Living with Prosopagnosia

Living with prosopagnosia is likely to present practical, social and psychological challenges.

Factors that are likely to affect the impact that it has on your life may include:

• A lack of diagnosis (unaware that difficulties are caused by a specific neurological condition)
• The degree of severity of your face blindness
• Your environment, work and lifestyle
• The understanding and support of friends and family

No two people will be affected in the same way, but hearing about the similar experiences of others with prosopagnosia and various coping strategies can help.  

Different people are likely to be affected in very different ways. Some people will avoid social gatherings as far as possible; others will smile at everyone they walk past just in case they know them.  The pages on strategies and resources may be useful in helping you develop your own ways of managing situations which involve recognising people.

Whichever approach someone uses there are likely to be times when these simply don’t work and explaining that you have Prosopagnosia may be the best way forward.  Whether you tell everyone or just those closest to you, the pages on explaining to others can be shared with others or downloaded and printed out.

For many people with prosopagnosia, simply knowing that there is a reason that they are struggling to recognise others and that they are not alone, makes the biggest difference of all.