Help! Who are you?

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I suffer from prosopagnosia. Thats a fancy name for a problem sometimes known as "face-blindness"; it is simply the inability to recognise human faces, perhaps even those of people you have known for years, including family members! it's a neurological condition, caused by damage to the part of the brain that is "pre-wired" to cope with recognising other people . Sometimes you can be born with the condition, sometimes it is acquired due to accidental damage or some kind of stroke.
In my case, I realise (thinking retrospectively) that I have always had a slight problem recognising people, but the problem became much, nuch worse some years ago when I had a cerebral haemorrhage and was in hospital about 6 weeks. needing rather drastic brain surgery! Luckily I recovered without serious after-effects.
Curiously I have read that although it is a fairly uncommon problem, prosopagnosia is found rather more frequently in Aspies, although I don't know why this should be. Your eyesight is perfectly OK; its just that when you look at a person you can see individual features clearly but your brain simply seems not to relate them together in a pattern that you recognise as a particular individual. Not only can you walk past old friends without recognising them: you can't learn new faces either. You have to develop a trick of remembering voices, how they walk, what they are wearing on a daily basis, how they do their hair; and Heaven help you if they change their hairdo or style of clothing!
Obviously, this could cause great difficulties in social situations for anyone, let alone an Aspie who has problems socialising anyway, and who may also have a tendency to think clothing and fashion rather irrelevant. In my case, it makes me nervous of any situation where I have to meet people, whether at work or just socially. On a "good" day ....with clues (or in a place or situation where I actually expect to see certain individuals)...I might just about guess who you are; otherwise, it can be hopeless.I have learnt to explain the problem to friends and wirkmates so they dont just think I am being rude if I walk past them without any acknowledgment. But I am sick of the situation even though I know nothing can be done about it. If you have it, its there for life. OK, its not dangerous and some might think it trivial, but its an awful embarrassment and nuisance!
Does anyone else have prosopagnosia? If so, do they find it easy or difficult to cope with? How in face DO they manage?

I do not think I have prosopagnosia but I have difficulties recognizing faces when I meet new people. I use details - which makes them look like people I already know and whose face I memorized although sometimes they really do not. Most of the time, when I meet someone, I recognize them through their clothes, bag, hair, etc. It happens that I memorize a face when I first see the person but it is very rare.

I do not have prosopagnosia, atleast I'm fairly sure I don't. I do have difficulty recognizing faces sometimes. If I see a person out of context, or wearing their hair differently or wearing glasses when they normally wear contacts, it throws me off quite a bit. This does not happen as much with people I know very well (such as family members), but can happen quite easily with people I know from classes but don't see everyday. I also have a hard time learning new faces, and I do sometimes need to hear someone's voice in order to recognize them.

I always thought that I was good at recognizing people. Then I got my job at the grocrey store, and I found myself being confronted by lots of customers each day.

I always found it odd that managment said that 90% of the stores business was from repeat customers since almost everyone there looked like a new customer to me. I brought this up one day on break and all the other employees told me that they belived that since they all recognized almost all the customers as having been in the store before, where as I could count on one hand all the customers I knew for sure were repeat customers.

Another problem that creeped up on ocassion was when I would go in back to fetch something for a customer and when I would come back out, I would forget what that customer looked like, but knew where they were. My memory would be refreshed when I would see that person react to me bringing out what they wanted. But on ocassion, they would go to a different isle and I would be completely lost after that as to who the person was I was trying to help.

So I made it a point to note what each customer who I helped was wearing, that way I didn't have to worry about identifing people thru facial features alone.

I'm not sure if this is the same thing - but I have a very hard time recognizing people if I see them out of context or if they change something major about how they look (like dying their hair or shaving facial hair off) . . .

For example, when I graduated from my telecommunicator academy we went out to lunch and one of the people I like to be around, Chris, was having lunch with his mom at the same resturant we were at - it is important to note that I find Chris to be a very handsome man - and everyone seems to agree with me . . . and when I saw him at the resturant I thought 'Wow - he is handsome . . .' but it took me a good 10 minutes to figure out he was Chris . . . then I went up and said 'Hi' to him . . .
I had a similar experience with running into DeeJay, who is my very favorite person to be around at a grocery store when I didn't expect to see him - it only took me two or three minutes to recognize him, though, becasue I was talking to him and could look at other cues like clothes and tone of voice . . .
And it threw me off for months when he shaved his goatee off . . .

Is that what you are talking about?

Yes. it sounds like it is the same sort of thing, although luckily if it doesn't cause you too much of a problem, you might only have it mildly. What you say about seeing people in context is true for me too. It helps if people are where you expect them to be! If you accidently bump into them in an unexpected place there are no helpful clues.
Another problem I had was that for a time after my operation, and after my surgeon had explained what prosopagnosia was, some people - including my family - found it hard to believe that I'd lost the ability to recognise faces. They thought it was a bit of a joke, or just pretty weird. They wouldnt accept that if I came into a room where they were with other friends, they had tell me who the people were. ("But you've met X loads of times before!" they would cry."You must know who he is. " (Well, I didn't.). Also , old friends who eventually understood and accepted my problem seemed unable to understand it applied to them, too. "But you've known me since we were six", they would grumble. Well; tough.
Thankfully however they accepted it after a while. These days I feel most uncomfortable with new people, or with work colleages i don't know well, especially those in authority. As for social occasions. well.... as an Aspie I have never found them easy, anyway!

