@SeekingPlumb

Face blindness: "I wonder what THAT'S like."

article image placeholderUploaded by @SeekingPlumb
So that's why I think I struggle more with women, but in learning more about this and the fact that this is actually a thing for me Made sense of a few other aspects of myself that I've often wondered about. I remember the craziest details about people, about their past stories they've shared interactions we've had, et cetera. To the point where it makes people either very uncomfortable if I bring it up and we're not somebody who we don't necessarily know each other very well

I had no idea this was me. #prosopagnosia #autism

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@UnityEagle
Unity Eagle
@UnityEagleΒ Β·Β 1:21

https://s.swell.life/SSznmiiCrWkcb8x

And immediately the words Woman without a Face popped in my mind and I wrote it down because it was inspiring me to create something out of it. And a few minutes later, I came across a post about the facial blindness. So this all inspired me to let AI generate a piece of art based on the prompt Woman without a face. So I will include a picture in here of the result
article image placeholderUploaded by @UnityEagle
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@SeekingPlumb

Synchronistic perfection! @UnityEagle

Wow. What synchronicity. And that image is so perfect for, like, the phrase for what you saw in the reflection to this post. Perfection
1
@UnityEagle
Unity Eagle
@UnityEagleΒ Β·Β 0:11

@SeekingPlumb

Yes. And although I like the perfect imperfections. This is perfect indeed. So I'm glad you liked it
1
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 5:00
So the fights, I would meet these people, they'd all say hello. I didn't know who any of them were. And also people in the gym, I just wouldn't know people. So people would come and have conversations with me and walk off, and my father would look at me and go, you've got no clue who is have you? I'd be like, no, I don't. I just didn't recognize anybody
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 3:24
He is Jack just in a different situation. He doesn't look any different. We didn't recognize him. And it was only until later when I looked and we thought, you know what? We just watched a movie with this guy. It's the same guy. We've been watching this, but we love Son Donakey, so neither of us recognized him
@SeekingPlumb

Face blindness, my take away, etc. @MarkR

Because it's already unsettling when it happens to begin with, let alone if I saw it happen as often as it does. Right. I think the biggest takeaway I've had in having this new understanding when I first learned about it, there were all of these ideas attached to it either. I don't know if it was from outside influence, if it was all me of shame about not either being observant enough, not caring enough to pay attention, whatever it was. Right?
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@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:11
Now, this is going to sound even more crazy, but I'm looking at you and I know you, but I've just checked my other account, so I know that I'm following you on Clubhouse. Have we connected on Clubhouse? Where else have we connected? What other platforms is it from? Anchor. Is that where we first connect? Because I know you're part of a group that I would speak in. Was it all the audio apps? Was it Anchor first?
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@SeekingPlumb

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLPuRAoH/ @MarkR

It's easy to understand that we might forget people when the human mind can only remember a certain number of people, and we've got to rotate or shift out some unnecessary data in order to bring in new data. So I get that. But I feel like this face blindness is something a little different, and yet I don't know how to articulate very well those differences. And so that's why I thought I'd share her link, because she might be able to offer more insight. Yeah
article image placeholderChrissy Flanagan on TikTok
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 1:16
Great conversation. And it's nice to meet somebody else with the same thing. Like you said, I didn't even know it was actually a thing. So how about that
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@Booey
Mike Competillo
@BooeyΒ Β·Β 1:53
And you have blessed us by sharing with us your infirmity and shortcoming, in a sense, just realizing that we all have certain shortcomings to be more compassionate to others and sensitive. And I'm glad you shared that. I know personally, I have an issue sometimes when I'm in a crowded room. I've spent 37 years driving a school bus. And I used to really think that my hearing was very good, but I've developed tinnitus and I have ringing in the ears
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@SeekingPlumb

@Booey https://s.swell.life/ST2no9BTt25zbTb

And that's really been a part of my personal journey over the last few years and it's been really eye opening for me. So thank you. This made my day. And thank you for talking about your tinnitus. I also experienced it, but it varies in intensity depending on a few factors, but it's not really inhibited my ability to isolate out conversations. Another aspect of who I am does affect that. But this was eye opening and helpful for me as well. So thank you
article image placeholderA snapshot moment from an autistic POV.
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 2:01
Because he's looking right at me. They didn't recognize him, didn't really like him. And then I realized it was me. It was my reflection in the door, which is open. So I don't know why I didn't recognize myself and I don't know why I didn't like maybe it's because I was looking because the person that was looking at me was looking right at me. Of course, because it was me looking at myself in a reflection
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@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR Oof.

I could imagine that person looking annoyed or who is this person type of thing. And having that reflected back would be unnerving. And not to mention that, like when we normally look in the mirror, we're not giving ourselves those kinds of facial expressions. We have these limited ideas of what we look like in any capacity. Right. Because we're always looking in the mirror and we're prepared for that
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:30

@SeekingPlumb

And I would get a lot of people I ended up looking like Tony Curtis, which isn't a bad thing, which is cool, but it's funny because I look at Elvis, but I had a very strong based around how I looked when I was young and my hairstyle, I had a very strong image of what I thought I looked like. And when you're young, you base yourself image on your hairstyle, your fashion, or how you think you look
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@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR https://www.truemirror.com/

Anyway, I loved your description or talking about how you tried to style your hair like Elvis and ended up looking like Tony Curtis. It's interesting, right. Because I think we sort of start we're finding our way. Right. So we present ourselves outwardly in one way, as in this is me. But then as we continue to grow through life, some of that starts to fall away and almost who we are emerges. Right. And then it doesn't matter what the external says
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@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:51

