Faces

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Ohyeah. That can be embarassing. Remembering which names to put with which face is worse, but I have, on occasion (and much to my horror) not immediately recognized my own child's face for a few seconds when she's come up to talk to me in a crowd. It depends on how tired I am, I think. When I'm really overloaded or tired it's harder to manage.

When I was a teen I worked at a job that was in a small company, and it took me several weeks to be able to remember the boss's name. It took me a good week to recognize the boss. Who I saw daily. That was pretty awkward.

Mostly it's a problem with decoding faces, rather than remembering who they belong to, though, now. I spent many, many years trying to learn the various expressions and sub-expressions (mostly through books and watching movies). I've got a pretty good handle on it - at least enough that I can "pass" and function mostly normally. But I do miss, I think, a lot of the nuances and I do misread body language often enough that it makes me nervous when I must rely on it. Compensatory for that, I try to structure my encounters with people in such a way that I can pick up on other, situational clues. When I can't, it's a bit unsettling.

Then there's the verbal stuff - people will say a particular sentence. If they are doing something with their face one way, I'm supposed to be understanding the sentence that way. If they are doing something else with their face, I'm supposed to be understanding the exact same sentence quite differently. Gods.

I don't go out much. It's easier than trying to deal with all that.

I also have some trouble recognising people but it isn't as severe as in your case. I can't picture people in my head I jst can't remember what they look like. i'll probaly only be able to recognise them when I next encounter them.

At the beginning of this semester I introduced my self to the same guy five? no six times in the same week, no matter that we share two classes and a club. Talk about embarrassing.

I am very bad at face recognition...and indeed, memory. I cannot visualise faces in my mind, and it has frustrated me for a long time, as let's face it, that can be a source of comfort if you are away from someone... it is usually something else about them I picture, like a mannerism or a bright item of clothing. I do not remember faces... I have to see someone a good few times before I start to recognise them facially... it is clothes I tend to remember and height, before facial features. Some faces, I will study...and still not remember them! I have always found myself studying the faces of old people in particular, finding the lines and cracks interesting...

Today, I looked at a few faces on the train, and couldn't for the life of me work out their thoughts etc, or imagine their having thoughts and feelings etc...they seem like aliens to me, seriously.

I can’t picture people in my head either, unless I know them really, REALLY well. And even if I haven’t seen them for a long time, the image of even people I know well starts to fade. It’s weird that I can recognize people in person even though I can’t remember their face in my head.

Most of my problems with face-blindness come when the person is removed from their context. Like my co-worker’s wife that I mentioned above – I’d never seen her at my workplace before, and wasn’t expecting to see her, so I didn’t recognize her, even though I was looking right at her. This happened with my best friend in the grocery store once – I totally didn’t recognize her until I realized that she was staring at me. Yet she’s picked me up from the airport before and I can pick her face out in a crowd no problem – because I’m looking for her specifically. If my mother picked me up when I was expecting my friend, I probably wouldn’t recognize her until she walked right up to me and waved her arms in my face!

I've always had trouble recognizing faces, and dread weddings, funerals, and family reunions, because I can't remember faces of family members. It's always horribly awkward when I'm expected to introduce my husband and kids...When they approach me, obviously happy to see me (while I cringe and beat my brains trying to remember who they are), I say, "Hello! This is my husband, Larry," and leave the unrecognized person to introduce themselves. Unfortunately, some people stand there with a dumb grin on their faces, waiting for me to finish the introduction.

Now that Larry and I have been married seventeen years, he's met almost everybody in my family, so it's not so bad now -- at least *he* remembers who they are!

My problem with face (and voice) recognition was also a terrible embarrassment for me when I was working. Big-ass clients would be insulted by my not "knowing" them, and my boss would get upset with me for not putting through their calls right away, or treating them "extra-special," stuff like that.

My neighbors, who I still can't recognize after seven years, other than the ones next door, who I see regularly, just think I'm a weird, arrogant recluse, and that's fine by me. Keeps 'em away from my front door.

On this topic, just wondering if anyone thinks they would recognize a celebrity if they saw one in person?

I was at a popular local park with my husband last summer when I noticed this guy walking past us on the path. He looked really familiar but I couldn’t place him at all. I don’t normally stare at people but I definitely stared at this guy. He even started to laugh a little as he walked past. I was about to completely dismiss it, but I glanced at my husband and was surprised when I saw him looking amused and pointing his thumb over his shoulder. He said, “that was the neighbour kid from that show ‘War at Home’!” As I thought about it, I realized he was right. I might never have gotten it on my own.

Probably the only reason he looked familiar at all was because I watch the show weekly. If he had been on something I’d only ever seen once, I would never have noticed him.

My sister is faceblind too. Once she was on an escalator in a department store, behind a man all dressed up really flashy, and she thought he was totally weird. Except that everybody was doing double-takes and smiling and waving at him. She finally figured it out - it was Liberace.

Haha, I have an amusing incident relating to this from a while back...cannot remember what year it was...but my mother and I were walking down a road across from a West End theatre, when she pointed across the road to an actor called Jonathan Pryce stood chatting to some guy I didn't recognise at all... I only had my amityville book with me for signing, so I went across and uncomfortably asked Pryce to sign... my mother was meanwhile gesturing at the other guy, but I didn't have a clue what she meant so I crossed back over with my book proudly in hand...the other guy, it seems was the director of Evita and Bugsy Malone... this was before Evita, so they were clearly in discussion about it. I had totally ignored this well known director as if he was just some nobody

My mother had to point out Andrew Lloyd Webber to me also when he was getting in a car as we passed by. She is great at spotting people, but I am hopeless.

I'm terrible at remembering faces. not sure if that's due to AS, since my NT parents have the same trait (though it may be more severe in my case).