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Tips for reading with facial blindness? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by thottistic@alien.top to c/books@metacritics.zone

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I have partial facial blindness which makes it hard to picture faces that aren’t super familiar and I can’t create new faces in my head. I end up picturing faces of people I know and celebrities.

It becomes frustrating when I’m reading as the faces morph constantly into my head. I constantly stop to get the faces right. Sydney Sweeney ended up as 2 characters when I read “Bunny” lol. I also get a biased view of the characters this way. It makes it really hard to enjoy reading nowadays. Any suggestions? Different strategies for picturing or reading without picturing?

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[–] TheStoryTruthMine@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

It's called prosopagnosia. I have it and can't picture faces at all even if I've seen them before many times (like myself or my mother or father or twin sister).

It's actually one of the reasons I like books more than movies. You don't have to recognize anyone (which I've always struggled to in movies especially if characters have the same height, gender, and hair color). Just let go of the urge to and follow the characters using their names.