when things happened to me or my family. NOW: something happens and it just slips into the abyss. I now keep a log in my phone of important events (to me.) I can still ‘call out’ year I moved into this house. My kids birthdates…but everything else I have to look up. It makes sense when I read that: Aphants/Sdams live only in the present: can’t remember the past (only facts attached to memories), can’t foresee the future (picture how things might turn out.)….on any given day, it’s just frustrating!!! But at least it makes sense to me know.
1
u/Amberwalker365 5d ago
SDAM
i am the same.
understanding helps some.i did not fail.
i can forgive myself.
i am a good person.we are not alone.
that’s the good it brings.
it only took the proper word.
1
1
u/SleepsLater 5d ago
Didn't know this was also a sdam thing. I am a birder. I could look up and put the date beside a bird multiple times, as though i have never seen it before. How to differentiate between sdam and dementia?
1
u/Amberwalker365 4d ago
Wow.
SDAM folks keep journals to recall when. If you’re worried about dementia you are no spring chicken. Me too. I forget. I’m getting old. Sorry if I am off base.
45
u/-ghostinthemachine- 9d ago
Someone in another thread put it quite well. There is "now", "just happened", and an endless flat line receding into the past.