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How to cope with not being able to read faces?

Touay

HI.

It's been a rough few days .. and just had a realization that is really sad.

I have seen emotion on a person face twice in my life (seeing someone the way NTs would I guess) ... and I happen to work with the person who was that second incident.

I can see some expressions, a smile, what I call 'bad face', laughter and a baby's crying face .. anything where there is large movements in the face, and I sometimes see when peoples faces are not relaxed, when I assume there is an expression that i just do not recognise.  when I see those expressions, it is only a recognition of the shape, I don't 'see' the emotion in the expressions. (other than the two times)

So this person in whose face I saw emotion (once) appears to be very expressive. but I had not really appreciated what that means until today.  I have long been puzzled about why her face looks so different every time I see her, and even during conversations. I didn't know what it was, and it is very different from the blank sameness of everyone else's faces.

She is from a much more expressive country and I realised today that the changes in the way her face looks are simply expressions that I not only do not see the emotion in, but simply do not recognise.   I has brought home to me just how incapable I am in reading faces.  I just don't understand how I am supposed to interact with people when I can't see the expressions on their faces, not to mention never seeing the emotion behind those expressions.

Any suggestions about how to navigate any kind of meaningful relationship with this 'issue' would be appreciated.

Parents
  • Touay said:
    I just don't understand how I am supposed to interact with people when I can't see the expressions on their faces,

    If you are open to disclosing your autism then I would straight up say to them something like:

    "I hope I haven't offended you previously but part of my autism involves me having Prosopagnosia which means I have real problems in understaning what you mean by your facial expressions.

    Please don't take offence if I don't get your meaning in future - it isn't something I can control and I would hate for it to affect our relationship."

    If you don't want to disclose your autism then you can always learn what you can about it so you can then conciously read a face when you need to (I'm not sure you can train this to be automatic).

    You can find out more in books like:

    Prosopagnosia - When all faces look the same - Davide Rivolta (2014).pdf
    ISBN 9783642407833

    I can't offer any tips from experience though - I do suffer from this a bit but I've stopped worrying about it (one benefit of old age I guess).

Reply
  • Touay said:
    I just don't understand how I am supposed to interact with people when I can't see the expressions on their faces,

    If you are open to disclosing your autism then I would straight up say to them something like:

    "I hope I haven't offended you previously but part of my autism involves me having Prosopagnosia which means I have real problems in understaning what you mean by your facial expressions.

    Please don't take offence if I don't get your meaning in future - it isn't something I can control and I would hate for it to affect our relationship."

    If you don't want to disclose your autism then you can always learn what you can about it so you can then conciously read a face when you need to (I'm not sure you can train this to be automatic).

    You can find out more in books like:

    Prosopagnosia - When all faces look the same - Davide Rivolta (2014).pdf
    ISBN 9783642407833

    I can't offer any tips from experience though - I do suffer from this a bit but I've stopped worrying about it (one benefit of old age I guess).

Children