What age do you start remembering what you were like?

I became really self-aware at 11. I’m guessing a bit about being 10, but 6th grade (11-12) is when I feel like I started being the person I still am 20+ years later. Obviously I’ve grown, but it started then.

Probably that I’m alive?

I already dealt with (undiagnosed) chronic depression by 10. The first time I thought about killing myself I don’t think I even knew the word “suicide.” I also had an overwhelming sense that I wouldn’t live past 30. That might not have started until I was 11 or 12, but I think it was there when I was younger.

Weirdly my mom also had an overwhelming sense that she would lose me at a young age from the day I was born, which she didn’t have with my older sister.

Well, I’m past 30 now. My love of people in my life has kept the suicidal ideation to only that. While I still have chronic depression, I’ve learned to manage it better over the years and medication helps.

I genuinely don’t know why I was depressed or had suicidal thoughts that young. I didn’t have a traumatic home or childhood. My parents worked a lot but loved me and my sister without question. We didn’t have a lot of money but always had enough food. I loved school and had great teachers. I wasn’t sexually assaulted before I was 10 (I think I was 12 the first time). I don’t know and that bothers me.

ETA: I guess I was bullied at school by 10, so maybe that accounts for it?

I was fortunate that individuals in my elementary school actually made accommodations for me being ahead of average. My third grade teacher gave me a fourth grade math book and special assignments from it. The pull-out classes for smart kids were K-2 and 3-5, but I got put in the 3-5 class in second grade. My principal supported my parents in moving me to a different class because of teachers who weren’t supporting me (multiple times, actually).

My school was in a pretty low-income district, but I completely lucked out with educators (and parents) who fought for me.

Definitely still ended up on the gifted child > burnt out teen/adult who struggles with some basic life skills, but at least I didn’t end up struggling with my ADHD in school until high school because of the support in my younger years.

This 1955 featurette interpreted it as re-gifting daily. It ends up being a LOT of birds.

Many people mentioned clearing ALL the snow off your car, but I didn’t see people mentioning why. Here are some videos to elaborate how terrifying and dangerous it can be when people don’t do that.

One, two, three, four

It takes a lot of energy to clear the car off, but it’s critical. Don’t be the person that harms someone else just to save a bit of time and effort.

I’ve definitely talked about ND behaviors within minutes of meeting strangers at parties (either they bring it up or I do about myself, never calling someone else out for it).

I’m a nerd, therefore most of my friends are nerds, and so too are their friends. While I don’t have data to back this up, I believe most nerds are ND (I literally can’t think of any NT folks in my social circle). We tend to be good at pattern recognition, so identifying similar traits when there’s already the confirmation of being friends-of-friends tends to be enough to get into such topics, lol.

If I think of tasting a lime, my mouth puckers and salivates like I’m about to eat something sour. I could probably say I’m imagining the taste, similar to how you described, like a 1/10.

I think hearing is maybe like that but like 1/100 instead of 1/10? It’s hardest to explain that one because with the stuck song thing, it’s there. I know it’s there. I can’t not imagine the song when it’s stuck. But I don’t “hear” it in any way like my ears hear things?

Smell I can’t imagine at all, but I can usually recognize smells (“usually” because for things that are similar to a memory, like someone wearing the aftershave my dad used as a kid or something that smells like my grandmother’s house from 25 years ago, are likely a miss, but normal things I recognize without question).

Visuals are probably more like smell in that I just don’t have them, but remembering visuals is more critical so I’m better at coping with that one.

I will mention I’ve met people and then instantly forgotten everything about how they looked, like I could only tell you gender and race, but I recognized them when I saw them again. Now, I had context clues. Like I met a couple in a dive shop in town then saw them at the airport on the way to the trip we were both going on through the dive shop. I knew I’d probably see them at the airport and I knew them when I did. But I couldn’t have told you a thing about them until then! It was the weirdest experience, and I think not being able to visualize was the root cause.

