#eyeofnada

[actuallyschizoid]

I am bad at remembering other things, but stuff related to people is the worst of all. It doesn't really bother me since I have most phone numbers/birthdays on social media, but the face thing freaks me out. Because I can see a person and think it's that other person. Or see someone I know and not realise it's them until they tell me. I don't even remember my mother's face off-hand and I live with her. I only remember the general "look" if even that. I get confused with actors and characters too

Yeah, that’s pretty close to how I experience it. I remember the face somewhat, but things like new haircut would confuse the fuck out of me, I’ll probably think that’s someone else. And generally I think there’s a bunch of people I only remember by face, and I know there was some data assigned to that face, but I really don’t store that data anywhere. So it’s just “familiar face #0397, name and personality data missing”. 

One thing I got to learn is that it is a skill. We might have less “talent” (and/or innate practice) than most people, but we’re still able to get better at it to some extent. If that bothers you and lowers quality of life, it might be worth to intentionally learn it. 

Being a schizoid, it’s likely you weren’t looking at people as much as it’s intended by human design to be able to rely on this skill. Just because you didn’t care enough to get better at this. But you still can catch up. I know I got better at it than I was back in college, let alone in school. 

In fact, back in school I had terrible myopia, like -6. And no glasses or lenses. I just didn’t need them, all I cared about was to see within 15 cm from my nose and the world around me, including people, was just fine in it’s perfectly blurry state. And it provided a good excuse why I don’t look at people, let alone their eyes, why I don’t recognize anyone or talk to them. So 90% of my face recognition experience until I fixed my eyes was from TV/PC screen. And only few years after laser correction, around 25 y.o. I started to properly recognize faces from distance. And now? Well, I still suck at it, but that skill is at least usable. 

[actuallyschizoid]

I have recently realised that I am at least partially face-blind. But the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it might be connected to my szpd. I don't remember or recognize faces, but I also have extreme difficulty remembering names, ages, birthdays and any kind of personal information really. Maybe my brain just deems that information unnecessary because I have such difficulty forming any social connections. Have you encountered anything like this before?

Yep, about the same for me. 

Names, birthdays, ages — tbh, I don’t even try to remember it anymore. I don’t bother to remember by own birthday even. When I’m asked by whatever that’s not officials that might matter I just input random date in realistic range. 

I don’t remember birthdays of my own parents, I just open their diet app where it’s listed when I need to know it, and then I’ll forget it few min later. All I know atm is that it’s late winter lol.

But maybe that’s just my thing, coz it goes to a bit more than just personal/social data. I suck at memorizing history dates, all kinds of numbers (my phone number that I have for like 15 years? ye, let me open my contacts to read it to you). 

Then somehow at random I just remember numbers I absolutely don’t need. For eternity. Like, when I was like 8 y.o. my mom was reading a book and had nothing to bookmark the page with so she said something like “page 137, pls remind me tomorrow what page it was”. Sure, mom. How about I’ll remind you which page it was 25 years later? Don’t remember which book, tho. 

Anyway, if your selective memory is so selective it only sucks at dates connected to information related to people and everything else works fine, then perhaps it has some psychological layer to it. Which means you might be able to recover that ability with some psychotherapy or whatnot, should you ever need it. 

But tbh, I don’t think it’s all that much of a problem. In the age of smartphones, you can just write down any info that’s actually needed and never bother to rely on your own memory. I’d say, it’s for the best to be able to keep your memory free of all unnecessary garbage like birthdays of people you meet once a year at best. Or, well, even if you meet them daily, but that date only needed once a year - the heck you’d waste a memory slot for that? Even if it’s just a single byte of brain cells, I’m sure there are better use for it.

Oh, and as for faces — yeah, I’m not too good at face recognition either. Though later it turned out I’m not too bad at it, but at a different angle. Like, I’m actually capable to recreate face pretty accurately from photo, using 3D software like DAZ Studio. I’m also able to create unique faces plausible enough with it (like for character illustrations I’m sometimes asked to make). I can somewhat recreate face from memory same way, maybe a bit less accurately. 

But then when it comes to practical usage?.. “Eh, that girl looks kinda familiar… Oh hey, neighbor next door I know for years, I never expected to see you 1 km from home and wearing a hat, that’s probably why I didn’t say hi and not because I thought I probably have seen you on tv or something”. 

Like, I probably would remember the face... eventually. But I might not remember which person it’s connected to.