Eye contact.

[Danny 74]

I have never understood why eye contact feels such a task to do
Hated school when the teachers told me to look at them and not the floor or walls etc etc i can only explain it as someones gaze is freezing me to the spot im standing on.. Being pinned to a wall or the gaze is just knocking me backwards so i tend to look away most times

 

[tree]

I lose track of what I am thinking if I have to lock eyes
with another person. It's easier to think and pay attention
when looking somewhere else.

 

[Judge]

I was told by my parents at an early age that not looking into one's eyes is all too often construed as a sign of dishonesty. Neither they or myself ever linked this trait to autism at the time, but even at an early age it was something I worked on. I can do it, but I never, ever lost the uncomfortable feeling it involves.

It's just that after all these years, at least now I understand why it was "uncomfortable" for me in the first place.

 

[Suzanne]

I am better than I was, but still feels horribly, well, intrusive to me; I mean: I feel that I am being intrusive to the one I am making eye contact.

I can look up to a point and then, I get very uncomfortable and need to escape. I guess it is because suddenly I have become aware of the eye contact.

But again, I am tons better than I was.

 

[ksheehan88]

I would describe eye contact as feeling like someone is boring a hole into your skull. I hate it, and I think it makes me noticeably uncomfortable.

 

[xudo]

I would describe eye contact as feeling like someone is boring a hole into your skull. I hate it, and I think it makes me noticeably uncomfortable.

Yeah, this is pretty much how I feel about eye contact too. I have no problem with making eye contact with my husband, or my best friend (she's HFA and says I'm also one of the only people she can make prolonged eye contact with too) but other than that, I'll at least make fleeting eye contact just so I don't look rude..but nothing more. In shops I very rarely make any eye contact at all with the person at the till.

 

[ksheehan88]

Yeah, this is pretty much how I feel about eye contact too. I have no problem with making eye contact with my husband, or my best friend (she's HFA and says I'm also one of the only people she can make prolonged eye contact with too) but other than that, I'll at least make fleeting eye contact just so I don't look rude..but nothing more. In shops I very rarely make any eye contact at all with the person at the till.

Yeah people I'm very close to I'm fine with, unless there's been cross words or something. Strangers, aquaintances I try to look at them for a few seconds at a time then look around and back at them so I don't seem rude, but its awful.

 

[Buzzerfly]

I have never understood why eye contact feels such a task to do
Hated school when the teachers told me to look at them and not the floor or walls etc etc i can only explain it as someones gaze is freezing me to the spot im standing on.. Being pinned to a wall or the gaze is just knocking me backwards so i tend to look away most times

Hi, I'm buzzerfly's autistic husband. I, too, can't formulate thoughts very well when engaged in eye contact. I can usually summon a firm, polite greeting and/or handshake at the beginning of a meeting, along with five or ten seconds of quality eye contact, but after that, I mostly look down. Sometimes I pretend that I'm looking down because I'm super considering what they're saying. In long conversations, or when I can sense the other person is really emphatic about what they're saying, I vigorously nod, reassert eye contact for a few more seconds, then resume looking down. It works well enough. Sometimes, I believe teachers super insist on eye contact to assert their dominance, and your subordination. NT kids get it and don't mind, but I didn't and was often scared. I almost always hated school.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Omg how long have I been looking into your eyes? Five seconds. I need to respond. I'll move my head up and down slightly.
The eyes. Omg. They'll think I'm a freak. Ten seconds? Is it a minute? Omg
Where do I look?
Is it my turn to speak now?
Omg what where they saying?
I need to blink, Omg I should have blinked this whole time.

Point. ' look at that' they turn and I run off into the distance. Planning how they could never see me again,now they know I'm a Freak.

A bit like that.

 

[JackSkellington]

I find eye contact to be respectful. There is sooo many times where people (NTs and aspies) look away, get distracted.. then I have to repeat myself. It's not everytime thankfully.. but still very frustrating.

 

[Bro'Freak]

I find eye contact difficult in general. A lot of the above posts have similar cores. I feel an uncomfortable energy, it descends towards my chest, almost with the vigour the intense hurt a broken heart shows in moments of deep melancholy. It feels almost exponential in potential disruption so I avoid lengthy contact. The only person I never had much issue with concerning eye contact was with my partner, in my last relationship.

The problem is that so called NT's can sometimes be of the mind that avoiding eye contact is a sign of shiftyness etc, which compounds issues a bit. Just keep smiling & look back once & a while is all that we can do.

