linatet wrote:
I don't understand. Why is it there are people here saying it is not prosopagnosia? I experience it too and I always thought it was prosopagnosia. Why is it not?
The OP has said that although there are times when she has difficulty recognising people, it is normally when they are out of context or for some other reason. On this occasion, the person she didn't recognise at first was a co-worker, who was where she would have expected to see them, when she would have expected to see them. She describes the experience as "terrifying" and that her only previous experience like this was when she had suffered an injury to her head. In addition, her mother had early on-set dementia, which can be hereditary.
All of these things suggest to me that she should definitely see a doctor to discuss this experience. This particular experience doesn't fit her usual pattern of difficulty with recognising people, and it's this departure from the usual pattern which suggests to me that it may not be prosopagnosia, on this occasion.
I too have great difficulty recognising people, and it can take me a long time to get familiar with faces, and then time again to put names to them. When I was in my early twenties, I had a successful job interview and the man who interviewed me became my boss. He told me that the day after the interview he had seen me in the street, but I had walked right past him. That was because I hadn't recognised him, and he was out of context. That's fine - that fits my usual pattern. If however, after working with him on a daily basis for some time, I had failed to recognise him in the workplace, that would have been unusual and so, worrying.