Prospagnosia

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I run my own business, I do sales calls, hire and manage employees, and I'm financially independent. I'm thankful that I'm pretty high-functioning and well-adjusted, if still a little eccentric. It took me a long time, but being obsessive is good for something.

Still, prospagnosia is probably the most frustrating symptom I can think of and I don't know if I'll ever figure out how to work around it. The fact that I could live with guys in college and eat meals or have several classes with them every day for years, yet be unable to remember who they were or recognize them at all. Never knowing if anybody is a friend or stranger or family or a customer...

And then people think you just don't care, or that you forget them on purpose. Why didn't I greet you in the hall or on the street? Or they think it's funny to tell you they're somebody else just to confuse you.

I know it's a huge part of the reason that it takes me so long to develop friendships. I can network pretty well, but it's acceptable to be far more forward in business than personal life.

Anyway, just my rant, anybody have any awesome coping methods?

What is scarier is if you are the victim of a crime and cannot describe or identify the criminal. Imagine being shown a book of photographs, or even viewing a lineup of suspects, and not being able to say "That's the guy." This is one symptom I would be very wary of sharing with anyone besides your doctor or close family, because if someone knows you can't identify them they might take advantage of that to do you harm.

I've heard some people make a conscious effort to remember faces by focusing on some feature that they can tie a memory trick to, then making a little rhyme or joke to associate that feature with the person's name. It's ironic that some Aspies who are so good at seeing patterns in things like words or numbers have such difficulty in seeing patterns in faces. So look for some type of "pattern" on the face and associate it with words or numbers, or both. I don't know if that will work for you, depending what style of thinking you have (I've heard there are different "types" of Aspies), but whatever you are strong at, try to extend that to face recognition by conscious effort, seeing numbers on their face or something. Just throwing stuff out there. Good luck. Like I said though, I'd be careful about sharing this symptom with too many people.

I usually go by people's hair and the way their voice sounds. My sense of hearing is dominant over anything else, so I can usually pick out people by the timbre in their voice. Hair can change, but the voice stays the same. My advice is, you really need to know how you learn. If you have a visual memory, then as the bicyclingguitarist guitarist said, use a visual cue. For me it's auditory.

I know how you feel about the social impedance. I recently attended a funeral and supposedly I knew everyone. They were all asking me questions like "how's your sister?" or "how's school?" They also were able to call me by name, yet I couldn't remember any of their names. I haven't seen these people in at least 4 years, so I couldn't use the timbre trick. Needless to say, my mutism kicked in I just responded by saying "good" and "thank you" to everyone. I couldn't really choke out any other words.