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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

  • The best way to navigate the world of affective communication, with a social impairment that has not spared you an understanding of a particular kind of cognition, is to use what has been spared in your cognition.
    In those with autism a commonly spared function exists in both procedural and rote memory-learning, that is to say that you will learn and memorise better by following others example and building procedure in your head, both are non-declarative alternatives that work for most autists.  
    So for example whenever I enter into a new relationship, I look for a phrase or action that is agreeable to the other person, and then I proceduralise it. So I’d always high-five a person in passing who has chosen to high-five me before, or I would use a phrase that another has used to greet me before and greet them that way, or I will use adapt a procedure by using smoother version of it overtime. In doing this most laymen will not pick-up that you are trying to avoid a novel communication or interaction, only the professions or extremely-insightful with be able to observe a well-practiced routine for what it is. 
    The reality of autism is that is a little-known and little-considered impairment, as such there are thousands of quirky individuals out there with some really well-perfected coping mechanisms, as we aren’t really protected as we should be, the peaks that we achieve in the use of spared-function are unique because most people don’t need to use a more basic communication, so they are usually not very aware of people who use these abilities.

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  • The best way to navigate the world of affective communication, with a social impairment that has not spared you an understanding of a particular kind of cognition, is to use what has been spared in your cognition.
    In those with autism a commonly spared function exists in both procedural and rote memory-learning, that is to say that you will learn and memorise better by following others example and building procedure in your head, both are non-declarative alternatives that work for most autists.  
    So for example whenever I enter into a new relationship, I look for a phrase or action that is agreeable to the other person, and then I proceduralise it. So I’d always high-five a person in passing who has chosen to high-five me before, or I would use a phrase that another has used to greet me before and greet them that way, or I will use adapt a procedure by using smoother version of it overtime. In doing this most laymen will not pick-up that you are trying to avoid a novel communication or interaction, only the professions or extremely-insightful with be able to observe a well-practiced routine for what it is. 
    The reality of autism is that is a little-known and little-considered impairment, as such there are thousands of quirky individuals out there with some really well-perfected coping mechanisms, as we aren’t really protected as we should be, the peaks that we achieve in the use of spared-function are unique because most people don’t need to use a more basic communication, so they are usually not very aware of people who use these abilities.

Children