Look at Me app

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@Jezebel, though feel free to respond if you aren't Jezebel,

With my husband, I have walked away from conversations without realizing he wasn't done yet and he has told me it is rude to go get something from another room during a conversation. I am like you on that. Thinking that since I am in hearing distance that, they (usually family) know I am still listening. I've learned to remember to say, "I'm still listening!" when I leave now. With other people, I didn't think they knew me well enough to know I was still listening or could hear them and wanted to show interest, so when I was younger, I might need to go to the bathroom, but didn't know how or when to say I needed to leave for a moment and knew interrupting was wrong so I'd sit there with people until my bladder was about to explode until it was all over. In my household growing up, my mom always just kept right on talking if I left the room for a moment. So, I don't have complete misunderstanding of how leaving is rude, but it is selective and/or flawed.

Another thing is that I didn't know how rude it was to leave a group gathering without announcing your exit. I wanted to so nobody would wonder where I'd disappeared to later (my mom used to fuss about people doing this, especially children). I didn't know how to get people's attention, thought it would be rude to interrupt them to say I was leaving and thought it was better in the ling run to just slip out. Most of the time if I went to a gathering it was as if I wasn't there anyway. Too much talking around, too quickly and I was on the outside usually, not knowing where to stand or where to be. Or I'd manage to offend someone while trying to play along with the jokes. And often times, I didn't want to give them the courtesy after having been sort of sidelined and given looks and left out of the conversation. The problem was that if I left without saying anything because I couldn't interrupt or get anyone's attention, or because I was overloaded and crying, I thought they'd know and understand. But then I'd hear about it and feel hurt that the host was bothered by it. I do that a lot, thinking the other person knows what I am thinking or feeling when they actually don't and my actions portrayed something I didn't mean. At least I didn't brave these things often or wasn't invited. Usually, when I was invited it was more out of courtesy than anything else which made it worse, but I wanted to connect and be included and be friendly so badly that I put myself through a lot of very painful experiences and things I hate remembering. Things I still feel guilty for because someone thought I was rude or because I remember others expressions and feel like crap. My husband says a lot of people think I am rude and standoffish and it hurts because I didn't think so and because I think they know what I am actually struggling with. But the bottom line is, they don't. And I hate being that way. It's worst now with new people and in larger gatherings with acquaintances or strangers I am expected to socialize with. I don't make myself go anymore to these things unless it is absolutely necessary or if I need information that will be given there. It's depressing to go and isolating and I just end up hurting inside and feeling like a failure and stereotyping them as conceited, materialistic, and/or exclusive. I suspect it's mostly my fault.

I don't and in 44 years it still feels as unnatural as it ever did.

I'm sorry it's like that for you, androbot.

I don't make eye contact either.
I used to think that I made more, but I overestimated the levels.
I dont' view eye contact as something I have to work on.

Thanks QuiversWhiskers. Don't mind me. I'm old and bitter. Lol

Your kitty cat certainly makes good eye contact.

I don't usually make good eye contact with people; in fact, I tend to actively avert my eyes.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 30 Dec 2014, 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree that it would be nice, but I don't think it can be expected, sadly.

In reality, there's nothing wrong with feeling "iffy" when someone does not make eye contact because generally speaking, people only avoid eye contact in certain situations. People have adapted to take this to mean that something's not right. That adaptation is often important in a lot of situations. So non-autistic people automatically apply that assumption to everyone, including autistic people (which isn't right, I'll agree with that), but autistic people also apply similar assumptions to non-autistic people.

One example of one is calling this adaptation being prejudice. While we may want or even expect non-autistic people to understand, in reality, it makes sense that they don't, because again, this is an adaption and it can be applied to most people (obviously not to autistic people though). This is precisely why social skills are key - having them helps prevent so many miscommunication errors. The best thing we can do is spread awareness about autistic people struggling with eye contact and also continue to develop new methods to teach these types of social skills.

As for your recent post:
Yeah, I got that from your other post. The end of my post would apply to you then. Do you think if you had of have some type of therapy for it as a child that your experiences would've been better overall? Or do you think it wouldn't have mattered?

@QuiversWhiskers:
Boy am I glad to find someone who understands!

It's a shame you have to feel that way though. Though awareness may help, in the long run, I don't think that alone will help those who struggle with making eye contact.

