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Original poster

Is it normal to not recognise people like this?

91 replies

Ilovechocolate87 · 21/08/2023 20:19

Today I saw two different people I know/should have recognised.
The first was my daughters midwife, who I got to know very well and last saw properly when she signed us off in late 2021 (I did actually see her sitting in her car a couple of weeks ago, but not properly) I wasn't expecting to see her where I did today, at the park, she wasn't in uniform, had her hair different etc....but it was embarrassing as my face must have looked blank for a few seconds because until she got closer and it clicked I had no idea who she was and she had to tell me, which was embarrassing!
Then, I took my daughter on a bike ride around the village and saw my friend's sister in law, who lives in the same village and helped cater at our daughter's christening last year.I knew she was someone familiar, but it was only after i saw her a second time on the way back that it clicked...now got to message my friend asking her to apologise to the SIL that I didn't recognise her 🙈🤷‍♀️
This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened....I've had it with colleagues at work, and a mum of a former friend who I used to know very well up until about 7 years ago, but saw at the cinema and again she had to tell me who she was.
I'm 35, can be abit scatterbrained/ disorganised in some ways, very organised in others, but no medical conditions I'm aware of....is what I'm describing normal for someone my age?!

OP posts:
iDontBelieveAnyOfYou · 21/08/2023 22:26

I get this all the time but then I do struggle with eye contact so faces don't stick in my brain quite as much. I rely on other cues like context, uniform, hair colour. When I've consciously tried to push through my discomfort and look people in the eyes then I find I do recognise them elsewhere a bit more but it's still tricky.

CrunchyCarrot · 21/08/2023 22:33

Some folks just aren't good with faces. My DP is like that! I'm the opposite. I wouldn't beat yourself up about it.

CottonPyjamas · 21/08/2023 22:34

I once told a bloke I didn't recognise him with his clothes on. The context is, he took his child swimming the same time my child had a swimming lesson each week and we'd started chatting. He acknowledged me down the street one day. I didn't have a clue who the hell he was until I saw him at the pool again, which is when I blurted out the above.

Utereusbegone · 21/08/2023 22:39

It's all about context. I once bumped into someone from work in a supermarket 15 mile away from work, on a Sunday morning. It took me a minute for my brain to click how I knew him because I wasn't expecting to see him

Mouthfulofquiz · 21/08/2023 22:44

I have the opposite where I see people that I once sat next to in a waiting room 3 years ago for example and I can remember them. Or people I met in a meeting 10 years ago. But when I say ‘hi, I remember you from such and such a place’ they look well and truly weirded out! The human brain is an odd thing.

wesurvived1992 · 21/08/2023 22:54

I have face a high degree of face blindness. Recognition might come weeks later! It's so embarrassing especially as I can't recall names either.

I can recall smell very distinctly and voices. But that makes recognising people very very odd.

My husband jokes, how do I know he's my husband? I tell him because he smells exactly like my husband (20 different smells in different zones of the body).

I do recognise him! I recognise family and close friends easily.

Yourebeingtooloud · 21/08/2023 23:00

I find it very difficult to recognise people - definitely have a degree of face blindness. It also means I massively second guess myself over whether they are who I think they are, which makes it worse. However, I can tell you exactly what people were wearing the last 5+ times I saw them so it just shows how our brains are all different.

My DH shaved his beard off last year (after wearing it for a long time) and said it was amazing how people fell into 3 groups: knew who he was & noticed he’d shaved it off; knew who he was and didn’t notice at all that anything was different; had no idea who he was without it.

KnickerlessParsons · 21/08/2023 23:13

Totalwasteofpaper · 21/08/2023 20:24

Its totally normal for me but I have prosopagnosia....

Same. I tend to confuse all young women with long blonde hair or pony tails ( so almost all of them).
But also everyone else. I don't like films for that reason can't keep track of who is who if they change their clothes.

surreygirl1987 · 21/08/2023 23:20

I have this, although I didn't realise it was a 'thing' until a couple of years ago. I'm a school teacher so it's a nightmare - I really struggle learning names.

Yesterday I said hi to a random stranger thinking it was someone I know. It's very disconcerting. You can have Prosopagnosia at different levels. Mine is pretty bad but apparently some people are much worse! I participated in a research study last year on this.

Doormatnomore · 21/08/2023 23:26

I’m not sure if I have this - stick with me.
I do recognise people and I know I know them and but I’ll be dammed if I remember their name. But if I can’t find their name I’ll not be able to explain who they are. I’ll be chatting to someone at the bus stop for 20 mins and they are from the allotment, winter mulch etc but I won’t be to describe them to dh until I see them again and then I’ll join the dots. And sort of the reverse, someone will say do you remember Doreen from school and I’ll not have dam clue until they dredge up a photo and the I can tell you she had 3 rabbits and broke her leg jumping in thr river. Except it’s not always long ago. Everytime someone asks me about what team I work in I cannot remember any proper nouns. Weirdly though I can identify actors across films and tv (not their names) but what they were in. I do care about people I just can’t remember pertinent details - like who they are.

Beetham · 21/08/2023 23:28

I always had a worry that I would be called in to identify the body of a parent/partner/child etc. if someone close to me died and that the police would think it suspicious that I wouldn't be able to recognise them. I realise this is a very unlikely scenario but it often played on my mind!

I frequently can't recognise people that I know well and I can't picture people in my mind- it's just blank. I often get the storylines in films/tv mixed up because I don't know who is who. Several years ago I heard a piece on radio 4 talking about face blindness and it clicked that my experiences were very similar, not that I've done anything about it but recognising it has made things easier as at least I understand that's it's not just me being thick

RabbitsRock · 21/08/2023 23:30

Don’t worry OP - I do this all the time when I see someone in a different place than usual.

