Faceblindness?

I know exactly how you feel.   You recognise someone..  but who are they ??????

I'm awful at recalling what faces look like in my mind, but I seem to be very good at recognising faces I've seen before and presumably have taken some sort of interest in for some reason.  The only problem is I'm hopeless at remembering what names go with what faces and where I saw that face!

Yep

After this interesting conversation yesterday, I paid special attention to the people in my dreams last night, and you know what? The faces, on every single character, is a fuzzy irrelevance. The only way people are identified is by the name they are called by other people in the dream and how others interact with them. Hence it doesn't matter at all when my brain sticks a random unknown face on the "my sister" character, because i know who it is straight away because everyone else interacts with her like they would with my sister.

me doing a witness statement:

errrr.... it was a bloke .... medium sort of height I guess .... maybe brown hair?

oh the car, yes, silver 2002 VW golf tdi, wheels were kerbed and had a slight exhaust blow, such and such sticker in the back window left hand side and the reg number was XX99 XXX :-)

Not sure I have face blindness, complex variations yes, for instance I can see someone and say they look the exactly like so and so, To be told they aren’t even vaguely similar!

Maybe I categorised faces into groups, if enough looks similar then they are the same?

I suffer with memory issues, always have, what sticks sticks but trying to remember something rarely works, I get so close to remembering, tip of my tongue kind of feeling, that in itself cause anxiety as I quickly rush about inside my head looking for the word I needed, I do this and have realised I use association. 

There was a guy on one job I was working, he had been there years and I have chatted to him over the years, but for the life of me I just couldn’t remember his first name, my work mate said, “ simple, his name is the same as? Think about who else you know with the same name,” So first I had to ask my work mate what his name actually was, bingo yes his name was the same as two other workers I have know for years, so when I see the man now I get a mental picture of the other two.

One man I had to associate his surname to something obvious,,,basically his surname was the same as someone who looks after sheep. Shepherd, so I think sheep,

 another has a surname to do with water.

I did tests to find out if I read emotions, facial expression, not only could I not get the supposed correct answer, some were like looking into empty eyes, no soul to put an emotion too, they were often models or actors, so not true emotions a portrayal of them, the models looked sad or just empty, just doing a job once again, same old pose, just to earn money to exist.

Summary,

I struggle with names because of memory issues.

I put faces into groups.

I can judge emotions but often see them strongly but get them wrong, unless what I am seeing is the deep inner soul?

I avoid eye contact, but have learnt to look elsewhere, eye brows, chin etc, but if I think the person has wide open eyes and mind, and I sense no fear from them, I am more than happy to look them in the eye, in fact it gives me comfort, as I am inviting them into my soul. To sense me, and me to sense them, 

First time that happened was an old Yorkshire lady. I was about to do some work on her driveway, she asked if I was an honest man? She then said her  mother always said if you look into their eyes and look hard you can tell.

 So she took both my hands and said “ are you an honest man” I replied yes I am, she starred deep into my eyes, it felt as if she had crawled into my head, was rummaging inside me. She suddenly smiled and said “ Yes you are truly an honest man”,

 it really felt intrusive but not horrible, she meant me no harm,,,

take care all, 

I find it incredibly stressful - I go into places where I suspect I am supposed to recognise people and I have to switch my cpu into full turbo mode to collect every piece of data in the environment simultaneously and process it into an instant database to cross-reference it all with existing data to try to deduce who I'm supposed to know in the few milliseconds before I make a complete ass out of myself.

It's a case of how many clues can I pick up before I blank someone I've known for ages. I'm very good at it - most of the time.

I'm measuring their height, probable age, clothes (indicating social status), who they are with, dominant/submissive posture, voice tone etc. trying to create a probable match in my mind.

It's exhausting.

Many of my incidents with faceblindness involve getting confused with two people.

I get two similar people mixed up and it's hard work to distinguish between them.   This is especially embarrassing at work where I am in contact with both of them in the same environment.  I keep getting their faces and names mixed up.  

In my last job there were four sets of  'twins' I had difficulty with.  Two clients and two staff.  Eventually I started seeing them as different people.

Many times I see people who say hello to me and although they look familiar I can't remember where I've seen them before -and that is just my family! 

I did some sort of test online about it and scored zero for face recognition.  I don't find it worrying though,just a little amusing really. But I would not be one to go to if I witnessed a crime.

You're braver than I, Robert!
I just try to avoid situations in which the only normal thing to do would be to refer to them by name until I've worked it out. Too worried about getting it wrong! D:

It's a case of me too!

I've had the problem my entire life.

People recognise me and remember me.   But I have no idea who they are.

I have to expand considerable effort to remember people's names and faces.  Usually I have to meet that person at least three times.  But people know me after a single meeting.

And it's really embarrassing when someone greets me by name in the street.  And I struggle to figure out who it is or where they know me from.

Several times I've gone with my gut feeling and it turns out to be right.   After a short conversation I get more clues about their identity.

I don't look at eyes more than I can help. I hate it, everyone knows I hate it. If I have to pretend to do it I do a bit of staring at eyebrows, seems to be enough lol.

I try hard to look people in the eye so I appear more normal - that means I do not see their nose or mouth or anything else - hence just seeing 2 circles as a face with nothing else around them. (a bit like my avatar pic).

Context is really important to me.
If I'm not expecting to see you in the situation I'm in, it will take me a long time to register who you are and that I know you, even if you're a member of my family and waving at me/shouting my name.

It all seems to jumble up and I can't get the features to align in my mind's eye. I'm either focusing on their eyes or nose or mouth, etc. etc. and I can't keep the whole face together at once. Yuck! D: 

I think I have it to an extent. I mean, I don't have a problem with people I see every day in the context I expect to see them in (though it takes me a few extra seconds to register if someone's got a different hairstyle or clothes that aren't the sort of thing they usually wear) but I frequently end up in conversations with people who clearly have had considerable conversations with me and I have no idea who they are, and I both fail to recognise people I know, and misidentify strangers as being people I know out of the context I expect to see them in. I find trying to pick people I know out of a room of other people very difficult (including family and people I know really well).

Have been trying this a bit more. Turns out I can picture a familiar photo a person's face happens to be in quite accurately indeed, face included, but I can't picture their face as a thing in its own right at ALL.

We have a printout of all the staff at work and it's invaluable when I'm stuck on what someone looks like!
I can memorise a person's most distinctive features from a photo, but if you change the feature I've picked to recognise you with I am lost again. ^^'

moggsy said:

And if it's a good enough likeness I can then just about recognise the person? This might somehow fit with the cartoon theory I guess ...

Yes - I can recognise people in photos - but I can't link the picture to the real person stood in front of me - unless they wear the same clothes and the same pose as the pic..

Absolutely fine with cartoons. And I've got an even more interesting one than that. We've got a remote office at work, and some of the guys I work with are based over there. They come over occasionally, and I have even sat in a team day with them for 8 hours, and a meal after. 

A few months back, 2 of the guys made a visit in succession. I encountered the first one in the lift, and did actually recognise him (bearing in mind I failed to recognise my old boss of 2 years when I saw him in the foyer, this is quite a miracle). Then a few weeks later, I get in and there is some random bloke sitting in the desk opposite mine. I had no clue who he was, until people started talking to him and I deduced that he was in fact the other of the 2 guys.

Now the only difference between the two is that one looks like his photo, which comes up whenever you email him. He's the one I recognised. The other one looks nothing like his photo. Makes me wonder if I can process the photos using Random Object mode and the image (rather than the face) will stick? And if it's a good enough likeness I can then just about recognise the person? This might somehow fit with the cartoon theory I guess ...