Episode 44
Episode 44 | Prosopagnosia! Featuring Mela Borawski and Margaret Kerry
Prosopagnosia, commonly referred to as face blindness, is a condition that significantly impedes an individual's ability to recognize faces, despite having normal vision. In this enlightening episode, I engage in a dialogue with Mela Borawski, who shares her personal experiences living with this condition, alongside excerpts from an interview with the renowned Margaret Kerry. Both women elucidate the profound emotional impact of prosopagnosia, which affects an estimated 2-3% of the population, highlighting the challenges they face in social interactions and personal relationships. Through their narratives, we gain insight into the complexities of navigating a world where face recognition is a fundamental aspect of human connection. This episode serves not only to inform but also to foster understanding and awareness regarding this often-misunderstood neurological condition.
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Transcript
Welcome to Wonderland, the podcast where I.
Speaker B:Go down the rabbit hole to research things you may be curious about.
Speaker A:My name is Amie and I'll be.
Speaker B:Your guide on this trip to Wonderland.
Speaker B:Hi, guys, and welcome back to another episode of welcome to Wonderland.
Speaker B:I found this month's topic to be really interesting, and if I'm being honest, I didn't even know it existed until a couple of months ago when Margaret Cary, yes, the woman after whom Tinker Bell was modeled, was giving Barrett Gruber from the All About Nothing podcast an exclusive interview at Coastal City Comic Con in March.
Speaker B:During their interview, Ms.
Speaker B:Carey spoke about a condition she has called prosopagnosia.
Speaker C:Prosopagnosia.
Speaker C:Prosopagnosia.
Speaker C:Prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:Prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:Fast forward a few weeks and I sat in to co host an episode of the All About Nothing since Zach is out on paternity leave.
Speaker B:Congrats on the twin sack where Barrett was interviewing a woman by the name of Mela Baralski who has the same condition.
Speaker B:After two totally unrelated instances of hearing of people with prosopagnosia, I became curious about this condition and began to wonder.
Speaker B:I wonder.
Speaker D:I wonder.
Speaker B:I wonder.
Speaker E:I wonder.
Speaker B:I wonder.
Speaker B:I wonder.
Speaker C:Hmm.
Speaker C:I wonder.
Speaker B:I wonder.
Speaker C:I wonder.
Speaker B:In working this episode out in my head, I knew I wanted to talk to Mela again.
Speaker E:So.
Speaker B:So we're going to do just that.
Speaker B:Today.
Speaker A:I am here with Mela Barowski.
Speaker B:First, will you tell us a little bit about yourself, Mela?
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:I live on a homestead with a bunch of my family, pretty much like a family commune out in the country with goats and chickens and my sister has a pig next door.
Speaker C:I do hypnosis for all sorts of things, other healing modalities like irregular therapy, energy healing, just different things that I've picked up from various courses and classes in school that I've gone to to help people.
Speaker C:Holistic mind, body and spirit.
Speaker C:And I also have a pagan church that I lead a religious nonprofit that we have out here in the country as well.
Speaker A:Well, that is exciting.
Speaker A:And we actually talk a fair amount about all of that on the episode of All About Nothing.
Speaker A:So welcome to Wonderland listeners.
Speaker A:If you did not listen to that episode, go back and listen to it.
Speaker A:I'll be sure to link it when we share this.
Speaker A:But the reason why I have Mela on the show today is to talk about the prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:I'm also going to include excerpts from the All About Nothing interview with Margaret Carey.
Speaker C:This is a me, a me.
Speaker E:This is Ms.
Speaker E:Margaret I have a thing called face blinders.
Speaker E:It's difficult for me.
Speaker E:And they walk right up to me and tell me who they are and.
Speaker B:I go, okay, but before we get into some of those first hand accounts of what it's like to live with prosopagnosia, let's first talk about what it is.
Speaker A:Exactly what do you think that word means?
Speaker C:Sounds like a condition, mental condition or something.
Speaker E:Prosopagnosia.
Speaker C:I'll go with whatever she said, no clue.
Speaker C:That is prosopagnos.
Speaker E:I really don't know.
Speaker C:I'm trying to like think of like Latin words because I know this probably helps with meaning.
Speaker C:Oh, it's Greek.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:Not close at all.
Speaker A:They're close.