AgeingDoc · 21/08/2023 23:37

I had an experience like this recently. I saw someone waving enthusiastically at me in the supermarket. I looked behind me hoping this stranger was in fact waving to someone else but I was the only other person in the aisle so I gave a half hearted slightly embarrassed wave back. I had absolutely no idea who this woman was but she clearly knew me.
But then she spoke and I instantly recognised the voice as belonging to one of the health care assistants in Theatres. I probably worked with her for 15 years but this was literally the first time I had ever seen her in normal clothes and it threw me completely. I'm hoping she didn't realise that I didn't recognise her! I do struggle a bit with faces and actually recognised colleagues more easily outside of work during the pandemic when everyone had masks on!

user76541055773 · 21/08/2023 23:41

I can’t recognise people from faces, but can from voice, gait, angle of shoulders etc.

On balance it’s actually been a huge benefit to me because, as a coping mechanism, I am absolutely lovely to everyone 😁. Particularly at work. I give a huge cheery smile and listen attentively until I work out who a person is …pretty much every single time I see them.

It’s a nightmare for things like after work drinks though. I have to make sure I’m the first person there so that people come to me, and an embarrassing number of times I have ended up chatting with a group of random strangers while thinking they were colleagues.

HelloVeritas · 21/08/2023 23:41

Another one with Faceblindness. Always suspected it but took part in some research a few years ago which confirmed it.

It's hard, but you learn to adapt. I'm not a great socialiser and wonder if this is partly why. It's exhausting having to constantly try and remember who is who and always doubting myself.

I once struggled to recognise my own brother Blush

CatherinedeBourgh · 21/08/2023 23:47

I have face blindness too, dh is constantly prompting me as to who people are.

CatherinedeBourgh · 21/08/2023 23:48

As this thread shows, it's not an uncommon condition!

HarrietofFire · 22/08/2023 00:02

I've been out for tea with six women today. I can remember what their names are. I can't tell you what any of them were wearing

FOJN · 22/08/2023 00:18

I've had some incredibly embarrassing situations because of face blindness, most memorably when I was having carpets fitted and on the second day I met the fitter, who had been in my house for the whole of the previous afternoon, on the driveway when I was coming back from walking the dog and asked if I could help him! He did not looked impressed. I warn people now because I've offended several people by not recognising them. Like a PP I need to meet someone about half a dozen times before I can remember their face.

Agapornis · 22/08/2023 00:28

It's people you haven't seen in 2-7 years, with different hair, clothes, out of context, who you didn't form a personal bond with. That's not embarrassing, and not prosopagnosia or face blindness. It's unnecessary to remember acquaintances' faces. Sure, it might be a nice thing to do, but keep the brain space for more fun memories of e.g. your daughter!

Brokendaughter · 22/08/2023 00:45

I am face blind.

I blanked my only brother because I wasn't expecting to see him walking past on the street (when I was on my way to my sisters).

He said hello & I gave him a fuck off look as I kept walking thinking it was some weird stranger as he was looking at me like he knew me.

It wasn't until he came back to her house & started telling her about it that I realised who he was.
I wasn't expecting him to be at her house.

I only recognise my sister when she's in the right setting too.

It's more that I recognise I should be seeing her in e.g. her house, or at my door when I'm expecting her to visit.

ifIwerenotanandroid · 22/08/2023 01:04

I have this & for years I thought I was the only one.

It's weird, because I can recognise some actors as well as or better than other people, but as others here have said, if it's just 'man in suit/uniform', they do all look the same & I curse film-makers who use e.g. all dark-haired, similar-looking men in a production. But I have a good eye & memory for art & objects, so I think the reason I can recognise some actors is that I look at them onscreen as if I'm looking at art, really studying them close-up for a couple of hours. I'm intrigued by what makes them handsome/ beautiful or ugly. Of course, I can't do this to people in real life. I suspect that I don't actually look at them very much.

Even in real life, I recognise some people easily & others not at all, e.g. I never got people mixed up at work but I remember DH introducing me to a friend of his & us chatting for quite a while on the street, then briefly running into her a few minutes later & asking my husband who that was! I had absolutely no recognition of her the second time.

GenerallyGreenerGrass · 22/08/2023 01:15

I am sometimes really bad at recognising people if they’re in a different place/situation from where I normally see them.
For instance, this guy pushing a trolley in the supermarket gave me a smile and said “Hi”, I said “Hi” back but he could tell with my face I hadn’t a clue, so I said, laughingly “I know, I know you but I just can’t think from where”.

He says “I live across the road from you and we spoke only yesterday” while looking at me as though I am totally bonkers. 🤪

Noodge · 22/08/2023 01:18

Very normal. There is a name for it (apologies if already mentioned upthread) that slips my mind at the moment. I was talking to a woman recently who said she's like this and I thought 'Oh god I'm like that too'.

fridaynight1 · 22/08/2023 01:27

I don't recognise faces if I see them in a place that is not where I would normally expect see them. A random blond woman said hi to me while we were out shopping in Tesco. I said hi back because a) it would have been rude not to and b) she seemed to know me.

DH told me afterwards, it was our next door neighbour. We've only lived next door to her for 5 years 😂

It does have it's advantages. I had a full on conversation with Mark Wahlberg once. We were on holiday and he was some random man on the beach ... or so I thought. My DD's were most impressed. DH not so much.