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I Know Him, But Who Is He? Adam Shares Tips for Recognizing People After a Brain Injury
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Hey, everyone! It's Adam! I'm coming to you today to share a little something with you that happens to me every day.
It happens to me all the time and in no specific location.
What I'm talking about is recognizing people but not knowing who they are.
So, after a traumatic brain injury or, in my case, mild traumatic brain injury,
many times you will interact with people throughout your life,
but you may remember their face or you may remember their name,
but associating the two is an immense challenge.
And so for me, in my job, I meet people out and around a lot,
and I may meet somebody one day, and a week later, I'll see the same person in the hall
or see them out on the street somewhere, and I'll recognize them.
I know I know them from somewhere, but I don't know they are.
I don't have any idea who they are.
So some of the strategies that I incorporate to kind of overcome that
are, you know, just kind of sharing conversation, being very generic.
"Hey, how you doing? How are things? How are things at work?"
You know, "What are you up to these days? What did you do this weekend?"
And slowly they'll start to disclose, you know, some identifying factors, if you will.
Another way I do it, and this is a little bit more technologically savvy,
but it's super helpful, and I recommend it to everybody,
is on the electronic address books, such as like your contacts or, you know, other electronic items,
pull a picture of them from the Internet or from somewhere and associate that with that contact file.
And so it stays with you in your smartphone, and you're able to see that person's picture along with their name.
So this is really helpful if you're going into a meeting with somebody
or you anticipate having contact with somebody.
You can scroll down to them, take a look, maybe sort by work place,
you know, their employer or sort by last name or,
you know, there's a number of fields that you can label and then kind of filter by that.
That's been really helpful for me, and so I hope that's helpful for you as well. Thanks!
After his brain injury, Adam had to create strategies to help him associate names with faces — from gleaning identifying factors in conversation to adding photos to his electronic contacts.
I’m a former Army Sergeant, a Department of Veterans Affairs employee, a service-disabled vet, and someone with a brain injury. I’m here to share my story with you — along with some practical tips — and I hope that I can help you in your own journey of recovery.
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View all of Adam’s postsResources for Veterans with TBI
