To be so embarrassed and feel tired of being the way I am?

[VioletBam]

I've always had difficulties recognising people and have also always had problems with getting lost.

I can't recognise people that I know. Recently I discovered this condition was "an actual thing" called prosopagnosia. Most people call it Face Blindness.

I am not VERY bad with it...I know my own family for instance. But if I see for example...one of my children's teachers outside the confines of their classroom, then I won't know them from Adam.

All my life I have had situations where people would just start talking to me...and I'd have no idea who they were.

Sometimes they'd say things like "Don't you know me?" or "It's X! From Y!" and get annoyed.

Well it's just happened again. I'm in Australia and it's day here. I was walking down a street which is long and eventually leads to my own. There had been a procession in the village...and DD and I were returning.

A woman was walking behind us...she smiled and caught up with DD and I and said "Do you take the short cut or go the long way?"

And I looked blankly at her and said "I usually go the long way or I get lost...but how do you know where I'm going?"

Then DD said "Mum! It's Emily's Mum!"

Emily is DD's friend...she lives on our street...three doors up. I have this woman's number...she has been round to my house to collect her DD. I've met her husband. I've met this woman about 30 times since we moved in a year ago.

I decided to be open and said "I have face blindness" and she just laughed and carried on chatting.

Does she now think I'm a weirdo or rude?

It's happened SO often. I also get lost all the time. And can't recognise our car or the cars of other people I should do.

I'm sick of it!

My mum thinks she might have this. Im terrible wth faces too at times. I can recognise that someone looks familiar but find it vey difficult to know why. One a night out fifteen or so years ago i introduced myself to my cousin!

I was reading Anne Widdecombe describe something similar. She said she can't remember faces, would often pretend she recognised people to avoid embarrassment, but stopped doing that when it nearly went very wrong. She said if the face was out of context - ie not where she normally saw someone, she stood no chance of recognising them. She also said she was very good at recognising voices, so if they spoke she could often know who they were, when face alone didn't help.

A friend of mine had business size cards explaining he had this condition and asking for understanding. They also asked that people would state who they were on meeting. It worked well and soon everyone started doing it automatically.

Tell everyone you know/meet. It's NOTHING to be ashamed of. Write it on your Facebook page if you have one. Put it in your Twitter bio. Most people will know nothing about your condition. Oh, and download a map app onto your phone to help you find your way if you get lost.

I hope the police never ask you to ID a criminal! They'd think you were being obstructive! Seriously, I feel sorry for you having this condition. I often forget where I've parked the car but can at least recognise it in the supermarket car park! Perhaps it would help to get a really distinctive coloured one.

I mention iit on Facebook from time to time. For example I linked to the recent radio 4 article Stephen fry did on it.

Yes to being anxious about a police report. I'm so glad I can now say I'm faceblind as I used to.worry. My mum asked me.what colour my husbands eyes are the other day and I couldn't tell you. I didn't recognise him at the airport when we were dating, no hope in a police lineup!

Yes, I have found my people.

I was on a course in a building for about 6 months. I hadn't realised that I had trained myself to leave last so I could trail after everyone to the next location/exit.

It all went wrong one day when 2 of us chatted and missed everyone else disappearing ... And discovered neither of us could find the room we had been going to multiple times a week for months.

I have this. I'm good with directions, so don't suffer from that aspect of it, but I really struggle with faces. I'm a teacher and really struggle when I move the kids into a new seating plan, or run into them out of school. Parents evenings are a nightmare! Unless there is something really distinctive about a child, or know them very well (ie they're in my tutor group) I really struggle. DP finds it funny when we watch tv and I can't place actors!

I have muddled through with this for years. In work I have conversations with someone thinking they are another person. I knocked on wrong door when visiting a best friend I have visited for years, we had a good laugh over that one. I take strange routes to get places based on the most logical route for me. I come out of the lift in work and go the wrong way to my desk. I explain myself to others by saying I have terrible sense of direction and am useless at remembering names/faces. I am sure I have offended people without intending to. Most people are really good about it and see it as an eccentric quirk. I have devised methods of coping such as mapping where people sit in the office on sheet of paper. It is difficult when people hit desk! I often print maps or use map on phone to get places. I didn't really think about it being a condition as it is part of who I am. I try to make connections in my mind which can sometimes help. If I find out as much as I possibly can about someone this helps me make the association.

