Sadie’s dad harbors so much guilt -- even though Sadie and her brother turned out fine. If you’re a parent, do you have anything you still feel guilty about? Would confessing help you feel better? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask your parents, but you don’t want to imply criticism or make them feel bad?

What are some of the problems with trying to observe one’s own thoughts? Do you think introspection can ever be part of objective science?

How are scientists beginning to triangulate what we claim is going on in our own heads? 

If you could beam into any person or creatures’ lived experience, what do you think it would be like? What might look (metaphorically or literally) different to you?

Why do even great philosophers often fall prey to the trap of assuming that their conscious experience is basically the same as everyone else’s? How does this relate to the parable of the fish?

Sadie always thought that people were being 100% metaphorical when they suggested things like visualizing and counting sheep to get to sleep. What does this tell us about the limitations or challenges of using language to convey mental or sensory experiences? How is Russell Hurlburt attempting to overcome this issue?

Hurlburt has found that most people split their time between five different styles of thinking: inner seeing, inner hearing, feeling emotions, sensory experience and unsymbolized thought. However, there are tons of individual differences, and you can do any number of these things simultaneously. How busy is your inner life? Do you think it’s more or less clamorous than average? (If you want to try out Descriptive Experience Sampling, Hurlburt’s app, iPromptU, is available for free in the Apple app store.)

Can Sadie blame SDAM or aphantasia for the fact that she failed to see obvious-in-retrospect signs that her boyfriends were cheating on her, or is this just the classic problem of love making you stupid?

Can Sadie blame SDAM or aphantasia for the fact that she failed to see obvious-in-retrospect signs that her boyfriends were cheating on her, or is this just the classic problem of love making you stupid?

At the beginning of the book, Sadie discovers that she’s a faceblind reporter. At the end, she learns that she is also an amnesiac memoirist! How do her conditions help or hinder her in her professional life?