@SeekingPlumb

Hey, Christina. Yeah. You know, I was saying something to a group. I've landed up in a coaching group. This is quite funny to be some sort of coach, like a life coach, I guess. And one of my clients runs an Academy for coaches, a really good one. She's well known in the UK and she was short. So she asked me would I like to do it? And I said yeah
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@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 3:10

@SeekingPlumb

He keeps touching my parents, but yeah, he was a good friend. But I think in the end, I started to consider him a bit of a bad influence. Where I was going to drama school and pulling back from going out so much, he was going a lot more and maybe taking drugs and doing all sorts of stuff. And I saw him at the traffic light opposite me. So I'm at traffic light going one way and he's at traffic light
article image placeholderUploaded by @MarkR
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@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR

I missed those days, but you got me thinking about what is the disconnect that's happening, let's say, on a Zoom call. And at first I thought maybe it had to do with how it was filmed. Maybe it was the skill of the camera person, but I threw that out because you can have chaotic filming and it still pick up on some of those nuances and the energies and so on of the character being portrayed
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:50
You get an impulse to say something different, you change it so you speak differently. And at first it seems like a really weird exercise, but what you're doing is working off the impulses of the other actor and the energy between you. Anyhow, I'm going to send a picture of what it's like now in London, seven months on
article image placeholderUploaded by @MarkR
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@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR

You're making them more connected with themselves instead of the environment or the technology or you. But in a group dynamic, that I think is harder, because if we're all in the same space, literally, like in a room, then when one person is speaking, we're all sort of looking at them, right? And we're not necessarily concerned with our environment or what we might look like on camera, etc. We're paying attention to that person
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:52
And my sister kept changing the music to Sam Cook, not realizing she couldn't get it in her mind if she changed the music because she was there for a boyfriend. I love Sound good, by the way, but she was playing slow songs and she put it on Mike love songs, and I'd be like, hey, what was going on? Who changed the music? And then she'd go, oh, sorry. She's come on. So it was great
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@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 5:00

@SeekingPlumb

And the things I've learned, I had to stand up and I was terrified as a child. I wanted to do it but I was always terrified. And I'd stand up in front of 70 kids and have to act. Talk to a head, which was like the heads that you put wings on. We used to do these invisations with that. So the head would be on a box in the middle of the stage. And then we'd have the improvise. They give you one nine
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@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 1:06
I left a lot of information about what I thought, and now it looks like that's disappeared. Anyway, I hope catch you soon. I'll send the picture so you can see as I did, we've got blue skies again. It's very crisp. It's cold, but skies are blue
article image placeholderUploaded by @MarkR
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@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR

So the theater company, it was sold as this is a Christian theater company, right? So there's already a religion tied to it, threaded through it. But then as time went by, there were these skewed perspectives that were easy to swallow and believe, instead of recognizing them for the skewed things that they were. And then eventually, once out, you can see a little more clearly as theater helped you develop public speaking skills or abilities. It did the same for me
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@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:56
It never really worked properly. That's why I never continued with it. But I tried it a few times. You'd have mike, a virtual space where you'd have, like, a swimming pool or a garden area and then a front room, and you could walk around, right? And if you're the host, you could talk to everybody at once. So you could make an announcement or give a speech or give a talk, but then you could close that off
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@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR

And I guess it's all the compartmentalizing that we're doing of trying to keep I don't know what or how or why we do the things that we do with respect to being open or shuttered. There was a word they used to use in a theater company a lot about when someone shutters are closed and they referred it to there's just a look in the eye when you can tell that maybe you said something to somebody that suddenly their guard went up or they withdrew
@Swell
Swell Team
@SwellΒ Β·Β 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:23
And I was very comfortable because I knew all the people in the room, but I've never been able to get I haven't done enough of it. That's probably why, but I've never been able to get comfortable in a clubhouse room. I feel like I'm on stage, mike, I'm on. Like you were talking about, oh, my God, I'm on
@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR

But clubhouses have definitely changed over the last year, and I think finding the good conversations are fewer and harder to find, and I miss that. A lot of the people I had some great conversations with, they've left the platform. So it's definitely very different vibe over there of late. It's kind of sad, honestly. And I prefer smaller stages for a variety of reasons
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 4:27
To me, some of the really big fitness rooms have disappeared and I kind of like that because I've been in these rooms before. People are a little bit rude sometimes. They either didn't agree with what I was saying or they didn't like it or I don't know, it was just some strange behavior. So these rooms seem to have disappeared and to me, in my mind, it looks a bit more refreshing
@SeekingPlumb

@MarkR

Periscope used to be attached to Twitter, right. I remember watching these sorts of virtual tours of people who were expats living in different countries. So an American living in Hong Kong would walk around and show you things. There was a woman, I think she was from the UK, and she was living in either France or Amsterdam or I don't remember where, but she would give tours as well. And there were a few others too
@MarkR
Mark Francis Rahaman
@MarkRΒ Β·Β 2:47

@SeekingPlumb

I've made friends with people and worked with people, both as a trainer and hired them as well through Periscope and meeting them through Periscope. But Twitter live isn't the same. For some reason. It's a bit more glitchy. And then when you post on there, nobody really seems to come in one or two. It doesn't have the same buzz, but of course it's harder because you've got to show something. You've got to be somewhere exciting
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