I think I have this too. I apologise to my husband's work colleagues every time I meet them (it takes me several times meeting someone before being able to remember who they are, even worse when meeting a group of people at once)

I'm not great with faces either. Chatted to Sadiq Khan in Tooting the other day convinced he was someone I knew from work but I wasn't sure. Couldn't work out why he didn't seem pleased to talk. Then others approached him for selfies and I slowly worked it out. Pretty sure I offended loads of people over the years. Usually manage to bluff my way through.....or I allow myself to believe I've got away with it. I would love to reliably recognise others.

I do however have fab memory for random facts and figures. I have car reg plates in my mind from when I was around 4, I am now late 40's! I also remember phone numbers and random stuff like periodic table. Do other people have similar strengths in another area? OP you are not being unreasonable. I hope you take strength from the fact it seems more common than you may have originally thought. We are each unique and cannot change the way we are made.

I've been living with a mild version of this - plus I am terrible with names! - and yes, it's exhausting. However, there are some plus points. For example, one of my primary coping mechanisms is to treat everyone in a super-friendly manner and try to let them lead the conversation, just in case I know them. This means I appear super confident, warm and approachable even though I'm a socially anxious mess. Another example - I am drawn to people with unusual looks, unique gaits, dramatic hairstyles or wacky clothing taste as I can recognize them quicker. This means my friends are all terribly interesting and diverse people! (although woe betide me if they change hairstyle).

I have it, badly. I scored 4 in that test above. I don't recognise close friends if they've changed their hair. I also have dyspraxia. I remember facts though. I won't know who you are but once I do know then I'll remember all the information I've ever known about you. It doesn't help that I am quite distinctive looking and everyone knows who I am instantly.

I know someone with this, brought on later in life, and he tells everyone up front, so when he first met me, he said 'hi, nice to meet you, by the way, I've got prosopagnosia, so if I see you again I may not recognize you, can you just remind me who you are'- and it worked really well. He does recognize me when he comes to my own home as presumably he expects to see me there, its out and about that would be a problem.

I think the way he's dealt with it is very sensible, and he doesn't need to mention it every time, only once, then after that, it's not an issue, and if he didn't recognize me I'd feel fine about saying who I was. It's got to be better than feeling embarrassed all the time.

I'm just not a visual person

I'm intensely verbal (ie. Total gobshite, verbal diarrhoea) - I think in words not pictures.

I'm also tremendously unobservant. I would be completely useless in a crime scene

I came home from work once and DH said 'hey so you saw BT finally sorted out the fibre broadband in our street then!' I had no idea what he was talking about. Slap bang in front of our front door was a 5 foot tall cabinet with 'BT infinity' plastered on the front, housing all the cables.

Which I had somehow completely missed as I walked past

That isn't face blindness, it's just being incredibly unobservant. I just don't pay attention to visual stuff at ALL

I am so sorry that you suffer from having this condition. I heard a radio programme about it the other day and had no idea it existed until then. Could you perhaps write down the main points about it, keep a few copies in your bag, and then if you have a situation like the mum who caught up with you in the street you could just hand one to her and say would she mind reading it when she got home as it will explain your situation? If people could read about your situation quietly at home they would understand .

I have this fairly badly too. It's great to hear about others and I'm looking forward to reading the whole thread. I can't count the number of excruciatingly embarrassing moments its given me.

I'm starting to get better at admitting it to new groups of people - but still have to use a lot of coping mechanisms in day to day life.

I'm much the same. Pretty bad on faces, absolutely hopeless on names!

The classic example is the old story about meeting someone at a party. Casting around for a clue, it emerges he has a brother. "What's he doing now?" "Oh, he's still King."

Really interesting to hear too that everyone else recognises people by their hair and gait - I have such a hard time if someone I know wears a hat or changes their hair style.

Op I'm the same and I get lost everywhere. I rely heavily on Google maps.

I have it too. It can be a bit awkward. Combine it with being a bit deaf and having aspergers....

I have this, to some degree, too.

I know family.

But I frequently know I know someone but don't know where from ie school, work, park, or from this decade in this country or 30 decades ago in another country which is really weird.

I HATE it. I tend to just smile and say something insipid.
Have NEVER been able to remember names either.

I once did a Uni Post Grad. 20 of us, full time.
At the end of it I still didn't know approximately 45% of the names, despite us sharing a lot of personal information.

And Yy to getting lost. Not just 'out and about' but in my own small village.
Also coming out of loos / meeting rooms / even in our small local hospital. I feel such a bloody idiot.

I recognise people by hair and context. I have failed to recognise work colleagues outside of work, or people who have changed their hairstyle.

Since recognising I have this problem I now make much more effort to study people's faces and also to pay close attention to landmarks as I walk about.