Speaker E:Prognosia.
Speaker E:I really don't know.
Speaker C:I've never heard this word in my life.
Speaker B:At its root, prosopagnosia breaks down to the Greek word for face, prosopon, and the Greek word agnosia, meaning lack of knowledge.
Speaker B:So we have lack of knowledge of faces.
Speaker B:More commonly, this is called face blindness.
Speaker B:So what do you think face blindness is?
Speaker C:Face blindness?
Speaker D:What does that mean?
Speaker C:What do you think you're blind?
Speaker D:Is it like a concept?
Speaker A:Kind of.
Speaker A:So like if someone has face blindness, what do you think that means?
Speaker C:They don't see face.
Speaker C:I don't see their face.
Speaker D:I don't see other people's face.
Speaker A:This is face blindness.
Speaker C:We knew that.
Speaker C:We did.
Speaker C:We even knew that word.
Speaker A:So it is kind of a mental condition.
Speaker A:What do you know about it?
Speaker A:Other than what we've discussed here, nothing.
Speaker A:So it's whatever the condition is, the person is either not able or much lessen their ability to recognize a face.
Speaker C:From time to time when they see it.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker B:So when they see a face, they don't remember what that face looks like the next time that face is in their face.
Speaker A:So it is face blindness.
Speaker A:Do you know what face blindness is?
Speaker E:You can't see people's faces or you.
Speaker C:Don'T recognize people's faces?
Speaker E:Oh, I would hate that.
Speaker C:Just like having permanent memory loss.
Speaker B:Overly simplified Prosopagnosia is when a person has difficulty recognizing faces or facial expressions in spite of otherwise normal vision function.
Speaker D: this may have perfect vision,: Speaker D:All of this happens in the brain, the visual processing and understanding.
Speaker B:That was an excerpt from a good video by Dr.
Speaker B:Neil Gaiman, OD or Dr.
Speaker B:I Guy as he's known on social media.
Speaker B:People with prosopagnosia may be unable to recognize the faces of familiar people such as co workers, neighbors, and even family.
Speaker B:In extreme cases, a person cannot even distinguish their own face in a picture or in reflections.
Speaker E:I'm having dinner at Tam O Shagger, which was Walt Disney's favorite place to eat.
Speaker E:And there are some people there.
Speaker E:I'm married to my first husband who was at assistant director at the Almost Broadcasting Company, and he starts to talk to the people next door.
Speaker E:We're sitting at Walt Disney's table.
Speaker E:They're there.
Speaker E:So he's talking.
Speaker E:He didn't do that, that he wasn't that kind of a person.
Speaker E:Not that he was closed, but they were chatting.
Speaker E:And then we got up and, and went out to wait for our car because the parking lot was slow so they had to have somebody bring.
Speaker E:And we're still chatting away.
Speaker E:I got in the car and he drove away and we drive home and he said, you have no idea who those people are that we've been talking to.
Speaker E:I said, no, I don't.
Speaker E:They're our next door neighbor.
Speaker A:Oh, gracious.
Speaker E:And that's a feeling.
Speaker E:Oh, that is a feeling that you have failed all the way along.
Speaker B:That was Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret Carey recalling a situation that is all too common to folks who experience prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:And with an estimated 2 to 3% of the world population, or around 8 to 10 million people, just in the United States, it's more common than you might imagine.
Speaker E:And one in 50 people have it.
Speaker E:Oh, me and Brad Kent.
Speaker E:How do you buy this?
Speaker E:Well, use a name here.
Speaker B:With so many people impacted, you may be wondering why they experience prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:As Dr.
Speaker B:Gaiman mentioned, face blindness isn't a vision problem, but rather is rooted in the brain.
Speaker D:And to break down this process, visual information and electrical signals starts with the eye.
Speaker D:The retina goes to the optic nerve, the optic nerve sends it back through the optic chiasm and eventually to the back of the brain, the occipital cortex.
Speaker D:That information that gets sent away to other parts where it can be ultimately understood and processed and eventually constructed as vision.
Speaker D:And this information is sent out into two streams.
Speaker D:There's the dorsal stream that kind of processes wear or spatial recognition, and the ventral stream that processes what or what we are looking at.
Speaker D:And that ventral stream goes into the inferior occipital lobe or the fusiform gyrus.
