‘I used to walk around the playground wondering where all my friends had gone’: The reflections of how adults with developmental prosopagnosia made friends in childhood

Abstract Current research into developmental prosopagnosia (DP) estimates a high prevalence rate in the general population, but there exist many gaps in the research. More needs to be learned about the lived experience of those with DP and how to identify it in children. Using reflexive thematic analysis, this study explored the lived experience of how twelve adults with self‐reported DP made and sustained friendships in their childhood. It identified four themes: coping strategies, psychosocial consequences, feelings and advice to others. There were three coping strategies, which had varying success in friendship formation and psychosocial consequences. For many, childhood was an exceedingly challenging time in which they felt uncomfortable with people because they had identification anxiety. The paper concludes that these findings should be used to inform professionals about how they identify DP and to use successful coping strategies to form and sustain friendships.