I am learning to conserve that energy for my kids and husband. Everyone else now is hit or miss. I am now excusing myself for it and accepting that as long as I am able to respond and talk to them, that they can overlook the minimal eye contact. I didn't know how little I looked at people when I was younger even though a few people told me I needed to look at people and the few times my mom said I didn't look at the other people my age at church. And I thought I was a lot better now until a friend told me I don't look at her much when we talk.

It very depressing at times, Jezebel. I am sure you understand that as well

Yeah you mentioned not being able to look your husband in his eyes. That's something I've worried about not being able to do in the future. :/

The best thing we can do is expect intelligent adaptive beings to learn and incorporate new information. That's what humans do. Why not in the case of autistic people? Is autism truly so abhorrent? This adaptation may have had it's uses, but is obsolete and should be overcome as other adaptations have evolved.



Oh I had therapy from my mother as a child. She studied psychology while I was a kid and she's a natural. I am capable of passing quite well if I choose to. But I don't. And that's because the cost is too great. And besides why should I? It almost cost me my life. And life's too short for games.

The problem is most people are ignorant when it comes to autism, and that's why we can't expect them to understand (at least for now). I guess we have differing opinions about it being obsolete or not. Or perhaps it depends on how it's being used - maybe it's obsolete in some instances, but not in others, because people still use it on a daily basis, so it can't be obsolete for everyone. (This is a bit off topic, but police use it all the time when questioning people. And then other people use it in similar instances to a lesser degree, of course.) While change may be nice, I just don't see it coming anytime soon simply because people don't understand autism well enough. There's not enough awareness about it, if you ask me. I think non-autistic people will understand our struggles more when they understand autism more, but then that brings up a lot of other questions. How is someone supposed to know we're autistic just by being with us unless they know a lot about it? Awareness doesn't equate to them knowing how we all vary with our struggles and display symptoms differently. Perhaps if they knew the person they were talking to was autistic (and also understood their eye contact struggles), we'd all feel differently. But maybe that's just wishful thinking, I don't know.



Oh, I love psychology. I'm studying it too.
It's interesting how you feel you have to pass though. I've never really felt that way.

In that I was behaving in a way that was unnatural for me. I know I don't pass anymore. I have received looks of amusement and disdain from strangers passing on the street. I talk to people in store checkouts, but I say what comes to mind other than what I judge to be appropriate. They are patient. I like being an older woman. You can get away with undefined social oddness.

Oh, okay gotcha!
I suppose I tend to get away with similar things as well, but usually because people assume I'm a little girl (because I look young).

I will make app that makes people look at it then suck out people's souls to stuff into my catatar and the souls will look out through my catatar's eyes.

Since NTs operate in a social world of multi-layered deception and manipulation, and they insist on eye contact, then it means the opposite of your statement is also true. The main difference is that the NTs are just much better at faking it.
When autistics force themselves to do it, then they are also faking it.

None of this changes the reality of someone lying or not, only the perception that the majority will choose to take of it. This is one of the many tools that psychopaths use to their advantage.


If the aliens (or any foreign culture) invaded and then insisted that we all change our behaviors and mannerisms to suit their perceptions, then I would bet some of the attitudes about this issue would suddenly change due to the new perspective. Of course there would still be a few sympathizers who might say "the invaders are in charge now so we should cooperate".

Perspective works both ways.
The main difference here is that one perspective is about controlling other people, and the other perspective is about controlling oneself.
This situation seems to come up a lot.

When i started reading this thread (i.e. the topic and first post) i was thinking, "thats a cool idea. i hope it works and helps some people who might find it useful". I wasn't expecting the whole first page of posts being something akin to "they're making people conform". When alex said "it allows people to connect", the response was that it didn't help them connect and to me that is discounting that it would help the majority of people we talk to connect to us.

I was especially amused by the "NT people should just stop expecting it" remarks when again, statistically, they'd be better off expecting it from everyone and we're outliers. If you want to walk around wearing a shirt that says "Aspie pride" or something, then sure it would be reasonable to hope that anyone seeing that wouldn't be expecting the same level of eye contact as with NT's.

Personally, I like the idea of using technology to help me change things I want to change. If you don't want to use it then don't get the app. It would be great to have software doing face recognition, eye tracking, and prompting me with all the social crap that i can't be bothered to constantly keep in my mind. If other people don't want to participate in all of that then they wouldn't use it and everyone is happy.
Maz