This week I am working on writing a feature article on Face-Blindness for a writing class that I am currently taking this semester. Our assignment was to first pick our topic, which I have, and before writing research pictures to enhance our article. Easy peasy.
The Unexpected – What I learned about me
I guess I learn something new about myself every day. This can be excited, frightening, confusing, and almost all the time frustrating. Searching for pictures related to my essay topic was no exception.
I have been practicing searching for pictures to correspond with topics for a while now, and have been incorporating photos into my blog posts. So for me this assignment was simple. I went to Wikipedia commons (looking for photos that I can use with creative commons licenses), then I searched Google imagines.
Many great photos appeared on my screen. This is the first time I hunted photos BEFORE writing, and it had an interesting and unexpected outcome.
As I mentioned, my topic is face-blindness. People with autism often suffer from face-blindness ranging from slight to severe. Face blindness can cause you not to recognize people even when you have interacted with them before, sometimes even if you have seen them every day at work.
If you take the person out of context (out of uniform, see your son’s teacher in the supermarket instead of in school, etc.) those who are “face-blind” will not recognize that person. This explains how I was able to work with people every day (who wore uniforms), and still not recognize them on the streets. And I mean—not at all! Learning about Face-Blindness after my diagnosis put many experiences in my life in perspective.
Back to the Pictures
Several really cool pictures caught my eye, and I snatched them up for this week’s assignment. What I did not expect was to learn something about myself from the pictures. There was one picture…. It is a girl holding a sign that says, “I am not ignoring you on purpose.”
That photo slapped me in the face and left me staring blankly at my computer screen. I had never considered that when I don’t recognize people who are familiar with me, that they may think I am just ignoring them!
The discovery of this picture illustrated my “mind-blindness.” I too often lately realize how much never crosses my mind. I would have never/and never have before thought that someone would think I was intentionally ignoring them.
I know that it sounds silly, and now that I think about it I feel silly–because it makes sense. If you didn’t know that I struggled with face-blindness, and I walked past you in the supermarket oblivious, you may think that I was ignoring you ON PURPOSE.
My picture hunt gave me clarity and insight—an insight that I likely would not have had, nor expressed in my written article had I wrote FIRST. So thank you to my professor for this assignment; it highlighted my mind-blindness.
Everything I see lately reminds me of how Mind Blind I can be.
The thing that is disturbing me lately though is that it seems I am discovering more and more how truly mind-blind I am. It is a hard discovery and I have often been stunned at my, what now feels like, ignorance. I always thought I read people well, I thought I was intuitive, I thought I was brilliant, and there was just something wrong with the rest of the world! Ok—many times I still think that.
This is the first of a series of posts that I am going to begin; the “What I Learned About Me Today” series, because it seems I am continuing learning something new and often stunning (to me).
I don’t remember any specific time I could say I had face blindness but I am sure I have had my times!
Hi Traci,
Sorry it took me so long to reply; it has been a crazy couple of weeks. I must admit that I do not think I would have thought about specific incidences had it not been such a defining thing in my life. Everyone always just said I lived in my own little bubble, and was oblivious to everyone around me. Although it was not intention, I suppose there is some truth in their observations.
Great post. I agree that it’s all about context. I have difficulty recognizing people I know if I see th In a different situation, like at the store. And sometimes people look sort of familiar, but I’m not sure if I know them. It’s not easy, and like you, I’m not ignoring people, I just don’t ‘see’ them.
It finally now makes sense why everyone in HS seem to know me, but I didn’t know any of them! Could it be that I did know them, but never “saw” them in the hallways? I remember (and it was quiet a long time ago) people walking by saying hello to me, and my be clueless to who these people were! That was HS, and more than twenty years later–nothing has change. Now, it finally makes sense!
Loved this! I understand just how you feel. Once you begin to connect your life experiences with autism, everything is a revalation!
I am trying to jot things down on notepads everytime I have one of those “ah ha!” moments. The pads are getting filled up.