What is it with the eye contact thing?

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Eye contact is something that bewilders me to no end. When I talk to someone, I often seek their eyes, only to avert my gaze when I meet them. Why I turn my eyes away is a mystery to me. I do not feel any anxiety, nor adrenaline surge, nor anything that I could identify. Nevertheless holding eye contact for more than 1 second (and for some people, more than an instant) is for some reason out of the question. Some people have "soft eyes", and I can look at them for a couple of seconds, but that's the maximum. With most people I usually move my eyes back and forth, and glance their eyes every couple of seconds. I have been told by one person that such an eye contact feels satisfactory.

I think I will do a scientific experiment with my girlfriend and try to stare in her eyes for, say, 15 seconds. Maybe the sensation would build up to a level that will allow me to identify it.

There's this teacher I have who I have had, um, 'a lot' to deal with, and she saw me in tears, a full on emotional breakdown, I really opened up to her, and she seemed to understand, and see straight through me. She has these round probing, earnest brown eyes, and she seems to always meet my eyes, and there's always this fear that she'll see 'me' again, and I get protective, and have to tear myself away. The emotion I saw in her eyes that day sometimes still haunts me. But, I love how there's this respect between us, this kind of message that gets passed from me to her, through our eyes. I know it's kinda off-topic, but, I couldn't resist.

I have had the same problem with my favorite teacher, soma.

I watch mouths. Actually, I do watch eyes, as long as the person isn't looking at me. Then I break contact immediately and am back to watching the mouth. I keep glancing up and if they're still looking at my eyes, I get more uncomfortable.

Yesterday I was in a conversation with a vendor at the outdoor festival I attended and it was almost like he was in some kind of stare-down with me. I SERIOUSLY WANTED the historical and cultural information he was explaining to me, so I was intently listening and watching his mouth. Everytime I let my gaze rise, he was boring holes in my eyes with his stare, all the while he was talking. It was unnerving. I finally had to mumble something to break off the conversation, accepted one of his business cards, and quickly walked away. I didn't buy the item I wanted, and was angry with myself for that after I got home.

I usually look at a person's nose. I learned this from a public speaking class I took. Works great at job interviews, as well as in the workplace in general.

Results of my experiment: it's a anxiety/panic type of feeling. The experiment was not scientifically valid, due to my failure to anticipate an important factor: my girlfriend was not able to withstand my sustained gaze for more than a couple of seconds. I believe it would be beneficial to repeat the experiment with a larger sample of subjects.

Personally, the only time I get really big difficulties with eye-contact is with that teacher. I guess it's because I've been through so much with her, and because we're close, in reality, a little too close for comfort, I think she's been 'spoken to' about the whole thing, but, I believe she really brought parts of me out, paticulary in the eye-contact dept.

I have had teachers i felt emotionally overwhelmed to face. But it seems like this teacher you speak of is accepting and understanding enouhg that if you do go to her again, she'll understand your difficulty. Also it is good to get such feelings off your chest.

Yes... our pupils are on a magnetic dipole to other people's eyes...

Which is why we have to train our eye muscles to withstand the lateral forces produced, so that we can force other people to avert eye contact. Works for me at least .

*grins* Nice one!

I dislike eye contact with some people. I try to maintain it sometimes, but not much of the time.