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apart, remember all their names, and straighten out which character did what. A few years ago, I discovered and fell in love with Thai BLs, and when all or most of the main characters are Asian males of around the same age, I have fewer clues (like skin color or hairstyle) to tell each character apart, which causes me a lot of confusion.</p><p id="ce0b">However, subtitles help me with more than just my <a href="https://readmedium.com/what-is-auditory-processing-disorder-6d3dfcd1d5b1">auditory processing disorder</a> since they often state which character is talking. Yet another likely reason for why I fell in love with foreign media from a young age. Subtitles help me accommodate several of my struggles. (Now I add subtitles even to English media, but that wasn’t common even just a few years ago.)</p><h2 id="1ada">Causes of Prosopagnosia</h2><p id="4377">Face blindness can be caused by:</p><ul><li>Brain damage, like a head injury, stroke, or Alzheimer’s</li><li>Never developing the ability to recognize faces (which may run in families)</li><li>Autism</li></ul><p id="b045">I’m assuming my face blindness is related to my autism, but I did suffer from a nasty concussion when I was 12, and I don’t know if I have family members who also struggle with prosopagnosia. It isn’t something I bring up very often.</p><h2 id="09dd">What it’s Like to Struggle With Face Blindness</h2><p id="3ff3">Prosopagnosia has affected me in many different ways over the years.</p><p id="6178">As a dog groomer, I always recognized the dog before their owner, so even after I had been grooming a dog every 6 weeks for more than a year, I often would have to ask the owner who they were there to pick up after I finished grooming their dog because I couldn’t recognize the human as my regular client when they didn’t have their dog with them.</p><p id="3d2f">Even worse, every

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once in a blue moon I would run into a client out in the world. They wouldn’t have their dog with them, and I would have to scramble to try to figure out who this person was talking to me like they knew me and where I knew them from. Luckily, they would often mention their dog’s name, which would help trigger my face memory.</p><p id="bf8e">In between dog grooming and full-time freelance writing, I worked at Walmart for a couple of years. I would be stocking shelves in one area and ask a customer if they needed help with anything, then go to another aisle, ask that customer if they needed anything, and be met with, “Uh, I’m STILL fine; thank you.” How embarrassing not the be able to recognize people from one aisle to the next!</p><p id="aa83">I’ve lived in my new apartment for nearly a year, and I still struggle to recognize all but my closest neighbors’ faces. I typically notice the way that they walk or the sound of their voice before I can clock their face. And if they grow out their facial hair or change their hairstyle, I’m back at square one trying to remember their face.</p><p id="ae8b">One of my most frustrating struggles with prosopagnosia was when I actively went to <a href="https://www.meetup.com/">Meetups</a>. If the organizers of a Meetup I hadn’t been to before didn’t have a sign, I would struggle to match the teeny tiny faces on my phone to the real live faces of people. More than once I turned around and left because I couldn’t easily identify the group I was supposed to meet with.</p><p id="3376">These days I mostly stay home alone, so apart from struggling to tell characters apart on TV shows, my face blindness is less of an issue.</p><p id="2e5d">If you’ve been struggling with face blindness, know that you aren’t alone. I understand the challenges that come with it, and many other people do, as well.</p></article></body>

“We’ve Met Before”: The Stress of Living With Face Blindness

Photo by Erika Quirino on Pexels and edited by Author on Canva.

Did you know that some people struggle to recognize other people’s faces? “Face blindness” is officially called prosopagnosia, and it’s something I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember.

Some people struggle with prosopagnosia so much that they can’t even recognize the faces of their family members. I don’t have it to quite that degree, but I can’t begin to guess how many times I’ve been told “Yeah, I know, we’ve met” in a huffy manner after introducing myself to somebody I thought I had never met before.

Being (undiagnosed at the time) AuDHD and struggling with auditory processing disorder made socializing hard enough when I still went out into the world and tried to meet new people, but prosopagnosia was easily one of my biggest foes.

After all, how do you recover from seeming to forget you ever met a person?

Symptoms of Prosopagnosia

In addition to struggling to differentiate faces, other signs of prosopagnosia may include trouble with:

Recognizing characters in TV shows or movies
Determining people’s age or gender
Reading emotions on people’s faces
Finding your way around
Recognizing other things, like animals or cars

It takes me SEVERAL episodes of a TV series before I can tell all the characters apart, remember all their names, and straighten out which character did what. A few years ago, I discovered and fell in love with Thai BLs, and when all or most of the main characters are Asian males of around the same age, I have fewer clues (like skin color or hairstyle) to tell each character apart, which causes me a lot of confusion.

However, subtitles help me with more than just my auditory processing disorder since they often state which character is talking. Yet another likely reason for why I fell in love with foreign media from a young age. Subtitles help me accommodate several of my struggles. (Now I add subtitles even to English media, but that wasn’t common even just a few years ago.)

Causes of Prosopagnosia

Face blindness can be caused by:

Brain damage, like a head injury, stroke, or Alzheimer’s
Never developing the ability to recognize faces (which may run in families)
Autism

I’m assuming my face blindness is related to my autism, but I did suffer from a nasty concussion when I was 12, and I don’t know if I have family members who also struggle with prosopagnosia. It isn’t something I bring up very often.

What it’s Like to Struggle With Face Blindness

Prosopagnosia has affected me in many different ways over the years.

As a dog groomer, I always recognized the dog before their owner, so even after I had been grooming a dog every 6 weeks for more than a year, I often would have to ask the owner who they were there to pick up after I finished grooming their dog because I couldn’t recognize the human as my regular client when they didn’t have their dog with them.

Even worse, every once in a blue moon I would run into a client out in the world. They wouldn’t have their dog with them, and I would have to scramble to try to figure out who this person was talking to me like they knew me and where I knew them from. Luckily, they would often mention their dog’s name, which would help trigger my face memory.

In between dog grooming and full-time freelance writing, I worked at Walmart for a couple of years. I would be stocking shelves in one area and ask a customer if they needed help with anything, then go to another aisle, ask that customer if they needed anything, and be met with, “Uh, I’m STILL fine; thank you.” How embarrassing not the be able to recognize people from one aisle to the next!

I’ve lived in my new apartment for nearly a year, and I still struggle to recognize all but my closest neighbors’ faces. I typically notice the way that they walk or the sound of their voice before I can clock their face. And if they grow out their facial hair or change their hairstyle, I’m back at square one trying to remember their face.

One of my most frustrating struggles with prosopagnosia was when I actively went to Meetups. If the organizers of a Meetup I hadn’t been to before didn’t have a sign, I would struggle to match the teeny tiny faces on my phone to the real live faces of people. More than once I turned around and left because I couldn’t easily identify the group I was supposed to meet with.

These days I mostly stay home alone, so apart from struggling to tell characters apart on TV shows, my face blindness is less of an issue.

If you’ve been struggling with face blindness, know that you aren’t alone. I understand the challenges that come with it, and many other people do, as well.