"The Asperger's Stare"

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It is real, imho.

I can further develop this "Asperger stare" theory.

2 Years ago I had a huge meltdown where I actually became so enraged that I could not speak for 2 days. Not a single word. I had the unlucky occasion to be on a trip to a huge city during this occasion (the meltdown started for personal thoughts, not an event that occured there).

I remember that during my trip back home (around 150 miles, so I took many trains, wandered in many streets, met a lot of foreigners) I was so angry and in meltdown that I had enough of whatever person would come in my way.

I had become self-defensive to the point where if a person randomly came to me (even to ask the hour or some other stupid thing) I was going to stare right at his eyes with an assassin's stare. I remember I scared something like 10 people during my trip which lasted a few hours.


So yes I can relate to that weird stare.
When i'm in good mood it is just weird, when i'm on a meltdown it looks like I'm going to kill someone.

I tend to stare in a random straight forward direction now and then. I thought it was normal. It is like my mind switches off. But if anything happens or anyone says something it switches straight back in. I remember once having this while waiting in the car in a carpark. I didn't realize I was doing it. Then I heard an angry lady shout "That man's staring at me!" I was so embarissed as I didn't know I was. If it wasn't that I had to wait for my mum I would have driven off quick.

Is it only those on the spectrum that do this? I habe kept quiet mentioning it incase.

I have been told many times in the past that my gaze is unsettling. In this respect it seems that I am doomed to social awkwardness whether I make eye contact or not. My wife has said that I often will stare at nothing, and that it can be difficult to get a response from me while in that state. I am usually either analyzing a past event or problem that I am faced with. My manager has noticed this too, he will see me stare and ask what I need.

It is good that people realize that it is something you naturally do. It is when I stare like that and people assume I am staring at them is when the problems start, and I may not have noticed there was someone there! When I am tired I will stare like this for a while as I am deep in my thoughts. However, I sometimes get them for short periods where my mid goes blank when I am trying to remember what I was thinking about or going to do next.
I never get these stares when I am doing something active like driving, cycling or walking.

Only those that know me recognize it. It has been misinterpreted as aggression in the past. I have been attacked for "mad dogging" people, but all I was doing was thinking.

I can relate 100% to this, people got scared by me. All I was doing was thinking as well.

They almost put me in a psychiatric unit for this. (this is clearly to let you understand how much Italy is behind on autistic diagnosis/understanding by common people).

I was almost f*****g taken to the hospital by force and put under brain scan because they thought I was crazy.

If I didn't live in a country where justice is just a word I would have sent them to court

Oh, that happens here too. Not as often as in the past, but it still happens. One advantage that we have here is that the court must order any involuntary hold lasting more than 72 hours, and you have the right to be heard in court. Where I ran into trouble is that when confronted with physical violence, my reaction is to end it quickly and absolutely allowing for retreat. This reaction scares people.

I'm very wary of staring at people for too long. Sometimes I'll be staring off into space then I'll find I was accidentally looking at someone, and I'm scared that they'll get the wrong idea.

I'm already terrible with eye contact so staring not being polite only makes it worse, being I have a very intense stare, and when I want to look at someone to take in who I'm sharing a room with, I end up looking a bit too long and people get the absolute wrong idea.

That is one of the problems I have. And I don't know I am doing it until I am doing it and see the reactions! I have got into trouble doing this.
It usually happens when my mind goes blank, or I am deep in thought.

I do it too fairly frequently, just zone out briefly without realizing. People sometimes think I was looking at them and get annoyed, but I'm really not even aware of them.

This always brings to mind a photograph of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (almost certainly autistic) at Cambridge:



When in deep thought, my face adopts basically the same expression.

I've noticed this with a lot of people who I know are on the spectrum and myself. It's like we're looking through people for their souls, and they normally don't like being undressed down to that state.

Do you know Klaus Kinski? It's German but I think also English people get at least his eyes which don't even change at all while he is playing.
As the one on the Titanic who plays the first violin ...

Or as Melchior ...

I can think of some more blokes with that stare:

I have to thank you for pointing out that The Stare (which I have) is an aspie trait. It starts me on a path of trying to fix it. I used to wonder why strangers approached me - eventually figured out I'd been looking at them. Friends confirm that I stare but don't know I'm doing it - at least they know. I wonder how many aspies avoid staring by using I-phones etc.?

Yup, I have it (also called Resting b***h Face elsewhere on the internet). I figure it's a combination of focusing more on what I'm thinking than on what my face is doing, plus human faces not being socially magnetic for me. "Normal" human expression tends to be, as far as I can tell, based significantly on micro-reactions to other people, so there's a constant subliminal two-way communication going on beneath the surface. When someone doesn't automatically engage via that channel, it gives the impression that their expression is 'dead', or that they're potentially dangerous because the viewer isn't getting a stream of constant subliminal reassurances.

It's related to the Uncanny Valley, where people get mildly freaked at things like hyper-realistic dolls and CGI because there's no strongly-connected mind behind the facial expressions, even if there's a puppeteer or facial expression scripter. It's also why some of the better CGI characters are either visibly not 100% human-realistic, or have facial expressions mapped directly from professional actors in order to get those tiny muscle movements right.

For me, it's actually been advantageous on occasion - I can sometimes shut people down entirely by gazing straight through them, like I'm seeing things written on the inside of their skull and considering the best way to disassemble them for a better look. As mentioned earlier in the thread, it's quite easy to give off a serial-killer vibe, or at least the impression of someone who doesn't consider other people to be human. It's honestly been a useful, if rarely used, tool when I've done customer service, or when dealing with minor-league bullies and asswipes in the workplace.

Knowing I have it by default also reminds me when it's time to do human interaction things. "Oh, right, have to do the face thing. Engaging real-time control of facial muscles; spinning up an emotional personality mask; attaching pretending-to-give-a-shit-about-other-people's-lives mental prosthetic; here we go."