"I *strongly* disagree with your assertion that people with SDAM can't empathize! I'm aphantasic (visually). I believe I have SDAM because (1) I can't re-experience my memories and (2) instead I remember things via the narrative I tell myself about them. (The closest I get to re-experiencing is when I retell to myself a conversation -- only possible with very recent conversations or with ones I've retold so many times that I have them memorized.) And (3) I seem to have relatively fewer memories of my life compared to other people my age. And yet I absolutely DO empathize! Reading a character's experience in book feels to me like I'm living the experience myself, not visually, but in the only way I know how -- emotionally! I've erupted into tears from sad words in a book as well as from sad words expressed to me in person! Please do not spread the false idea that people with SDAM can't empathize. It's this kind of incorrect assumption that made a lot of people think autism meant a lack of empathy! There's a name for not having empathy, and that's called being a sociopath. And I highly doubt you are a sociopath. It sounds to me like you're making assumptions about what it means to have SDAM and multisensory aphantasia, and it just "makes sense" to you that what you thought was empathy was merely sympathy. Stop that! Your feelings are real! And just because you can't visualize on command and can't re-experience your old memories on command does NOT stop you from feeling emotions triggered by a new experience or by someone else's sharing of their experience!!!!"

"I *strongly* disagree with your assertion that people with SDAM can't empathize! I'm aphantasic (visually). I believe I have SDAM because (1) I can't re-experience my memories and (2) instead I remember things via the narrative I tell myself about them. (The closest I get to re-experiencing is when I retell to myself a conversation -- only possible with very recent conversations or with ones I've retold so many times that I have them memorized.) And (3) I seem to have relatively fewer memories of my life compared to other people my age. And yet I absolutely DO empathize! Reading a character's experience in book feels to me like I'm living the experience myself, not visually, but in the only way I know how -- emotionally! I've erupted into tears from sad words in a book as well as from sad words expressed to me in person! Please do not spread the false idea that people with SDAM can't empathize. It's this kind of incorrect assumption that made a lot of people think autism meant a lack of empathy! There's a name for not having empathy, and that's called being a sociopath. And I highly doubt you are a sociopath. It sounds to me like you're making assumptions about what it means to have SDAM and multisensory aphantasia, and it just "makes sense" to you that what you thought was empathy was merely sympathy. Stop that! Your feelings are real! And just because you can't visualize on command and can't re-experience your old memories on command does NOT stop you from feeling emotions triggered by a new experience or by someone else's sharing of their experience!!!!"