‘I COULDN’T RECOGNISE
IMAGINE FORGETTING THE FACES OF YOUR LOVED ONES – THIS IS CHRISSY’S LIFE
The day she failed to recognise her own stepbrother – simply because he was wearing a hat – Chrissy Flanagan realised she had a disturbing problem.
“It’s called face blindness, or prosopagnosia, and it sucks,” explains Sydney’s vivacious ‘Sausage Queen’, who sometimes blanks her own bar and restaurant customers as a result of her mysterious, incurable condition.
“A lot of people don’t believe it’s real, which makes it even harder to manage. If you don’t believe me, that can only mean you think I’m really disinterested in people, which could not be less true.”
Inconvenient for anyone, prosopagnosia is a real snag for someone like Chrissy, 37, a NSW government advisor with a successful sideline in gourmet food, boutique brewing and hospitality.
Customers can easily get offended if she doesn’t recall their face or name when they walk into The Sausage Factory, the bustling venue she co-owns with her life and business partner, Jim Flanagan, in Sydney’s Dulwich Hill.
“I’m often at a loss to recognise people, even regulars,” says the entrepreneur who, surprisingly, spent nine years as a vegetarian before launching her Chrissy’s Cut range of meat products.
“Unless they keep their hair and dress styles pretty consistent I have no method of placing individuals until we get speaking.
“It’s so intense that I didn’t recognise my own stepbrother
when he came in, even though I knew he was visiting at that time, because he was wearing a hat!”
Prosopagnosia is a littleknown problem that may be the result of acute brain damage or, as in Chrissy’s case, just be an unfortunate fluke with which she was born, like some
2.5 per cent of the population.
Although there have been attempts to find a treatment, none has so far proved effective. The condition remains incurable.
“It can be inherited but no-one else in my family has it, not that I’m aware of,” says Chrissy, who was raised in Newcastle, NSW. “For a long time I just thought I wasn’t good with faces or names.
“Growing up, my school wasn’t huge and I only went to a small university in Bathurst, so mostly I met people in the same context. That’s the way I generally recognise other people – by their hair and clothes, their voices and how they walk – but most commonly it’s all to do with the context.
“When your mother turns up to meet you from school in the family car, it’s pretty obvious who she is!”
Oddly enough, Chrissy became aware there was a name for her problem only recently when she read an article about “super recognisers,” who are able to memorise and recall thousands of faces, often having seen them only once.
“They’re up the other end of the scale. That’s basically a super power; they’re like computers with human faces,” she says, ruefully revealing her condition in the hope of increasing public awareness and understanding.
“Because no-one really knows this exists, when I mention it even close friends and colleagues tend not to believe me and think it’s a made-up excuse,” she laughs.
“I would think there are quite a lot of people out there who think there’s something uniquely wrong with them – that’s certainly what I thought – so it’s nice to find a support network.
“Face blindness might sound like a small thing, but it’s very embarrassing and it can be really hurtful for people when you don’t recognise them.
“You try to bluff your way through, but that doesn’t always work.
“It’s so unintentional and out of your control, but you do end up inadvertently offending people all the time.
“I’m a hyper-social person so that’s painful to be me. But I can’t live with the alternative – of becoming a recluse – because that would be awful!”