Reasons why you don't like eye contact

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Eye contact is difficult for people who are on autism spectrum.is there any other disorder in which also eye contact is difficult.

As someone else put it, eye contact feels like looking deeper into each other's soul. For someone like me who is clueless to how others are feeling or what they are thinking, eye contact only betrays my confusion, makes me very self-conscious and that makes the interaction very awkward. So it's easy just to avoid it.

If I force eye contact, then it is not spontaneous and it's so intense that I'm making the other person very uncomfortable and making him/her look away.

When my mom was still alive, she would always warn people that if they saw her iris and pupils shine, get the hell out of her way, because she was going to blow her top. I never could see that most of the time.

She also had a hairpin trigger on her temper. The slightest provocation would set her off. When she got mad, she would use anything she had in her hands to discipline me and my brothers. We all learned how to bob and weave, like a prize-fighter, since she had a vicious left upper-cut.

Dad, on the other hand, was a heckler. He could dish it out, as well as take it. I was always the butt of his jokes.

One of the reasons I couldn't look most people in the eye was that it was simply too painful.

For example, after I got my BA in Music History, I tried re-enrolling in my alma mater to get my teacher certification in music education. They flat out told me to get lost, as they didn't think I had the makings of a teacher. I did attempt to get my certification at another school, with that school being the oldest teacher training college in PA. My academic advisor at this school didn't think I'd make it as a teacher either, even though I had a couple of students in a private studio.

I should have known then I was in trouble when during one of my classroom methods classes the professors taught you how to write lesson plans. I was writing them to spec. Every last lesson plan I wrote always came back with comments like, "Too cold, too unfeeling. Who are you trying to teach, Jean-Pierre Rampal/Benny Goodman/Enrico Caruso/Jussi Bjoerling, etc."? The professor who taught middle-school classroom methods was always badgering me to look her in the eye. I could never see anything.

It also didn't help that this school had me on the two year plan. They tried cramming 4 years of pedagogy down my throat in 2 years. I told them quite plainly when they accepted me that don't try to do it, since I'll end up burning out. Guess what? They went ahead and did it anyway. I got booted out of the program after the second semester. I had a meeting with my advisor and broke down. I asked him, why? He came back and said I proved to him, as well as myself that I can't handle it. When I asked, you mean I just wasted my time and money for nothing? He came back, No, I'm not saying that. For God's sake boy, I wish I could clone you and have three of you on faculty. This department would be going places if i could do that! Do you realize you have almost the entire faculty of this department running scared? Hell, man, YOU even scare ME!! ! It made me feel a bit better, though not by much.

This gentleman at least sat down with me and discussed my options. He told me, with your background in Music History, have you ever considered becoming a librarian? I told him I considered it at one time. He made the proposition to me, if I applied to SUNY-Geneseo, he would write a glowing recommendation. I asked why SUNY-Geneseo? Because they have a co-op program with the Silbey Library at the Eastman School of Music. THAT got my attention. It also helped that I had relatives that lived in Rochester, NY, so I made application, and was accepted. Unfortunately, 3 months later, I get a letter back from SUNY with my application fees, stating they were closing down the Library Science program. I pretty much panicked after that incident, and went to the first school that would accept me. Shippensburg University was the only place that would accept me, since my grades as an undergraduate were none too spectacular.

After that, I never really focused on eye contact, until about 2 years ago, after mom died. I was living with my next to youngest brother. I realized he was having his own problems. The psychiatrist had switched me from citalopram and BusPar at that time to Viibryd. It made my depression worse. My brother would come home from work, and get pissed off because I was stilly in bed. I look at him in order to talk, and realize that I can't read his face! Everything got woes from there. My youngest brother and his wife saw the signs that I might have aspergers. What the hell is Asperger's? I google it, saw some videos, and realized, hokey muck! I took the Baron-Cohen and the Aspie Quiz at www.rdos.net. I told my next to youngest brother, who took the same quiz. He proclaimed it was all BS, even though he scored higher than I did, and told me to get the hell out of his house after mom's estate was settled and he closed on her house.

