Sadie Dingfelder Portrait and her book, "Do I Know You?"

What if your brain was wired differently from most other people’s, and you didn’t know it? My friend Sadie Dingfelder didn’t realize how radically her sight perceptions differ from other people until she reached middle age. When Dingfelder, a science writer, realized she might be faceblind and have other vision-related neurodiversities, she turned her investigatory training inward and studied herself. She met with neuroscientists, had her brain scanned, and took video-based brain tests. She even learned to drive, something she hadn’t attempted before.

Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey Into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination, by Sadie Dingfelder, is the true story of Dingfelder’s neurodiverse brain and what that brain learned about herself over the past few years. What does it feel like to see in 2D instead of 3D, and what’s the one quirky advantage of that? How can you overcome faceblindness so successfully—without even knowing that you are faceblind—that you get elected house president in college? These are just two questions with fascinating answers in Do I Know You?

I know Sadie—and she knows me—because we were both featured authors at a Barnes & Noble event last year. I hope you enjoy this author interview with Sadie Dingfelder about neurodiversity. And do pick up a copy of her book if you’re interested in a wonderful (and comical) journey through life when your brain is wired differently.


Your book Do I Know You? describes your experience of discovering in middle age that you are faceblind and have other neurodiversities. Did your new scientific knowledge (not counting the brain-training activities you did) affect your life in a huge way, and if so, how? Or do you feel that you had already adapted to your life (for example, by taking notes to help you remember people) and life hasn’t changed much as a result of your new scientific knowledge?

My nerdy midlife crisis overturned a huge assumption upon which I have built my entire life. Like most people, I thought that my experience of human consciousness was basically the same as everyone else’s. I was VERY WRONG. Most people literally see the world differently than I do; almost everyone can eavesdrop on their own thoughts through an inner monologue and inner seeing. I, on the other hand, have no idea what I am thinking until I write it down or say it out loud. So, I never really understood what “ruminating” means to most people. I didn’t get why other people can’t just go right to sleep when their head hits the pillow at night. And when friends took longer than a few weeks to get over a breakup, I thought they were all being drama queens. It didn’t occur to me that I was the weird one!

Now that I realize that my brain is literally built different than most other people’s, I have much more grace for myself AND for others. There are things I struggle with that other people find trivially easy, and vice versa. In the past, I mostly just dismissed the former: e.g., sports are dumb and boring so what does it matter that I can’t catch a ball? As for the latter, I thought people were making a big deal out of nothing when they freaked out at my ability to join a musical jam session without any preparation, or remember and play a tune after hearing it just one time.

You describe using video-game-like technologies for visual learning. Did your new skills improve your life dramatically, or was it a minor improvement, or was it not enough of an improvement to have made the effort worthwhile? Do you still do brain-training activities on a regular basis?

I went into writing this book hoping for it to be a paeon to adult brain plasticity, and boy was I humbled. I put a lot of effort into learning to see in 3D and learning to recognize faces, and while my test scores went up a LOT, it didn’t really seem to translate to real life—or not much, anyway. I want to take another run at 3D vision though. I was stymied by my childhood eye surgery for strabismus/amblyopa, which forever left one of my eyes stuck a little higher than the other. But I have since gotten prism glasses that make up for the aberration, and so I want to try again.

Writing and publishing a book about your own personal story can be frightening (as I well know!). But in your case, I wonder, was putting your story out there more of a relief than a scary experience? After all, as you write in the book (and I love this line), “Having a neurological disorder is much better than being an asshole.”

Coming out as faceblind has been truly a weight off my shoulders. People now flag me down when they see me in public, and it’s such a joy to unexpectedly run into friends. My dad was recently complaining about my tendency to stop short at stop signs, and [my husband] Steve helpfully explained that it’s probably because I can’t see in 3D.

You write about “cogitations that are not accompanied by imagery, inner speech, or anything else” and give this example: “Knowing that you need to grab your umbrella before leaving the house.” Reading this sentence makes me visualize my umbrella, with all its bright colors, on its shelf in my bedroom. Trying to read this sentence without visualizing my umbrella causes me to visualize the rain pouring outside. Trying to read this sentence without visualizing my umbrella or the rain causes me to hear the words in my mind. I can’t comprehend what it would be like to know this fact without the intrusion of my mind’s eye or ear. Does this make me neurotypical, or does it make me neurodiverse in the opposite direction from you?

You might have hyperphantasia—a lot of poets do! And people with hyperphantasia are prone to synesthesia, which is SO COOL. So, I am a bit jealous. Isn’t it wild how differently we experience being awake and alive? In answer to your question, yes! Hyperphants and aphants represent the two extremes of the human visual imagination, we are in the top and bottom 2%, so we are both neurodiverse, just in opposite ways.

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Are you working on another book or creative project? What’s on the horizon in your writing career?

I want to write a pilot episode for a comedy series about a faceblind entertainment reporter who has no idea that she’s faceblind until the last episode. (The viewers will get clued in earlier.) Romantic and job snafus will ensue, but her ability to bluff and her comfort with ambiguity will get her through.


Featured in this post: Do I Know You? by Sadie Dingfelder Buy it now

Note from Liza: I don’t have synesthesia, but hyperphantasia sounds like me.