Can you picture your own face? I can't.

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In the thread 'becoming a fictional character' in this forum, I wrote a bit about how I often imagine my own face to be that of the character in the film or manga I'm engrossed in at the time, or even the face of someone I've been talking to for a while. When this happens it gives me a morment of disorientation at re-discovering my own face in the mirror.

This, I suspect, is partially due to the fact that I find remembering my own face very difficult.

It's only in recent years that I can actually, albeit vaguely, picture it in my mind without refreshing my memory in the mirror. This is different from not recognising my own face, in which rare condition, they can see it's a face but cannot see whose it is. However, on some occasions I have experienced brief moments in which I said to myself, "Her face looks familiar in a certain way that I can't name" while looking at myself in photos. I have no major head injuries.

The question is, can you actually remember your own face when you're not looking in the mirror? I'd like to know whether it's autism/Asperger's related, so I created a choice each for ppl on the spetrum and for ppl outside. Plz help as I need to know. Thank you.

I can remember my eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth, but not always a lot else.

I remember I have blonde hair, blue eyes, beard etc just dont ask me to sketch my face, i'll get it wrong, I just didnt think that was AS related :/ but you make a good point

Sure, I can picture my face, but I don't want to.

I don't know what I look like (besides facts I've memorized..."brown hair/brown eyes", etc) until I look at a photo/in the mirror. Everyone thinks I'm ret*d because I'm constantly being spooked by my reflections. Any time I'm walking past a store window or anywhere with a mirror, I'm pretty much guaranteed to be surprised that a girl who looks like me is staring at me...I figure it out quickly obviously and have a laugh, but sure enough, 3 seconds later, the same reflection gets me again!

I have some degree of face blindness, but not completely FB. Strangely, the only way I can remember what people look like is to remember PHOTOS of them (the only way I remember what I or my mom look like is by remembering a photo I see often), and even then it's not 100%.

I usually have a reasonably accurate idea of what I look like but I find it hard to visualise this at times. Sometimes certain features of my self-image will be distorted or exaggerated, i.e big ears, nose, angry demeanour. This is probably more of an OCD-type thing as I often check my appearance in mirrors and other reflective surfaces (windows etc). I usually recognise other people but I have trouble recognising people I have not seen in a while. Slight changes in someone's appearance (new haircut usually) will often upset me for a while.

Same, except that I will not notice changes at all unless they are quite drastic.

whenever i picture myself in my head, i always look like someone else.. maybe the person i feel like i am??

maybe that's why i like looking in the mirror and taking pictures of myself.. cause it's like looking at someone else... even though i know it's me.

To answer the original question, I can picture myself - though not nearly as clearly as I would appear in a mirror reflection.

I'm not sure I understand exactly. Does this also occur if someone wears new clothes, dyes their hair? Also, if you haven't seen a person in a long time and they've grown or physically changed in some way, does this upset you? Personally, if I were to list things that might upset me, people's appearances wouldn't make the list.

I will admit that I sometimes don't recognize people (at first) who I haven't seen in years if they look considerably different - even if they recognize me. This doesn't upset me though, it just catches me off-guard.

I also don't fully understand why society (in general) seems so fixated on appearance. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with it, I'm just trying to see it through others' point of view here. For example, there are females who spend a great deal of time and money on makeup and hair. I've always thought women look better without makeup, because to me - it shows they're comfortable with their natural beauty. I'm not opposed to those who enjoy makeup for artistic purposes and special events, but wearing it every day might be a bit extreme. Just my opinion.

To be clear - I do respect others' feelings and beliefs, even if I don't share them on a personal level. I realize that disorders can inspire thinking and processing that may not always make sense to others, and I do my best to accommodate to those around me. Of course we all have our individual differences as human beings, and with a little diplomacy the world is surely big enough for all of us here. With that said, maybe others here can fill me in or expand on the issues we're addressing.

I'll try to explain it better.

If someone I know well suddenly appears different, then I feel I don't know them on some level and I have familarise myself with them again. They are relabelled as strangers in my mind. This even happens when I get a haircut, it feels odd to see myself suddenly looking so different.

I know this rationally doesn't make much sense but I guess it might be connected to the whole area of "mind blindness" in autism. I'm primarily aware of other people as objects in the universe, rather than as distinct minds. Their appearance is rather more important for than it might be for others who have a stronger concept of other minds than I do.

This is only my rudimentary theory about this and I may be wrong about the origin of this anxiety.

Thank you everyone who have voted/ replied so far.

This looks very promising. I know this isn't a controlled environment, but if more ppl vote, especially if I can collect more NT data, the results will be more reliable. Even without statistical analysis, the data seem to point to a clear tendency.

But what does this mean?

I voted... "3. Yes, but on and off /with various degrees of success (on the spectrum)."

Yes, but I'm a visual artist. I did a police sketch artist-type sketch using this on-line flash application, and I think I got very close. I posted this link on another forum, and was surprised to see some very good likenesses from people that aren't artists. I think most people have a general idea of their features and proportions, better than they think.

http://flashface.ctapt.de/

I think I'm okay at it, but I have a friend who looks a lot like me or at least a lot like I picture myself as looking (she says I look exactly like one of her sisters and people always say the two of them look alike) and when I see photos, I always think she's me. But also my appearance has changed a lot (gained a lot of weight, then lost it; hair changed color; had my rosacea get really bad and then pretty much disappear) so I don't really look like what I thought I looked like. But I can picture what I used to look like pretty well, I think.

pretty kool. i think it's kinda close. it helps to have a visual aid and look and say, "no, that's not right.." and change it.. but i can't just picture it in my head.

Nice job! If I knew you, I would probably recognize you from the sketch. It doesn't deal with the neck area well, but oh well. Here's mine (the glasses are wrong):