I had an interesting experience at an internship where I spontaneously developed a very good ability to remember names lol. Recently (nearly a decade later) I’ve been diagnosed AuDHD so take from that what you will.
But basically I’d always felt fairly antisocial and consequently not great at remembering names. Then I had this internship with a cohort of 100 or so other interns for the summer, and it hit me and I was like, “actually, I do hope I can make friends this summer. I want to make connections and have people like me. And a simple way I can do that, I think, is learning people’s names quickly and using their names so they know I remember them.” And bizarrely after having this epiphany, it was like my hyper attention activated whenever I met a new person and I realllly focused on pairing their names with a face. And I’d estimate I had close to 90-95% recall after just one or two interactions since then. It’s something I still needed to, and still need to, make a conscious effort in but I could do it.
Not to say that this sort of reframing would work for everyone or even most, and definitely not with people who have like real face blindness issues, but it was fairly enlightening for me personally. I realized that at least some of the social skills I’m bad at, I might just be bad at because I’ve convinced myself I don’t care to be good at them. And lol I still don’t care to be good at a lot of them. But it did feel a little super power-y that I could activate a skill like that if I just got myself to care about it.
You know, I just had the epiphany yesterday that the reason I’m so bad at remembering new names and faces is probably because it hasn’t been worth my while to in probably a decade, haven’t made any new connections other than coworkers (and even then). But it’s a vicious cycle, it becomes hard to connect because I don’t know their name and barely recognize their face. It’s getting worse too. Friends of friends will walk up like “hey oops, how’s it been? Haven’t seen you since blah-blah-blah” … but I have no idea who they are. I can tell that I’ve seen them before, and I can guess from the context who I know them through, but I don’t know them even though they seem to know me. Fucking scary, just losing that information.
I don’t have ADHD but it’s so weird because all of the memes from the community are so relatable:
- my inability to plan for any chores after work (I’m drained)
- my brain being able to go super fast when thinking about stuff and being very chaotic when exploring/creating
- my inability during my last year of high school to conform to the productive expectation of teachers (I was not productive in mathematics for example, I preferred exploring other concepts alone that following along the boring classes)
- not being able to memorize names
It’s so weird seeing yourself in something I probably don’t have (I think ?). And even if I had it unknowingly, even if it’s hard to be productive some time, life’s working for me because the chaotic creativity brings a lot of good ideas I can apply to all my passions and get better.
So for all of you that really have from ADHD, I hope that you’re getting the support that you deserve because if I can relate to that, the real ADHD experience must be so depressing.
There are other mechanisms that can result in ADHD symptoms. Such as depression, burn-out, personality disorders and, the internet’s favoured, trauma! Also, ADHD has overlap with Autism.
That said. Some of the issues people with ADHD struggle with, are executive functions of the brain. Which take time and effort to develop regardless of whether someone has ADHD or not.
man i wish i had the fast thinking strain
I’m hyperfocused and thinking a mile a minute, shame its not what i actually want or need to be thinking about
Redlining in neutral is how I like to describe it.
Fast thinking? When?!
If a person says something to me but doesn’t get my attention with a “hey” or similar first, queue my brain locking up and rebooting as I stammer out a response. There’s my fast thinking.
“Did you eat?”
Thinking
“Eat”
“What is eat”
“If I eat my tummy must be full”
“I don’t feel like my tummy is full”
“What did I do ten minutes ago?”
“What idk”
“Oh yeah I spilled water when i was eating”
Me: “Yeah i think so”
Are you me? Because that’s 100% correct.
i once tried to play alias with a few people, and even if i recognized what they were describing immediately, it took me so long to get the word loaded up that they were already in the next card… i couldn’t get a word out for an hour straight.
I have the same problem. For me training took care of this temporary muteness under pressure. Unfortunately training took longer than my relationship who loved to play lasted, but hey, now I’m at least OK in it (and really good when I get to the zone).
Any specific tips on training? Is there a name for it, or is it just general practice talking to people?
I can tell you how I did it. Stopwatch and webcam. Also getting used to a set of questions helped answer different questions.
I started a stopwatch and only answered the questions in my head. Went through a set of 50 questions. Noted the time. (While typing this out I think it could have been 20 questions, not sure.) I did this only three times so I had a consistent baseline.
Then I sat in front of my webcam. Put it on mirror mode so I could see my face, since faces are the most distracting to me. I should note my cam back then had a noticeable 2 second lag so that was very annoying to me. And faces are my biggest distraction. Maybe something else is in order today, since I do not know how to recreate this effect with modern software. I had the camera hooked up with FireWire and mirrored with some freeware stuff. Also my face was the wrong way further irritating me.
Different set of questions. Same number. Started the clock again. Looking down reading, then looking into the webcam when answering the question. Sound of the cam was off. First try - Took a looooong time to get through.
I only did the webcam thing the other times. I just multiplied the baseline to the cards I was reading.
If this is actually helpful to others, I don’t know. Maybe you can adapt this to your needs.
On the other hand there are fast card games where you need fast hand eye coordination to pick up and throw away cards depending on the cards your opponents are playing. I never figured out how to get better there. Still bad at it.
Edited to add: I also recorded one session and I realized how slow I was speaking. it never occurred to me before, since I usually think quite fast and was usually one of the first people to finish exams.
That gives me some ideas. Thanks for typing all that out.
I was explaining this problem to a teacher after we were supposed to discuss a book, and I didn’t get a single sentence out because it took to long to phrase it. Yeah… She had no clue what I’m talking about.
It will get better I swear.
I read the title as “the three breasts” and got excited.
Eccentricia Gallumbits? Niiice….
The names are there, they just aren’t linked to the memory of that persons face.
Ohhh. Is that why if I was given a list of names I’d know which one is theirs but without a prompt I don’t know what it is?
Aphantasia doesn’t help me either, since I can’t picture their face later.
Yeah bad memory and no visuals, that’s my winning combo right there >_>
Aka “working memory”
I just wish I would actually remember names. My brain only seems to “save” the first letter of their name and then it just goes “well the rest of this name is clearly irrelevant data” and it just get tossed.
