Anyone else have prosopagnosia?

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Hi, new here. Just wondering if I'd find anyone else like me. Any prosopanostics on here, especially developmental prosos?

In case others are curious... Prosopagnosia is the inability to see a face as a whole picture. In mild cases it's also called faceblindness.

Most people find it hard to understand, so here's some fun prosopagnosia facts about me:
I could never have a job where I check ID. I can't look at a photo and a person and tell if they are the same, in fact it baffles me that other people can.

I can't tell that identical twins look the same.

If I've spoken to you once, I will recognise your voice on the phone.

I also recognise people by memorising one or more unique physical characteristics about every person I meet.

I am surrounded by strangers 99% of the time.

As I'm both on the spectrum and proso, I've seriously considered printing a t-shirt that says "I don't know who you are and I don't know what you mean, please introduce and explain yourself" (it's meant to be funny, no one gets it, maybe someone here will!)

Many prosos use face expressions to get by in life, eg apparently people make a certain face when they recognise you. Not me though, face expressions mean nothing to me.

If you read this out of interest, thanks for reading, our lives would be much easier if people knew about it and undertsood it's a neurological disorder that there is no treatment for.

I can't wait to read all the articles on this site too!

Does being told repeatedly, "My eyes are up here" count?

Seriously, I have some trouble connecting names to faces, especially when I'm under stress.

I'm "OK" with facial recognition. But only if I've consistently been around the person for days. Otherwise, it becomes rather foggy and vague.

With the ID checking thing? Yeah, I would also be pretty bad at that job.

The other day, the neighbor lady who has lived across our street for 10 years... she offered me a ride to work. I did not even recognize who she was. She acted baffled by it. Yeah, that's understandable. I tried to play it off saying that I stayed up too late making music the night before, so that's effected my memory.

She probably thought I was on drugs or something! I felt like such a buffoon.

I think it is common for people with ASD to have at least some difficulty with facial recognition. Although there are always exceptions.

Yes, I'm awful with faces and have offended people because I couldn't remember who they were. I went to a small high school (about 120 people in my class), and there were still a few people in my class I couldn't identify by face when I graduated. Some people would take advantage of me when I asked who someone was; they would say it was someone it wasn't in order to see me humiliate myself.

Unless you have a very distinct face and or face shape, I probably won't remember it. Which is weird, because I have a very good memory.

@Austinfrom1995 maybe you have prosopagnosia. You can do online screening tests. It has nothing to do with memory, I also have an excellent memory. The part of your brain that processes faces as a whole picture is separate to the part that processes other things, eg allows you to identify a table is a table. The part of my brain that processes faces doesn't work. So I remember people by a particular stand out feature, maybe you only remember faces that have a very identifiable feature, that would be a typical proso trait.

When I was 20, I asked my younger brother one day if he had seen my younger brother.

In general, my primary recognition of people is based on voice and the situation. Obviously, it's much easier to recognize someone when you're at their house than if you are at the grocery store.

Lol to the younger brother story.

Yes you def sound proso. Most prosos are screwed if someone is out of context. There are lots of funny and frightening stories on the proso facebook group. One lady whinged about a boring lecturer to the lecturer, she didn't realise the lecturers use the same bathroom as the students.

One time a lady worked into my work, she was short, blonde bob, big nose, rather wide, always wore skirts, based on what suburb we were in, I placed her as someone from my son's playgroup. Wrong. She was the exact same description (we call those our unique identifiers, the more plain someone is, the more things you need to remember in combination to identify them, we love people with ONE unique identifier, a giant mole in the middle of their face is perfect). She was actually someone from head office, I owned a franchise and had just breached the agreement by buying another business while still under contract to them, it was only overlapping by a month and I figured they would never know. I told her everything. My ASD prevents me from recognising facial expressions and body language, I'm sure I should have noticed the shock on her face, but I didn't. Thankfully after much pleading and explaining they agreed not to sue us. It can be dangerous!

You should read up on it and consider being diagnosed. I was diagnosed late and if you're like me, you'll suddenly realise all the times you've probably ignored people you were supposed to know. The swimming teacher probably didn't change every week, the bus driver was likely always the same person too, so were the people on the bus you still didn't say hello to after 6 weeks because you didn't know they were the same.

I'm quite familiar with it. I don't see any reason for a formal diagnosis for myself, though.

For what it's worth, I live in a small community where I do know nearly everyone (all but one family). That makes it a lot easier.

In the nearby town, I'm expected to know nearly everyone so what I do is treat everyone like I've known them for years. That sometimes confuses people who I have never met. The real problem is when I run into someone somewhere else where I don't expect to run into people I know.

I've never been Screened for Proso.

I detest baby talk.

It's either prosopagnosia or faceblind/faceblindness. Take your choice.

I am very sorry.

I will go with faceblind.

I can recognize faces very well, it's just I don't know what their faces mean.

I wonder if I have some sort of hearing/audio memory issue. I tend to have trouble remembering what people (especially strangers) have said to me. My family tends to ask me what I've talked about with people and I don't remember everything someone has said.

I also have trouble understanding what people are saying especially in noisy public places. If people catch me off guard and talk to me, I tend to not understand what they're saying at all. Sometimes I guess what someone is saying or pretend that I've understood what they said.

I am excellent with facial recognition, even 20 years later, but I am terrible with remembering people's names. I can even go an entire year talking to the same person and still not remember their name, even if I ask for it time and time again. People get really offended when you don't remember their name, they take it personally for some reason. I can only imagine how offended they get when you don't even recognize their face

I have a very very mild case of this (or maybe something similar to it). I can sometimes not remember people's face and I have no idea what I look like to others. I know what I look like in the mirror and in photos, but I think my photo and my mirror face doesn't look the same. I have no clue how other people perceive my looks. Dunno if this is the same thing, but it happens to me at times that I cannot recall somebody's face. I have learned to just say Ohhh hi when people talk to me on the street and pretend I know them even if I have no idea who they are at the time. It may occur to me later or I might see them again and be able to ask their name and pretend I forgot the name etc..

Sorry hope this makes sense.

So do you also detest "AS" and I must say Autism Spectrum? "Proso" is what we call it in the prosopagnosia forums, it's also used clinically as an abbreviation just like HFA or ASD. I detest that you call an accepted abbreviation baby talk clearly without realising it is a common abbreviation.