Speaker D:And that's where facial recognition happens.
Speaker D:The occipital lobe talks directly to the temporal lobe and they kind of communicate and figure out what they're looking at.
Speaker B:Most often, prosopagnosia is the result of an injury that impacts the brain.
Speaker B:The part of the brain generally associated with face blindness Is the fusiform gyrus, which activates in response to faces.
Speaker B:This little section of the brain allows most people to recognize faces in more detail Than they would other inanimate objects.
Speaker B:It's also the area of the brain that has been linked to other neurological phenomena, Such as synesthesia, where people see colors when listening to music, or see shapes when smelling certain scents, for example, and dyslexia, which was previously called word blindness.
Speaker B:In most known cases of prosopagnosia, the fusiform gyrus experiences trauma or damage due to brain injury, stroke, or even things like carbon monoxide poisoning or Alzheimer's.
Speaker B:But there are also rare cases where the condition is congenital, Meaning that the affected person is born with a condition.
Speaker B:This accounts for around 2.5% of all known cases of prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:It's not uncommon, however, for people who have this affliction to not know they do, because to them, they don't realize they're experiencing facial recognition In a way that is atypical.
Speaker B:In Speaking with both Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret and Mela, they both talked about how they didn't know they had face blindness until they were older, and how it's comforting to know that there is a name for what they were experiencing.
Speaker B:Here, Mella tells us about realizing that she has face blindness.
Speaker A:It sounds like more often than not, face blindness is a result of an injury or a brain event, like a stroke or Alzheimer's, but in some cases, they're finding it's congenital.
Speaker A:Do you mind sharing what your circumstances are or were?
Speaker C:Because I didn't know what I had, I am not exactly sure.
Speaker C:I don't know if I've had it since I.
Speaker C:I was a child, Because I don't remember a lot of my childhood Just because of trauma and things like that.
Speaker C:But I did fall down.
Speaker C:I hit my head.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:I had different.
Speaker C:I had concussions through my life, and.
Speaker C:And I just know that since my 20s, that's when I remember having trouble and not knowing what the trouble was, Just thinking that I was very forgetful, Just thinking that something was wrong with me, that I was broken in some way.
Speaker C:And it wasn't until later on that I found out that there was a name for this.
Speaker C:So I may have had it when I was younger, and I just didn't know it.
Speaker B:Similarly, while Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret is 95 years old, she didn't realize that she had face blindness until she was in her.
Speaker E:80S, because I only found out about eight years ago that that's what it was.
Speaker E:I found out because I read a story in the newspaper paper and a lady has it so badly that she doesn't recognize her own children's faces.
Speaker C:Goodness.
Speaker E:So I do not have that.
Speaker E:Yeah, but you can't until somebody says something and you go, really?
Speaker B:While it is generally accepted that face blindness is the result of something not working as expected in the fusiform gyrus, people who live with prosopagnosia may experience it in different ways.
Speaker E:The former governor of Colorado has it.
Speaker E:The man who builds these great big, huge machines for Disney to put in their.
Speaker E:Their parks.
Speaker E:Yeah, he has it so bad that the.
Speaker E:So badly bad.
Speaker E:Well, anyway, it's not good.
Speaker E:He has an assistant at his side all the time.
Speaker E:All the time to tell him who he's talking with.
Speaker E:And if he found her in a market and looked over, he would not recognize her.
Speaker E:Works with her every day.
Speaker E:So it can be debilitating.
Speaker B:There are three types of prosopagnosia that most people with the condition will fit in.
Speaker B:First is apperceptive prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:Folks who fall into this category cannot make sense of faces and are unable to make same different judgments when they are presented with pictures of different faces.
Speaker B:With this type of prosopagnosia, the person may not be able to discern different facial features or emotions.
Speaker B:They may see a person's face as blurry or distorted, with no identifiable pieces.
Speaker B:They may, however, be able to recognize people based on clues such as their clothing, hairstyle, skin color, or voice.
Speaker B:Next is associative prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:People experiencing associative prosopagnosia can typically make out faces and facial features, but there are impaired links between the early phase perception processes and the somatic information we hold about people in our memories.
Speaker B:The parahippocampal gyrus may also come into play with folks who experience face blindness in this way.
Speaker B:Generally, they may be able to distinguish faces and facial features looking at photos and people.