 

[Ambi]

When I look in someone's eyes, it feels extremely intense/intimate. I can't keep track of what they are saying, instead I am seeing every detail of their eyes and also - they say the eyes are the window to the soul, right? That's what I feel I am seeing - I am seeing the person behind the outer surface/mask. I find with some people, the inside matches the outside. They are authentic, and I find them fascinating - more fascinating than what they are saying, though! With many people, I find the outer does not match the inner - I perceive a discrepancy, and that makes me very anxious and suspicious of that person. That energy dynamic makes it even more difficult for me to attend to what they are saying. If I really want to pay attention to the details of what a person is saying, I need to look in a different direction entirely - I naturally do that, and I hadn't realized until recently that they might take that to mean that I'm not listening, that I'm lost in my own thoughts - but it's actually quite the opposite! I get lost in my own thoughts when I lock eyes with them.

 

[Adora]

I always had eye contact issues for as far as I can remember,when I do try to make eye contact it makes me feel weird and uncomfortable,I have had people say to me on some occasions "please look me in the eyes while I'm talking" which made me feel even more uncomfortable and once I even had a counsellor tell me that people will see me as rude if I don't make eye contact and also re -enacted what I look like to other people.

 

[ms grey]

Eye contact has always been an issue but more so when I was younger. It was an issue between my mom and me as in "look at me when you talk to me" so I did learn to look at her and lie. My mom was a bigot and a narcissist-histrionic. She could be unreasonable.

One big secret about work - explaining slides by looking at them and good lighting are your friends in giving presentations. Working with schematics or documents means both of you are looking at the schematic/document.

The most uncomfortable situation as an adult has been the yearly interview with the extremely social boss who feels like he has to give his opinion and look you in the eye as he is justifying why I am not getting a big raise for outstanding work. Well, my comprehension is less when I am forced to look someone in the eye. I learned to smile and nod my head and now ---I am retired. I never understood the eye thing. It just became part of the game face.

The other time was in social situations or flirting when I was a lot younger. I once read that NTs do a "eye dance" as part of flirting. I realized that I did not do flirt.

As I read, re-read what others posted, NTs need to be educated or informed that we have the right to not make eye contact. We have a right to our space. They need to not feel threatened or lessened if I am not looking at them in the eyes. If someone had status and did not make eye contact, then it might become the thing to do. But I think NTs get lied to all the time and get looked in the eye while it is being done. I think after all these years, I still become angry about this. It is so unreasonable. It is just wanting conformity on the part of the dominant society. It is comparable to a friend of mine straightening her hair. She was telling me about the difficulties with her hair. I asked her why she did it: why didn't she go "natural". She said that she was more accepted in her job as a black woman, if she wore her hair straightened. People should accept her as she is and people should accept autistic people as they are. This may not be a certain reality - or fit a certain reality of people who are in a dominant position getting to tell the rest what to do. So glad I am retired. Always felt like an alien.

 

[jane]

Supporting pupils in a drama lesson,my student left for a counselling session and I took his place on the teacher`s request so the class could pair up.(I can feel my stomach tightening in stress now.) Acting out the scene from Romeo and Juliet when the two families have first conflict,we were told to stand in pairs,facing a partner and stare into their eyes.For.Five.Minutes.Speak a line,keep staring,while slowly walking forwards.To cut a long story short,feeling extremely uncomfortable,finding I needed to keep apologising to the lovely,red haired young chap whose eyes I locked my gaze into,I spiralled into a shut down and had to take time off.
`Eyes are windows to one`s soul`

 

[Keigan]

I imagine their forehead is a blank wall and count to four, then I look elsewhere and count or four.

 

[Lady Penelope]

I've noticed i can look at someone's eyes when they are talking to me but i need to look away when i am talking back or i lose my train of thought.
If i know what i want to say i can glance back every so often but it is an effort and uncomfortable.
Also, when there is a pause in the conversation and our eyes are meeting, it's super uncomfortable and i really want to look away but then i think that would be rude. So i stare... which probably makes them as uncomfortable as me. Huzzah!

 

[shinyedge]

I have learned to look into other people's eyes when they are talking. A suggestion that helped me was to look at one eye, and not try to look at both.
When the other person is not talking, the biggest problem I have with eye contact is that people seem to expect me to say something if I am looking at them. And I usually have no idea what to say, so then it starts to get creepy. With people I know, I linger nearby until they start a conversation with me, because I don't know how to start the conversation myself. It is hard to look at the person while I am talking, too. I don't know why that is so hard.

 

[Hopeless_Aspie_Guy]

I have never understood why eye contact feels such a task to do
Hated school when the teachers told me to look at them and not the floor or walls

I lose track of what I am thinking if I have to lock eyes

PLAY @ 22 seconds

 

[Karen S.]

Do you want me to look at you or do you want me to Actually Hear You?? It's hard to do both! I feel like I'm in a "Peanuts" special and an adult is "speaking".

I frequently tell people "you don't need your eyes to hear"! This is a extra problem for me because I have double vision at times, or a headache and have to close my eyes to help myself.