Has it ever happened to you that you meet some people socially, but are unable to recognise their face? Or end up mixing their identity with someone else you may know? Well, most of the times you may dismiss this as a memory issue, but actress Shenaz Treasury has revealed how this can actually be a disorder. The former video jockey, and Ishq Vishk actress has revealed that she has been diagnosed with Prosopagnosia, a facial blindness.
Shenaz made the revelation through a series of Instagram stories.
“I have been diagnosed with prosopagnosia. Now I understand why I’ve never been able to put faces together. It’s a cognitive disorder… I always feel ashamed I can’t recognise faces, I recognise voices,” Shenaz wrote.
She went on to explain how this prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, simply means you cannot recognise people’s faces. This can affect people from birth and is usually a problem a person has all or most of their life.
This tends to make people think of the person as self-centred.
Sharing how she always ends up mixing up people and can’t remember faces, Shenaz asserted: “This is a real brain issue… Please understand and be kind. This is a real disorder and not me being aloof and snobbish.”
Shenaz Treasury outlined the signs and symptoms of face blindness:
1. You fail to recognize a close friend or family member, especially when you weren’t expecting to see them. According to Shenaz, who is now an active travel blogger, she can relate to this as she takes at least a minute to register who the person is – “sometimes even a close friend I haven’t seen in a while”.
2. Confusing movie or TV characters more so than other people! Shenaz says it so happens to her that she can’t tell the difference if two characters have the same height, build and hairstyle.
3. Difficulty in recognizing neighbours, frends, co-workers, clients – people you know and who expect you to recognise them. However, Shenaz says that since she has struggled with this, she thought she was “just dumb” for not being able to identify people.
4. When someone casually says hello on the street, and you can’t recognize who they are.
5. If someone undergoes a look change or haircut alteration, it makes it harder for a person with face blindness to place them the next time. As Shenaz shares, may people with prosopagnosia use hair as a way to remember people.
Brad Pitt also revealed his brush with face blindness
In an interview to GQ magazine, Hollywood Brad Pitt spoke about having an undiagnosed face blindness, explaining his tendency to recall people and sometimes come out as “remote and aloof”.