Speaker B:They can typically tell you if it's a male or a female, the person's general age, and other generic information about that person.
Speaker B:But they may not be able to discern whose face it is, even if it is a familiar face.
Speaker B:The third type is developmental prosopagnosia or congenital prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:And this is the kind that manifests in early childhood and is generally not attributed to any acquired brain damage.
Speaker B:There's some belief that this type of prosopagnosia may even have a genetic link to it called hereditary prosopagnosia.
Speaker B:Now that we've learned a little about the types of prosopagnosia and that people, even with the same diagnosis, experience it differently, let's hear from Mela how she experiences face blindness.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Okay, so what is it?
Speaker A:If you can.
Speaker A:I know how hard it is to describe something when it's normal for you, but what is it that you see?
Speaker A:See, like do you see facial expressions and can you make out whether someone's happy or sad and you just can't put it back to the right person later?
Speaker A:Can you tell us a little more about that?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I see people when I'm.
Speaker C:When I'm with them.
Speaker C:So it isn't, it isn't the kind of thing where when I'm looking at you right now, I see a blank space.
Speaker C:It's just that when I look away, I'm not going to be able to describe what you look like.
Speaker C:If tomorrow I'm not going to be able to tell somebody what color your hair is, what color your eyes are.
Speaker C:I couldn't tell the police to do a sketch, nothing like that.
Speaker C:I'm not going to be able to remember you.
Speaker C:If I passed you tomorrow in Walmart, I would not recognize you.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:But you have good vision, right?
Speaker A:So right now you can see me for what I am.
Speaker A:You can see that I've got blonde hair and, or brown hair and wearing a green shirt.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And this isn't something where.
Speaker A:So I tell people all the time that I'm bad with faces, but it's more like when I don't know somebody, well, I won't recognize them out of the right setting.
Speaker A:So if it's somebody I work with that I'm not especially close with, if I see them out that, and I don't know, like, I'll go, they seem familiar, but I don't know why I know them.
Speaker A:So it's not nearly that same kind of thing.
Speaker A:Do you.
Speaker A:Are you able to recognize like your family members on the regular or just because of their gait or smell or there's.
Speaker C:There's a lot of things that, because I've had this for so long, you kind of train yourself.
Speaker C:So what you mentioned about how having maybe a co worker, but then if you see them out, you wouldn't recognize them.
Speaker C:That's definitely something where if somebody is in the same place, I could recognize them just because I'm putting the context around them.
Speaker C:So I think with my family, my kids are here, they're going into the, the Same rooms that they're going into.
Speaker C:But there is a possibility that if I hadn't.
Speaker C:If I hadn't seen them in a week or two and they passed by me out on the street, I would not recognize them.
Speaker C:I've actually driven when they were little, I drove right past them many times, and they ran after my car when I was going to pick them up from school because they weren't standing at the same place where they always stood.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Does it.
Speaker A:Is it the same way with pictures?
Speaker A:Can you look at a picture and say, oh, yes, this is my daughter or this is my husband, or only because, you know, that's who's in that particular picture.
Speaker C:Sometimes if I.
Speaker C:If I've kind of memorized it, it takes a lot of.
Speaker C:Kind of brain power.
Speaker C:That's how I try to explain it to people, is the amount of brain power.
Speaker C:Let's say for you, if I wanted to remember what color your hair was and what you look like, the amount of brain power that I would have to start expending now to kind of dig that into my brain.
Speaker C:Brain is so much that I just don't have the power to do that.
Speaker C:So with my family and things like that, it's a little easier because I have constant contact with them.
Speaker C:My kids live with me still my husband, but if.
Speaker C:If he came home today and his beard was shaved, I would be extremely shaken up, and I have before, and I would know that it's my husband, but he would look so different to me that.
Speaker C:That I feel kind of scared inside.
Speaker B:As you can imagine, living with.
Speaker B:The inability to recall faces presents additional challenges other than just not being able to recognize a face.
Speaker E:Do you.
Speaker C:Do you feel like.
Speaker C:Do you feel like people are offended when.
Speaker C:If you don't recognize them?
Speaker E:Oh, yes.
Speaker E:Oh, yes.
Speaker E:I mean, you're sitting there for four hours and talking, and then the next day, no idea.
