I have partial facial blindness which makes it hard to picture faces that aren’t super familiar and I can’t create new faces in my head. I end up picturing faces of people I know and celebrities.
It becomes frustrating when I’m reading as the faces morph constantly into my head. I constantly stop to get the faces right. Sydney Sweeney ended up as 2 characters when I read “Bunny” lol. I also get a biased view of the characters this way. It makes it really hard to enjoy reading nowadays. Any suggestions? Different strategies for picturing or reading without picturing?
Oh this is actually a topic I got weirdly fascinated with and I think it’s related to whether or not a person thinks in words or images. It started when I asked my bilingual mother what language she thinks in and she said “What do you mean? Thoughts are pictures.” I think in words and this was absolutely wild to me. I can visualize things if I try, but by default I just hear the words in my head.
Turns out she’s a slower reader than me because she’s visualizing every detail by default. Meanwhile, I just read words and get the general emotions. But apparently most of the world is split into word-thinkers and picture-thinkers.
In short, I don’t picture faces at all. But if you’re usually a visual thinker, I’m guessing your facial blindness is conflicting with that. Not sure there’s a real answer to that conflict other than trying to let it go, but you might find this interesting: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/16/how-should-we-think-about-our-different-styles-of-thinking