You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know

What it’s like to live with profound face blindness.

by Heather Sellers

The Gifts of Prosopagnosia

In the weeks and months after I was diagnosed with prosopagnosia, I agonized over how to tell people. I dreaded and postponed telling anyone outside my immediate family. My therapist urged me to come out. "Choose one friend," he said. "You'll see. It's not going to be a big deal to people." Read More

Accurately Diagnosing Prosopagnosia

The first three doctors I saw here in Michigan said there was simply no way could I have prosopagnosia. "Too rare." And, I passed all of their basic screening tests for prosopagnosia. I argued that the tests didn't really measure my deficit, but my complaints fell on deaf ears. "The Benton works," one doctor told me. Read More

Teaching Doctors, Empowering Ourselves

Five years ago, face blindness was still thought by many, even in the medical community, to be an extremely rare disorder. We now know face blindness is not rare at all: face blindness affects, to some degree, one out of fifty. But it's going to take awhile for all the doctors in all the towns to hear the news. What we can know about the brain has exploded in recent years. Read More

DIAGNOSING PROSOPAGNOSIA: When The Patient Knows for Sure, and the Doctor Disagrees

Coming to an accurate diagnosis for a little-known disorder is complicated, painful for patients, and very challenging for doctors. Here's my story.

When I happened across the phrase face recognition, I knew I'd found the explanation I'd been searching for. If face recognition was "a thing," I certainly had a serious problem with it. Read More

Living with Prosopagnosia: How could you not know?

How could I know? Read More

Well, which is it? Face blindness? Or prosopagnosia?

Researchers are moving away from calling the mysterious disorder that affects me and an estimated 2 percent of the population "face blindness." I'm not blind. Blindness in this case is a metaphor. In fact, the disorder affects perception, not vision. The name "face blindness" is confusing for people. I am often asked, "What do you see when you see a face?" I don't know. Read More

Hi, I’m Heather Sellers, Would You Mind Always Wearing a Nametag?

Welcome to my new blog. I'm Heather Sellers, and you don't look like anyone I know. Should we happen to meet, I would have to tell you right away that I will not recognize you when we meet again. I'm profoundly prosopagnosic: completely unable to recognize people by face.

"Don't worry!" most people say, "I'm terrible with names, too." Read More

Heather Sellers, a writer and professor living in Holland, Michigan, is the author of the memoir You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness.

more...