Speaker A:I mean, you.
Speaker C:You remember that you talked to someone.
Speaker A:Or that you know that person's name.
Speaker E:But is this the one?
Speaker B:Mela echoed the same sentiment when we spoke.
Speaker A:Oh, man.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I think that's got to be incredibly difficult to deal with and to navigate just daily life.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:What are some of the biggest obstacles that you have in not being able to remember faces?
Speaker C:I would say the biggest obstacle would be interpersonal, of.
Speaker C:Of just having people in my classes and.
Speaker C:And having a church basically, with people that see me almost every week, and yet I don't know who they are.
Speaker C:And just having that.
Speaker C:It's created kind of rifts with people because, like, I said earlier, Some people think I'm stuck up.
Speaker C:They don't understand.
Speaker C:Especially before I was very open about it.
Speaker C:So the.
Speaker C:The biggest thing that I've had to deal with is interpersonal things of just people thinking I was just a horrible stuck up person who didn't even want to talk to them when I saw them.
Speaker B:Because people who don't experience face blindness cannot understand what people who do are experiencing.
Speaker B:It's not uncommon for people who have prosopagnosia to who also struggle with anxiety, shame and depression.
Speaker B:This came up with Mela while discussing her own experiences with face blindness.
Speaker C:Because you're not doing it on purpose.
Speaker C:And I think that anybody who has this, especially if they're undiagnosed, there's probably some kind of shame that they've got.
Speaker C:Because I know I didn't want to go around people because I would be afraid that I would run into somebody that I didn't know and I'd have to pretend I felt very inauthentic because I was pretending that I knew people all the time and had no clue who I was talking to.
Speaker C:Couldn't even describe them to people later to figure out who it was in the end.
Speaker C:And so the shame really brought me down.
Speaker C:I felt very isolated.
Speaker C:So if you think you have this and you've been isolating yourself, you've been feeling that shame.
Speaker C:One of the best things that I did for myself that changed so many things in my life was learning to love myself like that.
Speaker C:People might say that as kind of a trite little thing.
Speaker C:It absolutely changed my life.
Speaker C:It changed all my relationships and allowed me to just realize that this is how I am.
Speaker C:And there are things that I can do because my.
Speaker C:My face blindness and I don't know if in your research it said anything about this, but it can also extend to recognizing cars, recognizing animals and things like that.
Speaker C:So I can't find my car because of this.
Speaker C:I can't tell somebody what color my car is or what color of car anybody in my family drives because of this.
Speaker C:It just doesn't shelf in my memory banks, you know, it does not there.
Speaker C:So it brings a lot of shame because you do feel like you are a lesser individual.
Speaker C:So please realize that you are not alone.
Speaker C:There's nothing to be ashamed about.
Speaker C:And there's lots of things that you can do to help help yourself recognizing who people are.
Speaker C:And one of the best things is just telling the people you know to say, hey, remind me, I have this thing.
Speaker C:It's not a terrible thing.
Speaker C:It's Not a bad thing.
Speaker C:It's just who I am.
Speaker C:It's just how I am.
Speaker C:Would you please remind me who you are?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it seems like that'd be so easy.
Speaker A:But I guess maybe if you're shy or anything like that, that might be a bigger pill to swallow than it seems like it would be.
Speaker C:People get upset too when, I mean, I've asked that to people and they get offended.
Speaker C:So you don't believe you.
Speaker B:They don't understand.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:What about me is not memorable?
Speaker C:Or I feel, you know, they'll make remarks like I've done, I've.
Speaker C:I've been in your classes for two years now and you don't remember me.
Speaker C:I guess I'm just not memorable.
Speaker C:And you have to really love yourself to let that not get under your skin.
Speaker B:Furthermore, it may be frustrating to people with face blindness because it isn't well understood even in the scientific community.
Speaker B:And while there are tests that can be given in studies that exist, diagnosing prosopagnosia generally relies on the person experiencing it realizing that they are seeing things differently.
Speaker B:But studies do exist and there are tests available that neuropsychologists can use to help diagnose the condition, though they are difficult to standardize.
Speaker B:One test is the Benton Facial Recognition test during which individuals are presented with a target face above six test faces and are asked which test face matches the target face.
Speaker B:The images only include the face and are cropped to remove hair and clothes.