That sounds very difficult Glen. I don't envy you. It's bad enough when you don't notice someone important's haircut (which I do all the time). I have 'grey people', who I constantly get muddled up cos I've got them in the same category, and I've stood blankly in front of people who've told me they've met me before (often). I get panic stricken if I see someone I might or might not know and hide in shopping aisles just in case. Changing context absolutely throws me out. Because I have trouble remembering faces, I always assume it goes the other way and introduce myself, but amazingly most of the people I introduce myself to seem to know who I am. In contrast though, I work at a school, and deal with photos of students and staff all the time. I rarely go out, so most people have never seen me, but I am quite familiar with their photos. I've been there about 3 years, and I'm starting to come out of my shy shell a little. I've said hello to a few people I think I know who have no idea who I am, because I only know them from photos... I go away puzzling for ages as to whether I've actually met that person before, or only touched up their photo.

I divide people into 'easy faces' and 'difficult faces'. It does not matter how well I know someone. For example, my sister has a difficult face. Such faces are hard to remember and distinguish. The problem is rather minor, but it does lead sometimes to embarrassing situations. Here are a few examples:

1. Several times I was in a situation when I have seen on the street a person resembling one of my cousins, or my sister. Sometimes I was able to rule out the person as a stranger by their clothing, but usually I was solving the mystery by positioning myself on that person's line of sight, and checking if they react to me.

2. On many occasions I mixed up salespeople in stores. I would be talking to a salesperson, and then (s)he would go to fetch something for me. In the meantime another salesperson would come, of the same sex, similar age and similarly dressed. I would then talk to the new person believing they were my prior interlocutor. Once this has happened after I have spent 20 minutes talking and looking at the sales guy.

3. One meeting, however long, is usually not enough for a new face to register properly in my memory, unless this is an extremely easy face (usually with some distinguishing facial feature). This often puts me in a situation when I am unexpectedly greeted by a total stranger. Since I have also trouble remembering names, an awkward situation often ensues.

4. One of my uncles was always wearing a beard, but he shaved it once. I remember being very perplexed by his appeareance, as he seemed to have gotten a totally new face, without any resemblance to the old one.

5. It happens, although rarely, that I mix up characters while watching a movie.

I do actually. A neurological condition?

I can point out distinctive facial features, like eyebrows or eye color, or earlobe shape, but can't retain memory of them. That's perhaps too absolute a statement, but it does get pretty ridiculous sometimes. All I remember about my preschool teacher's face is that she had curly hair, and that's because I saw her a few years ago and noted, "Her hair's gone grey," without actually being able to remember what color it used to be. A teacher that truly inspired me, the first teacher who left me shocked to discover I was reluctant to leave school for the summer, I think she... had... nope. All I can remember is the rats and silkworm moths we got to play with, and that journal she had us write in, the first person in my life who ever asked me to write a story.

Other examples... I recognize my mother by her glasses. If she's not wearing them I often get her confused with other women of similar builds. I can generally figure it out after a good hard look, but just walking through the supermarket aisles looking to meet with her I get a lot of false positives.

My friend once expressed amazement, "I can never find you at dances, how do you find me so easily?" I was taken aback, not used to that happening, but then realized I could honestly answer him, "I remember what color your shirt is."

Besides the shape of my preschool teacher's hair, none of my memories back then contain people. Every memory, however exact in detail, is crystal clear and empty: playground equipment, snack rooms, circle games, all I remember is the scenery.

Finally, at this job I got at the beginning of October, I am having serious problems. All the guys are tall with dark, short cut hair. All the girls are low built, portly and surprisingly strong. I don't know how humans can tell each other apart sometimes, but thank goodness for the colors in clothing. At work we are required to wear black shirts at all time. Go figure. I can never tell if I'm talking to Alex (Eric?), Manuel, or Brian...

I remember faces, but I can never put names to them. There are people I've known for years from various social groups, but I don't know their names. I can tell you from which group I know them, their jobs, how many kids they have, where they live, how long they've been married -- all from listening to them talk for years, but who are they? Not a clue!

I have this mildly, it is hard for me to remember someones face if I have just met them once or twice but not if I've known them for a while. I often worry about not recognising one of my friends if I haven't seen them for a while, fortunately this hasn't happened yet.

I have prosopagnosia i have to look at there hair or shirt and I come up to complete strangers thinking they were my friends or family their have been times i've walked right passed my friends and family and voices argh i'm horriable with that and with other features to but its good to know somebody has it to