Eye Contact

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I've not gone through any therapy in the last 12 years from "coping" with my AS. I live a very normal life, but there of course are still ups and downs that can be attributed to my AS. a big one is eye contact. I have never been able to understand why it's so important when talking to people. I mean i completely understand that much is conveyed through facial expressions and such, but if im simply relaying and receiving information, why would i need anything but my ears? I cant' stand forcing myself to look at something. I am very fortunate to have friends who understand and don't think of me as being different, and to have had relationships with women who understood, so long as i would compromise. I've found that changing myself is not the answer.

Agreed. After I realized this, I began mixing it up (nose, ears, hands, forehead, etc.).

It's incredibly helpful that in sunnier climates, people wear shades. That makes conversation easier, as for me it seems to automatically put the speaker in a "weaker" position. However, for me, it simply nullifies the social hierarchy at play.

As a younger (8 or 9), a boy named Broderick Punch, as we were standing at our new classroom computer, actually punched me as I stared off, accidentally making eye contact with him for a time. (I vaguely recall being fascinated by the computer. It was my first encounter.) Around this age I would make eye contact ("death gaze") with others indiscriminately, and he happened to be the "alpha" type of our classroom (Year-Round School Program). I recall feeling incredibly at peace, as I usually am, like when I'm counting or recalling chunks of information from memory.

It wasn't until after MDMC that I learned to re-gain the ability to look at people in the eyes while possessing that feeling. So, it's been about 20 years since I could engineer the ability in myself to make eye contact. But as I said before, I still require moments to "puzzle." A fellow Aspie in my community does the same thing, he will stare at the ground or seemingly stare at the ad hoc shape that he constructs with his demonstrative hand-gestures during conversation.

I tend to stare downward and roll my eyes to one side and backwards. When I do this, I can more efficiently digest what someone is saying. I am also able to more easily block out sounds when I do this. Primarily I try to engineer conversations with others preemptively so that I might have the advantage (or rather remove "disadvantages"). So, for instance, I hang around socially with more philosopher types.

Over the years I have been training in hostile sound environments so that I can work on interaction with NTs; so, road side coffee shops, bars with music play, etc. I also train by bringing out philosophical or dialectical conversation during sport. I can discuss metaphysics, etc. during long distance running, futball, etc.

I used to have difficulties in making eye contact with people however nowadays i tend to make good eye contact.

I can look at people when they're talking to me, but when I'm talking I have to look away from them, because it distracts me to see how they're reacting to me. I misinterpret their expression as confusion, and just give up on what I was trying to say because I figure it didn't make any sense to them

But if I don't look at them, I just say what I need to say, and hope for the best! Haha

i'm horrible with eye-contact. It is embarrassing, because recently i was at a friend's house, and some of her friends were also there (that i didn't know). We all sat around and i didn't know what to do with my eyes. But if I avoided their eye-contact, i would be looking at nothing but house furniture, and i grew paranoid that that would seem weird.....who stares at a chair stool or lampshade, it might look like i'm creepily eyeing the material value of their furnishings....ugh the crap i worry about

As a child I had no eye contact; I could only watch my parents for a few seconds in the eyes.
Now, I can look only for a second a person that doesn't belong to my family in the eyes, and I can make eye contact with my parents a little more. Furthermore, I can't listen to what a person is saying to me if I look him/her in the eyes.

My girlfriend and I go out, but it almost looks like we're not a couple. When we were in high school, we were often teased about this a lot, but we're lighter on this now. The same thing applies too, I make eye contact to my girlfriend, but we don't exactly look at each other.