I remember their name as a fact associated with the person.

That’s how the way something looks is stored in my head.

Derp, I was exhausted last night and said the wrong shape. But yeah, I just recognize things without needing to visualize it when it isn’t around.

I’ve definitely heard other aphants talk about not enjoying books. I love reading, but I typically don’t care for authors who are overly descriptive about visual things OR I just zone out during those descriptions. Most authors I read stuck to 1-2 sentence descriptions of things and then move on to what’s actually happening. That’s fine, and I might keep 1-2 of those details in mind.

I recently drew what I imagined the layout for a building in my favorite book series to be, then went back and found the text describing it to compare. I was way closer than I expected to matching the description, except I didn’t remember the entryway was a “long hallway” because literally none of the story happens there. If the description matters to the plot, I’m more likely to retain it. If something is only described at the beginning and in a lot of detail, I probably will not retain any of it.

I cannot hear in my head either, but my partner is an aphant who can do that, so they are unconnected. That one is weird too because I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I ‘know’ what they sound like, and my brain keeps the beat with the song, but I’m not hearing it. If anything it’s more like I’m silently singing along to the song. I do tend to get snippets of songs in my head because I can’t always remember where it goes though (I write as one line from a song circles endlessly through my mind).

Can you taste or smell things that aren’t around? If not, do you still know what those things are when you do taste or smell them?

It’s hard to explain how one thinks. But yeah, I think of the words to describe something and they are automatic. I can’t describe a lot of detail about anything unless I’m looking at it, but I know enough of the basics to remember things.

I think the name comparison I mentioned is probably the best I can think of. When you see a person you know, how do you remember their name? Unless you’re a person who imagines their name on their forehead in order to remember it in the first place, I assume it’s just a word you associate with that person? That’s what the details of everything are like for me.

A triangle is a shape with three sides; that’s all I need to know and I can draw it. A stop sign is a hexagon, red, with STOP in the middle.

I can’t draw anything more complex than that unless I’m looking at it. I’m pretty good at recreating images I look at, but I can’t do art from my own head for shit; it’s paralyzing to even consider doing it.

When I’m reading a book, I’ll retain the most often repeated and basic physical traits. Harry Potter had a lightning scar and glasses, Ron Weasley was red headed, and Hermione had crazy hair. If there were other descriptions in the books, they never sunk in; my brain just disregarded them. However, now I think of Daniel Radcliffe and the other actors. I can’t describe what they look like but I can recognize those people with no hesitation.

Not who you asked, but yes I could answer and also yes it’s gone from my mind’s eye. I would be answering from memory.

I have no mind’s eye. Full-stop. But I have memory and can recall details without needing to see the thing.

If you can remember someone’s name after meeting them, that’s the same process it would be for me to remember their hair or shirt color.

Motion sensor and smart light switch. There are two rooms in my house with multiple entryways and awful light switch options, so without these I’d just stumble in the dark.

We also have it for our carport and it’s so pleasant for the light to automagically happen and then go off without needing to remember to change anything.

(And all of this done through local mesh and Apple HomeKit. We do not use proprietary services that can be shut down on us.)

Leadership definitely drives a lot, but even with bad leadership a PM can and should do a lot to help here. I spent 5 of my years of PMing with an operations org that drove every big decision and I still did everything I could to protect my devs. I ended up in major burn out from it multiple times, but I don’t regret it.

Alerts that are waking devs up in the middle of the night have a user impact too, and a PM can and should communicate that impact and risk to the business side as part of why it needs to be prioritized. Alternatively, there might be a reason that the UI change is ultimately more valuable, and it’s the PM’s job to communicate why that is the priority to their devs. If developers with a Product team ever truly believe the reason they’re building something is just “because [insert team here] is excited about it,” then the PM failed at a critical responsibility.

“that’s not good, but we’ll have to fix the underlying issue after we finish implementing the new UI the design team is excited about”

If this is happening, sounds like you have a shit-ass Product Manager (or no PM).

