Face recognition failure...total embarassment

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I'd had an important reason for attending a public gathering this weekend.

My therapist turned out to be there too. We happened to pass in a crowd. He smiled and said "Hello".

I had no idea who he was, said "Hello" (and I KNOW he could tell I didn't recognize him), and moved on, only having it hit me who it was a few moments after it'd become too late.

No, I was apparently having NO sensory issues at all in the crowd. (I also have some swampland to sell you, if you believe that.)

He's going to want to talk with me about this in the coming week, isn't he?

Is this another arrow pointing to me being on the spectrum?

Although it's not a definitively diagnostic characteristic, a lot of people on the spectrum experience this kind of face blindness.

I have a very odd sort where I have what I call contextual face blindness (meaning that if I see someone in a context where I wouldn't expect to (particularly if I see a coworker at Target or something like that), then I won't recognize them at all).

This happens to me with movies/actors too where I will misidentify an actor that I should be familiar with and my wife can figure it out pretty quickly.

I don't even recognize close family members if they appear where I don't expect them to be. So I guess this could be a characteristic of autism.

happens to me all the time. I can't recognize people out of context.

I might see someone 5 days a week at work, but If I run into them at jewel, nothing! Not only do I not recognize them but if they identify themselves not only do I not recognize 'them,' as in the person in front of me, but it directly clashes with my memories of 'them,' the person in the context they belong, and I can get a migraine and once even a nosebleed (though to be fair I was particularly embarrassed and was playing it up a bit). I refer to this as "scrambling my reality matrix."

Edit: ok, thats too many of you for it to be a coincidence!

It's just simple face-blindness... you have trouble memorizing faces. It's a pretty common thing, especially in its milder forms, where you can still recognize people if you are very, very familiar with them (for example, your mother, or the friend you've had for five years).

It's nothing to be embarrassed about. Most people will accept an explanation like, "I'm sorry, I just really suck at memorizing people's faces." It can also help to avoid any insult if you make it clear that you remember the person themselves--like, comment on something you've learned about them, for example ask how their German Shepherd's obedience training is going, if they mentioned that to you last time.

I've tried telling people straight out that I'm faceblind and I might not recognize them, but so far, only one person has taken the hint and actually notified me of their name every time we met. And the stupid thing is, she has a distinctive haircut that I can recognize her by, which makes her one of the less problematic people. If I could just get those identical-looking young, pretty college students to tell me who they are, that would be great; they're the hardest to tell apart. No distinctive features at all, in many cases, and the hairstyles can be either identical (because of trends) or ever-changing.

Don't beat yourself up, though. That's just life.

I have this problem too
I identify people by a combination of their hair and their voice

I have it too, don't recognize people out of context, can't identify movie characters, recognize people based on the hair etc
But I have the perfect excuse! I have sight problems so I sometimes use glasses other times I use lenses. If someone I know walks by me and I don't say hi, they get upset, so when they tell me that I tell them I didn't see them. They assume it's because I wasn't wearing glasses, even if I was using lenses
I don't usually tell people I can't recognize faces or them because most of the times they get upset ("she doesn't remember me!") or think I'm weird/exaggerating. So I think this sight excuse requires less explanation and is more accepted.

Actually, Sethno, your story surprised me because, according to HIPAA laws, your therapist is not supposed to acknowledge you outside the context of therapy.

This happens to me all this time too. Most people don't hold it against you and it usually isn't a big deal at all.

I also have difficulty telling apart characters in movies if they have similar hair and similar proportions (height/weight).

For me, if someone is wearing sunglasses that hide their eyes I tend to be unsure as to whether or not it is the person I know.