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Comment by quantumwoke | Hacker News Reader

Can you describe your expectation vs reality? What do you think a “normal” person experiences?

My understanding is that most people remember past events in the context of their own experience of those events — when they remember, they recall into their minds some version of what they felt/saw/heard at the time, re-experienced from their own perspective. I've heard some people describe it like replaying a film, and they may even get a portion of the original emotional or sensory experience with it. I have none of that at all.

No way... really? I think I fall under aphantasia, but I never realized people could potentially relive memories like that.

Welcome in the SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) club. It is highly correlated with Aphantasia.

I'm thinking of a happy childhood memory. I'm with my grandmother down by the lake. We're getting into a boat.

I can see the way the sunlight reflects on the sand in the shallow water and off the oars in the boat (and what their flaking varnish feels like in my hands). The smell of the reeds, grass, and lake water is very clear to me, as is the voice of my grandmother telling me to be careful to not fall into the water. I can also hear a lawnmower somewhere in the distance, kids splashing around by the beach, and rustling of the reeds as they're caught by the wind.

It makes me happy, but also nostalgic. Most of the things from this memory are gone now. I believe the English word that best describes this is "wistful".

I know memories are peculiar and that parts of this memory are probably borrowed from other memories, or even made up, but it doesn't make it feel less vivid to me.

Are bad memories also vivid?

Yes, quite. They can be affected by the kind of tunnel vision you get when you're very stressed out. Like remembering a spot on the wallpaper, or a brass part of the handrails on the stairs where my parents gave me some bad news when I was four.

Unfortunately I can't seem to decide what sticks and what doesn't. I don't have perfect recall (far from it). I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday, but if I do I can probably still taste it.

Yes, but I think there's something even worse: things that haven't happened.

Anxiety is kicked in to overdrive when you can vividly imagine adverse outcomes to such a degree that they are indistinguishable from things that have happened.

Echoing SirRoderic here, but my understanding is that many others have the ability to clearly visualize their POV of past memories along with all or some of the sensory experiences associated with those experiences.

My lived experience is that I can remember key life events to some extent, but there is no visual experience with it. I don't remember what the last house I lived in looked like (less than 2 years ago) but if I were to visit it, I'd clearly recognize it.

One that kind of gets me is that I can't even picture my parent's faces. I can describe them, I have a ton of positive memories associated with them, and feel very strong feelings of love and affection for them, but despite having seen them yesterday for Easter, I can't picture them in my head. In some ways, that's strangely disorienting. It's frustrating to me to feel such a disconnect from things that are __very__ important to me.

But in some ways, it's freeing. I think I have a pretty strong resistance to traumatic imagery, because once it's gone, it's just gone. If I see something disturbing, it doesn't haunt me. I can't imagine terrifying things (at least visually), so when I compare my experience to friends who have hyperphantasia (or at least a decent ability to picture things), there's a lot that can get stuck in their heads that I just can't.

I try not to view the aphantasia as a good or bad thing. It's just part of how I am.

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