Speaker B:For the first six images, only one face matches the target.
Speaker B:For the next seven, three match but the poses are different.
Speaker B:Another test that is used is the Cambridge Face Memory Test, the cfmt.
Speaker B:In this test, the individual is presented with three images each of six different target faces.
Speaker B:They are then presented with several three image series, one target face and two distractors and are asked to pick the target face.
Speaker B:It turns out Mela is familiar with.
Speaker A:These types of tests.
Speaker A:In doing some of the preliminary research for this episode, it looks like there.
Speaker B:Are tests that they can do MRIs.
Speaker A:And various tests to officially diagnose it, but that most people are self diagnosed with the face blindness.
Speaker A:What is the case for you?
Speaker C:I would consider myself self diagnosed but I have been in different university studies and gone through their testing so.
Speaker C:So it wasn't doctor diagnosed but all the tests that I've ever done and all the studies I've ever done, I have been, I've been in the more severe testing.
Speaker C:So Bournemouth University in UK I studied with them and I think 72 or something is the, the average and I got a 29.
Speaker A:Oh no.
Speaker A:So, so, so what are on those kinds of tests, if you don't mind me asking?
Speaker C:Most of it is just lots and lots of faces and they just have the face part, no hair or anything.
Speaker C:So you're just looking at just the face and you have to look at all these faces and then they go to another screen and you have to pick out the face.
Speaker C:Which face is not in the ones that you saw, which face is in the ones that you saw.
Speaker C:That sort of thing.
Speaker C:It's extremely difficult.
Speaker C:They also do famous people, they do just general people and that's another thing people don't think about though with the famous people.
Speaker C:Keeping up with storylines and movies and TV shows is extremely difficult, Extremely difficult.
Speaker A:Because you don't know who's who and what they're doing and why they're doing it.
Speaker A:For people who think they may have.
Speaker B:Prosopagnosia, the 20 item prosopagnosia index or pi20 is freely available online and I'll link it on wtwlpod.com for you to review.
Speaker B:Both Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret and Mela found comfort once they were able to put a name with what they were experiencing.
Speaker B:And both discuss the importance of people talking about face blindness openly.
Speaker A:Oh, that's wild.
Speaker A:That actually came up when I was talking to some co workers about the fact that I was doing this episode, you know, and asking had they ever heard of it or anything like that.
Speaker A:And one of the women that I work with named Cheyenne, she said, I can't even imagine the emotion, the emotional impact of having to deal with not recognizing people and then other people not understanding that it's not that you have anything against them or that there something wrong with, but that you just physically, your brain won't do it.
Speaker A:So how do you kind of manage that, you know, emotionally for yourself, but also when you're interacting with people who just have no idea.
Speaker C:How I am now is a lot better with that because I'm very open about it.
Speaker C:And when I teach, when I talk to people, I'm very open and tell them that this is what I have, this is how you could help me.
Speaker C:Please introduce yourself if you see me, that sort of thing.
Speaker C:But most of my life I.
Speaker C:At first I didn't know what was wrong with me, but even when I figured out what was, what was going on, I was very ashamed and I tried to hide it and so I had things that I did like if, if my husband Randy was with me and somebody walked up and, and I have met so many people through my life because I did so much community work and teaching and things like that.
Speaker C:So it is very possible, since I've lived in the Columbia area, that I'm going to run into somebody that knows me.
Speaker C:I'm not going to know any of them.
Speaker C:So Randy was really good about coming up, and I was just stuck.
Speaker C:The whole Southern thing.
Speaker C:Hey.
Speaker C:Hey, honey.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's good to see you.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:And they're telling me this, and I have absolutely no clue who they are.
Speaker C:So Randy would kind of sidle up and say something to help trigger me as to where I knew them from.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah, How's.
Speaker C:How's your kids from so and so school or something like that.
Speaker C:So he got really good at kind of secretly giving me information to help me figure out who I was talking to.
Speaker C:But it's not.
Speaker C:It's not as difficult anymore because I am totally upfront with people and tell them I still.
Speaker C:I still kind of get in trouble with people.
Speaker C:Just maybe a year and a half ago, one of my hypnosis clients saw me at another event and I didn't recognize her, and she talked to me and I just was.
Speaker C:I just was super nice to her, but I didn't really realized she was a client of mine.
