What does eye contact actually do to you?

Post Reply New Topic

QFT!! !! Yess!! I'm not the only person who feels sexually molested during prolonged eye contact!
I only like eye contact with men I am sexually attracted to, because then it feels awesome and exhilarating. With other girls it feels ghey, and with some older, ugly women I knew (they were usually teachers), they made me feel like I was the object of unwanted lesbian attention. I deliberately avoid eye contact with men I am not attracted to because I don't want them to think I like them in a sexual way.

And I don't have a problem with gay people, I just write like a 13-year-old boy......

Hi.
I appearantly don't have aspergers though I seem to share some if not many attributes of aspergers. I used to avoid eye contact. I realized it was because I assumed that others can see into me just as clearly through my eyes as I can see them through theirs. But after I got past most of my self esteem issues, I no longer felt like I needed to hide from people by avoiding eye contact. I have since discovered that many, if not most people do not feel into people's souls through their eyes. For me, eye contact has become energizing, and can be a kind of connection. But I expect on this I am an odd one here.

You aren't really an odd one here because if you are neurotypical and you don't mind eye contact, then there are many others here who are the same, so no worries

Excactly how it is for me, too. The walls can’t be bright white either, it hurts my eyes.

Cringe is the closest one.

If I try to maintain eye contact, something happens in my stomach, a sort of churning. I feel dizzy and sweat breaks out, especially on my forehead. I lose track of what I’m going to say and feel disoriented or confused. Finding it hard to pay attention. At which point I feel desperate to get away or at least get some distance. There is also an element of mental gasping, so fear might be part of it. Painfully conscious of blinking or where my eyes look. (Natural inclination: Down. Ooops, can’t look there, or they might think I’m checking out their body. To their side. Not a bad option, but you can be sure that soon they will a) move so they keep staring me in the eye, b) turn to see what I’m looking at or c) both. Sigh…) And extreme general discomfort.
It feels intrusive.

Sometimes I can look at family members for a while before I feel my gaze go stiff and I unfocus my eyes, other times I simply can’t. Acquaintances/strangers? Forget it. At the most I look at their eyes while turning my head.

That’s something that annoyed me in the movie ”Mercury rising”. When Simon spoke to someone, especially in the scenes at his school and when he returns home from school, he would speak very monotonous. When the teacher or his mother forced him to look at them, he suddenly spoke with more warmth in his voice. The excact opposite of how it is for me. Did anyone else notice this?

@ ASMJT and BelindatheNobody: I can’t look at my reflection, either. If I for instance look into the mirror while brushing my teeth or washing my hands, I have to look down. But I easily space out if I just look at the mirror…

@ MattShizzle and Hovis: Yes, animals see eye contact as hostility/threat. But so do people in some instances. Even most NTs try to avoid eye contact while commuting. In Norway it has sometimes been called ”the thousand meter stare” when you go to lengths to avoid looking at the other commuters.

makes me cringe an I don't give it anyway someimes fleeting glances but never directly

A little off-topic, but…
I’m not trying to be mean or insulting, but that’s how faces in general are to me! Mouths and the lower parts of noses gross me out.
Same with facial expressions. As a child I felt others did something indecent when they did this, and I would look away, waiting for them to stop. I wondered if they were aware of how utterly ugly it was.
I’m sorry if this offends anyone, it is not my intention – it’s just how I felt and still feel about it.
I had no idea that body language existed or that it was supposed to be a tool of communication until my father told me when I was 9.

You know, something that's really weird is that, whenever I draw, I feel the urge to draw eyes. Not faces, not pairs of eyes, just single eyes. Either realistic, simplified, or one of the various anime styles, but always eyes. I even turn random shapes that I draw into eyes. The other day, I had drawn a sort of ellipse out of two curved shapes, and then I turned it into a dragon's eye.

I've actually become really good at it.

I have to force myself to start something else, like a face or an arm or something.

it makes me feel fear inside, I always get the impression that if I look people in the something really bad is going to happen - no idea what the "bad" thing is though

I will almost always blush no matter who it is. If I maintain it too long I definitely get a feeling of slight nausea or more like butterflies. If it's someone I'm attracted to it's even worse and my heart start beating super-fast. I can't listen to a word their saying while I'm holding eye contact. The not listening part is the same for everyone though. I cannot pay attention unless I'm looking away. I really enjoy tracing patterns with my eyes while someone is talking as well. I'll pick several points on a wall and trace one line in between them, for every syllable somebody says. If I feel like I should make eye contact (for a person I respect or a really important conversation) I'll look right in between their eyes or some other place around the eye. I don't think anyone knows the difference.

It makes me cringe, but what happens immediately upon making eye contact, I have the same reaction I do to someone touching me. When someone bumps into me, even barely, I have a natural reaction to jerk away from them. It's nothing I do purposely, it just happens. It's a flinching thing, I can't explain it. I just jerk away real fast and always look like an idiot to most people. Women often think I have some kind of weird crush on them when I do that, but in fact I do that with everyone. Same thing with eye contact. If I accidentally make eye contact with someone, in most cases I automatically pull my eyes off theirs and look either down or off into space. Can't help it, it happens naturally. People think it's odd, but whatever!

I used find it really intimidating but then after learning its a norm within human interaction I just find giving eye contact hard and annoying being fixed on a persons eyes. I will give eye contact more comfortably with someone I know well. But overall I hate eye contact but I try more now so sometimes it'll be a drifting eye contact.

doesnt really do much when i have to, i just naturally dont do it when im not thinking about, and avoid even when i am, just doesnt feel right for some reason

nauseous, anxious. Off medication my eye contact is appalling.

on medication, it is a little better.

One of the problems is multi-tasking. I cannot look at someone's eyes and concentrate at the same at what they are saying. it's just too much information and sensory stimuli at once, and then there is the constant movie screen in the brain that is as visually striking and prevalent as the material world i see with my eyes.

I experience this too; but for me that is about needing to visualize what they are saying, in order to understand them, and it's hard, for me anyway, to visualize while also maintaining eye contact.

I have a related question. Does it bother people who have AS to receive eye contact? In other words, if I happened to encounter you IRL, would it make you feel more comfortable if I avoided making eye contact with you?

Yes, it would.

I worked hard on eye contact after I heard my mother complain about how stupid it was to expect people to do it, and she considered american indians to be the most sensible because they (according to her) consider it rude to look someone in the eye. I think to her it was a sign of submission to look at the ground when you spoke to a superior, at least that's what I gathered from the words she used to idealize indians and the way she thinks indian children speak to their parents.

because of her tirade, I realized eye contact is important to people, so I decided I should look at their eyes. I think I was somewhere between 9-12.

people's eyes creep me out because I feel like I'm supposed to be able to understand something about them from their eyes, but eyes are flat and expressionless. they're the same whether they're dead or alive.

eyebrows, mouth, shoulders... those are the things that tell me how people are feeling, so those are what I prefer to focus on.