@PhoenixSerenity @Quasit

Ah, okay. So SDAM isn't that. It's not repression of trauma. Myself don't have any episodic memories. Not just of childhood. Adulthood. Long after any abuse. This is a feature of aphantasia.

Not all folk with aphantasia have SDAM, but those with aphantasia, especially multi-sensory aphantasia, are much more likely to have SDAM than the general population.

Ask me to re-live an experience from a year ago, last month, earlier today, can't do it. My brain doesn't do mental time travel. Ask me to imagine my life in five years. Blank. Same reason. Brain doesn't brain that way.

Indeed, once aphantasia had been given a name, came to realize that my mother probably was also an aphant. It would explain a lot of the gaslighting at the time.

If she didn't remember something, her strategy was to make the person who had found a strategy to keep track of that information out to be mistaken about their own experiences. Rather than admit to her inability to reflect upon her own.

Folk oft mistake SDAM for traumatic repression, because the latter is more common, and because it's barely been a decade since aphantasia was even named.

It makes therapy extremely challenging, as finding a therapist who will believe how our brains work is near impossible. We have trauma (everyone does), but it isn't in the form of repressed memories.

Can't selectively repress what you don't have to being with.