Speaker C:And later on, I was talking to someone about face.
Speaker C:That I had face blindness.
Speaker C:And she came up and said, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad that I heard you saying that, because I thought that you just either, you know, didn't like me that I wasn't memorable or in any way.
Speaker C:And I said, no, that's.
Speaker C:Oh, my goodness, no.
Speaker B:Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret is also an ambassador for people with prosopagnosia and leverages any situation she can to bring awareness to the condition.
Speaker E:There's a name for it.
Speaker C:Interesting.
Speaker E:And once you know that there's a name for it, you say, well, I don't.
Speaker E:I'm not happy.
Speaker E:But at least there's a name for it.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker E:And the same thing happens.
Speaker E:And that's why I would like the story to get up.
Speaker B:And while living with prosopagnosia can be incredibly difficult, Both Mela and Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret shared that having a supportive partner makes it a little easier.
Speaker C:And again, Randy is extremely helpful to me.
Speaker C:So I'm constantly asking him, who is this person and why are they doing that?
Speaker C:And then he tells me, oh, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker C:So he's very helpful with that.
Speaker B:Despite the obstacles they face, both of these women are able to find humor in their situation.
Speaker C:I've been doing pretty good with things.
Speaker C:And Randy's been really good about helping me, and I found different ways to recognize people from context.
Speaker C:But we were at a social situation a couple weeks ago.
Speaker C:We had someone that we didn't know sit down beside us and he sat right beside me and Randy was across from me and we talked to this person for a while.
Speaker C:We were having dinner and I had no clue that the person got up and somebody else sat down in their seat.
Speaker C:They went to mingle with somebody else.
Speaker C:So I look back and continue the conversation and.
Speaker C:And the new guy who had a tattoo that I had no clue that that was.
Speaker C:Was even a different person, was talking about the same thing.
Speaker C:And so I could not recognize that this was a different person.
Speaker C:So the whole time on the.
Speaker C:On the way home, I was talking to Randy about this guy and all the things that he had said.
Speaker C:Randy said, who are you talking about?
Speaker C:And he told me that we had been talking to two different guys and he tried to explain to me what one guy looked like and what the second guy looked like and at.
Speaker C:And I could not even pinpoint at one point at what point the other guy must have gotten up in the and the new guy sat down and I said I should not be allowed to leave the house.
Speaker C:That is wild.
Speaker A:Gosh, would you.
Speaker A:This sounds super insane, but would you know if you had an intruder in your house or if it was somebody who was allowed to be there?
Speaker C:Oh my gosh.
Speaker C:New fear triggered.
Speaker A:Oh no.
Speaker B:That's it for this episode of welcome to Wonderland, My Wonderlings.
Speaker B:And I hope that you found this topic as interesting as I have.
Speaker B:My full conversation with Mela borowski is around 30 minutes long and available on YouTube for you to view.
Speaker B:I will also post the conversation with Ms.
Speaker B:Margaret in its entirety.
Speaker B:Both of these women are advocates for people with prosopagnosia and strongly encourage people to talk about the condition.
Speaker B:Please share this episode to help continue to spread awareness so the 10 million Americans who may experience some form of face blindness don't feel like they're alone.
Speaker B:Please visit www.wtwlpod.com for additional information on this topic and links to all my research.
Speaker B:Until next time, be safe, be kind, and stay curious.
Speaker A:The welcome to Wonderland podcast is copyrighted by Amie Bland and is distributed by Big Media, llc.
Speaker A:This podcast is recorded in and around Columbia, South Carolina.
Speaker A:Any thoughts or opinions are those of the hostess unless otherwise indicated.
Speaker A:Subscribe to this podcast Wherever you get your podcast, please like, follow and share the podcast.
Speaker A:Check out the welcome to Wonderland linktree at Linktreewtwlpod to find out where to join me on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and more.
Speaker A:When you find me, be sure to follow, like, share, subscribe, do all the things it helps me grow.
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Speaker A:Thanks for listening.
Speaker C:I did it.
Speaker B:See, it was short.
Speaker B:That wasn't too bad, right?
Speaker B:Are you asleep?
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:Did you fall asleep at boredom?
Speaker B:Are you even here?
Speaker C:Okay, I was gonna let you get all of that in there.
Speaker B:Oh, man.
