Hey,

I've decided to join this forum! I'm 21 years old and have congenital prosopagnosia (the reason for my joining), which makes me unable to recognize or remember faces and impairs my ability to recognize locations. Dealing with this has been a struggle as I grew up in a school system which was quite the opposite of supportive, with teachers getting visibly annoyed with me and publicly shaming me in front of other students for being unable to tell them apart (they all just looked exactly the same to me). They went on to tell my mother they thought I was stupid, I suppose to say I needed to go to a "special" school, my mother was outraged and had my IQ tested. Needless to say, my mom shoved the results in their faces and forced them to move me to higher level classes.

I've found some very successful coping skills that make it hard for people to tell I even have it nowadays, such as identification by hair, voice, clothing, whether or not they are where I would expect the person, etc. These do fail occasionally, like when people get haircuts or, most often, when I see them somewhere I'm not expecting them.

Anyways, glad to be a part of the community and I look forward to getting more involved, thanks!