I have the reverse kind of issue where I sometimes make too much eye-contact so I try to avoid it. I had the thing where I looked at someones mouth once because I didn't want to make too much eye contact. I get the feeling that may be as "bad" as too much eye contact/staring. My eyes can get kinda irritated from too much eye contact too.

I can make eye contact during brief exchanges, such as when I am on the till at AGE UK charity shop, where I volunteer, and a customer asks a question. But when I am expected to make eye contact with the manager I feel very uncomfortable, and it is hard to listen and look at the same time. When I am engaged in serious conversation with most people, I find it hard to look in the eyes at the same time. I force myself to do it, but it is very tiring and I have to struggle even more to work out what they are saying. It is easier to look in someone's general direction if they are sitting at the other end of the room to me, as they do in my sitting room. Depending on the context, it can still be uncomfortable.

After going back to school once I spent a whole week staring at the ground lol. I couldn't get myself to look up or forward.

-It makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable.
-I feel like they are getting some kind of wrong impression from it.
-It doesn't come naturally to me.
-It just doesn't make sense. Why would you want someone to look into your eyes? Unless maybe your in love with them but otherwise...

I can't get it right. Ever. I naturally process information in my own head so when someone talks to me I pay attention by looking at other things as I think it through.

So when I stare I end up uncomfortable and I end up having to spend more effort looking at them than I do thinking!

when people talk to me, i try to understand what they say. i point my focus of attention to where i can best receive their output.

if someone is talking to me, i always look at their mouth.
their mouth is where their words are coming from, and i always stare at their mouths when they talk.

peoples eyes never change shape or color. they never flex or bend in concert with the flow of conversation (optical gesticulation (makes me sick to think about)), and i think it is useless to look at eyes because they are just organs of sight.

what i do find curious however is that all animals that ever look at me look at my eyes. i am sure it is the same for everyone else too.

when a dog looks at you, it looks at your eyes.
it is the same with a cat or a rabbit or a hamster or a tiger or a wolf or an elephant or a bird.
even a crocodile will look at your eyes if it knows you and is otherwise well fed

i can look at animals looking at me. i do not like to look at humans looking at me because they have millions of secret things going through their minds.

To me, the eyes are the most personal feature a person can have, almost like the windows to the soul. Every time a person I don't know looks into my eyes or shakes my hand I feel like they are trespassing.

I tend to not look at someone else’s eyes and focus on the mouth instead. This is true not only when interacting with real people, but also when looking at pictures of people or watching television. I am not certain why. It seems like it’s almost an automatic response.

What I noticed, is when interacting with others, I feel much (much, much, much) more uncomfortable when I am in very close proximity to the other person. As it feels like my natural inclination, to gaze at the mouth, becomes impeded. But looking into the eyes (when in close proximity) is very uncomfortable. I can do it (if I think about it). But then I cannot focus on interaction. My main thought, in this situation, is “I need more space”.

When I do it I do not feel I am looking into someones soul but it causes my eyes to become psychically uncomfortable

I just can't seem to speak if someone looks me in the eyes. If I'm in the middle of talking and my eyes meet someone else's eyes (I tend to look around the room) I just freeze. I don't like feeling watched and eye contact and being filmed/having a photo taken of me feels that way. I think this is probably what's caused me to be unable to read faces. I have never looked people in the eyes and have always been shy.

I too feel that people can see right through me when they look in my eyes and it makes me uncomfortable. In fact, there are some people, like my son, that I have no problem looking into his eyes...but others, like my husband, when I do I just see evil. I think for me, the eyes say a lot and I don't like what I see in most people's eyes.

Pretty much what everyone else has said. I've also found that if someone has darker eyes (like brown, green, hazel sort of colours) it's a little bit less odd than someone who has blue or grey eyes. That sounds weird but I dunno it's strange, it doesn't change much but just a tiny wee bit less uncomfortable but it is still extremely uncomfortable. I often don't know where to look, like I hate looking at people so I look around but I can never decide where the best place would be to look if someone is talking to me.