Signed, not a shit-ass Product Manager

Ha, I’ve heard of that one so I caught it. I missed 3 of the passes, though!

If you want a fun experiment of all the things we see but don’t actually process, I recommend the game series I’m On Observation Duty. You flip through a series of security cameras and identify when something changed. It’s incredible when you realize the entire floor of a room changed or a giant thing went missing, and you just tuned it out because your brain never felt a need to take in that detail.

It’s sorta horror genre and I hate pretty much every other horror thing, but I love those games because they make me think about how I think.

Do you have a primary care physician? I think this going on for 2 weeks warrants talking to them about it. If it’s not changing, then the urgent/emergency need isn’t there. Getting to a specialist could be months or over a year though (took me 10 months for first-available appointment with a cardiologist who specializes in dysautonomia issues like I have; someone I met in the waiting room waited closer to a year and a half).

Alternatively, if you have insurance many of them have a nurses line you can call and get input. Like you mentioned you would do as an EMR, they’re likely going to recommend you go to the most extreme care (ER) because they don’t want to risk being wrong. But they might be able to talk you through your doubts. And hey, if it’s insurance they have motivation to get you to the cheapest care possible, so maybe they wouldn’t recommend ER after all, lol.

Lastly, since you’re stuck in decision paralysis, it might be worth taking some actions on your own to see if you can improve the situation. Obviously this isn’t the smartest option, but I know I’m stubborn, cheap, and have white coat anxieties after being dismissed for my health issues my entire childhood, so I tend to go this route often. (Heck, I waited until my mid-30s to seek care that ended me with a cardiologist despite having the symptoms literally as long as I can remember.) You mentioned potassium deficiency and my immediate thought when reading “palpitations” was electrolytes as well. If you have a history of high blood pressure ignore this, but if not, eating salt and getting magnesium/potassium can help a ton. My cardiologist insists I eat 7-10 grams of salt a day. It’s a fuckton, but hell if it doesn’t make me feel worlds better.

ETA: I just want to reiterate my last idea above is a bad suggestion. But I know that’s likely what I would do, so I mention it anyway. Also I had frequent palpitations throughout my life as some of the symptoms I ignored, but I didn’t actually know those were “palpitations.” I thought “my heart is just beating hard/fast today,” and that palpitations meant something…else. It was less than a year ago when I learned it just meant awareness of your heart beating, and I can’t even explain what I thought it meant before that, other than more than that.

I was going to call it a “small” city but Google told me that 300k is mid-size so I went with that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The city is ~350 sq km and our tiny downtown area is probably about 1 sq km, so the entire city is kinda like a suburb. Heck, I’m from Houston which is known for its urban sprawl, and yet there’s lower population density where I live now.

I’ll just use the same criteria you gave as an example.

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.5mi (2.6km)
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.8mi (2.9km)
• To the bus stop: 0.5mi (800m)
• To the nearest park: 0.3mi (480m) - I’m lucky to have several parks in my neighborhood
• To the nearest big supermarket: 2.1mi (3.4km)
• To the nearest library: 2.2mi (3.5km)
• To the nearest train station: 5.1mi (8.2km)

Edit: I live in a mid-size city (300k) on the east coast.

I’m friends with two siblings who frequently refer to any/all of their friends as ‘habibi’ and it makes me feel warm fuzzies every time.

That’s a good one. A few others that help with my executive dysfunction are:

• “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” (It’s better to do something than to obsess over trying for the impossible goal of ‘perfection’.)
• “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” (This one helps especially with art and things I enjoy but struggle to do if I’m not instantly great at them.)
• “Laziness does not exist.” (This was inspired by a Medium article I read years ago which explained there is always an underlying cause of procrastination. Mental or physical ill health issues, uncertainty about the task, fear of failure, etc. When I am struggling to move forward, I now look for that reason and can begin to remove the barrier.)