Prosopagnosia * neurological condition * This happened to me * Autism

Living With Face Blindness — This is My Story

Prosopagnosia means I won’t recognize you the next time I see you, but I haven’t forgotten you

When watching crime TV shows, I’ve watched with incredulity as witnesses help produce identikit faces. To me, this is impossible fantasy stuff.

If I meet someone once, I can’t describe their features in detail. There are people I know well and have met many times, but I can’t tell you whether they have a beard or wear glasses. I might be able to describe their hair or clothes and the way they speak or walk, but not the shape of their eyes.

When I listen to people describe faces, the words make no sense. People talk about eye color, the shape of the nose and lips, and whether someone wears glasses or has a mustache. I don’t notice these things and can’t recall them.

Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth are about the limit of my observation skills. I don’t picture someone as a face in my mind.

I was in my 40s before I discovered face blindness was a real thing affecting about 3% of the population, and I might have it.

It didn’t occur to me that other people saw things differently until I got to know a new friend with prosopagnosia, and most of what she said about her condition sounded familiar.

The clues had always been there — I’ve always been this way.

I know my mother because I recognise her body shape, and she’s the woman who opens the door when I go to her house. I’ve failed to recognized my mum when we arranged to meet in a public place, even though she was standing precisely where I expected to see her.

Can I picture her face within my mind right now? No, I can’t. I can picture her as a whole: her shape, her hair, her clothes, the way she speaks, and the things she believes in. I have a solid mental image of my mum, just not her face.

Many times, I’ve heard through the grapevine that I walk past people and completely blank them in the streets. I’m not expecting to see them there so, of course, I don’t see them.

The flipside of that coin is that faces look a lot the same so I think most people look familiar.

Most people who are complete strangers to me look familiar because faces look much the same.

If I go to a social gathering, I prefer to have someone close to remind me who everyone is. I know these people, but I don’t recognise them. I’ll be talking to a stranger, but when they start to tell me about things, I’ll realize I know who they are, and we’re picking up on an earlier conversation.

If I had to go out and meet my clients in public, I would struggle to pick them out, even if I’ve met them many times before. Fortunately, they turn up at my door with appointments.

It is awkward when people arrive at my home unannounced for a social visit.

When I opened the door to someone bringing flowers after the birth of baby number one, I wasn’t sure whether it was a delivery person or someone I should invite in.

I remember trying to shut the door on someone who obviously wanted to know more about the baby and be invited to see him. Strange behaviour from the florist delivery people I thought. Fotunately, I realised my mistake just in time.

Years ago, I internalized the idea that not recognizing people was a flaw in my character. It was my fault. It was sheer rudeness and I should make more of an effort.

And I felt guilty.

I don’t want to be disrespectful. By not recognising folks I feel that I’m putting out the message that they are unimportant.

It has to mean that I’m not interested in other people. I’m so completely self-centered that I don’t pay enough attention to others. Do I think I’m better than them?

But if you saw inside my head, I don’t think like that. I’m very egaliterian with my thoughts and look for the good in people. If I knew their life story, I’d remember it — I just wouldn’t be able to match the face to the life story.

I remember many things about people. I think about them a lot when we’re apart. I don’t know why I’m so unobservant when it comes to faces.

It bothers me and it has been stressful to carry the guilt.

And then there are the coping strategies. Trying to meet people at a place where I can be sure it will be them and then making a big effort to note exacly what they are wearing so that if we get lost in the crowds or when one of us goes to the loo I’ll be able to find them again.

Bluntness comes with old age, and I’m often more comfortable now just saying, “Who are you. How do I know you?”

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My face-blindness is mild compared to my friend. She can’t wath films, whereas I love watching films.

She can’t tell the characters apart because their faces are all the same. I can see differences. I have a number of theories. They are all guesses:

• When I watched the horror fantasy TV series Heroes I could tell the men apart because they all looked very different — race and age, and generally things about them. I could not tell the women apart because they were too similar in many ways that wasn’t to do with faces. They all had long stawberry blond hair and were much the same.

• In contrast when Jake Gyllenhaal, played two characters in Enemy I had no trouble following who was who. As I don’t see faces I was watching body langange, the two characters were poles apart. In fact I’ve enjoyed many films where one actor played two characters.
• In generally, I can watch films because the characters are all so different in appearance and behaviour (at least, in the films I enjoy watching).
• I don’t know whether this is a thing, but perhaps I can hold faces in my short term memory while I am concentrating on one thing, like watching a film.

It has been good to find out this thing about myself. It relieves some of the stress to do with the guilt I carried. I’ve learned that other people don’t experience the world in the same way that I do.

A devised a checklist to watch out for signs that might indicate a child or adult has developmental prosopagnosia (DP).

This checklist is to help others recognise people who may have this different way of seeing people. However, the authors of the study also note that mostly people who have always had the condition don’t generally realise until well into adulthood. It can be a checklist for ourselves!

lists 16 possible indicators including:

• Struggling to reconstruct or imagine a person’s face in one’s mind and/or being unable to describe that face
• Relying on extrafacial information to identify someone and failing to recognise someone when this changes or is unavailable (e.g. hair style or colour; voice or accent; gait or walk; clothing style or uniform)
• Consistently avoids using other people’s names
• Appearing “lost” in a crowded place/large gathering (e.g. in the playground, at a train station)
• Inability to identify people in photographs (including famous people, a personally familiar person, or oneself)

A few things that I think really help in schools and work places are:

• Set seating plans
• Name badges
• People introducing themselves at the start of meetings (even when everyone is assumed to know one another).

It just helps everyone to understand that neurodiversity means we don’t all process the same visual information in the same ways.

I’ve also learned that it is often linked to autism (another story), there is no cure, there are just coping strategies — I think I figured them out for myself.