problems with eye contact that i was unaware of?

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okay so i did the ados testing yesterday (wednesday december 19th).
i have been diagnosed previously with social anxiety and aspergers has been something that has been on many of my doctors minds for quite a while.
a couple of weeks ago i did some cognitive testing with a psychologist who specialises in aspergers and autism and from how i did in the cognitive tests she decided it would be a good idea to do the ados.

anyway after doing the ados testing i was asking about why we had done certain things and when she mentioned a activity where she told me a story and i had to stand up and repeat it back to her and how that was looking for eye contact problems, something that i had always thought i had zero problem with.
and when i say zero problem i mean i was completely and utterly shocked when she mentioned that i didnt keep eyecontact.

afterwoods i had an appointment with my psychiatrist and i asked her about it and she too said that i often didnt keep eyecontact.
my parents agreed, though apparently i keep eyecontact more with them.

how could i have been doing this without noticing!!
its always been something that i've sort of written off in my "mental list of aspie traits."

how does one not notice that they are bad at keeping eye contact!

sorry if you guys think i'm over reacting i just have always been so sure that that didnt apply to me that i can barely believe it, but since so many people are saying its the case.. i guess it must be. especially people who spend a large amount of time with me.

sorry for the multitude of grammatical and punctual mistakes, but you'll survive.


tl;dr did ados and found out that i dont keep eye contact, something i was completely un aware of.


i guess im just asking for your input on what you think of this. and if anyone else has been in the same situation (most people i read about seem to be readily aware that they dont keep eye contact and purposely avoid it).

I find this can be a real problem, and I'm generally only aware I was failing it after the event. I find it best not to stare - that's going too far the other way and can seriously put people off you. Try to consciously think of making eye contact, but then keep briefly breaking it for a rest. Don't look down to the floor as that can appear negative - look to the side instead. Try to find things that both of you can look at as a brief diversion - perhaps you are discussing some objects with someone, or looking at some documents. I find it helps when having eye contact to occasionally smile (but not too much) at appropriate moments. Eye contact is not just eye contact - the other person is also registering your facial expressions.

Get into the deliberate habit of self-assessing your conversations when they finish. If you think you didn't make appropriate eye contact then just say to yourself 'I'll do it better next time'. I find that helps.

You can say that again.

When taking classes, I would listen to the prof and would sometimes become aware that I was staring at them and the prof would get kind of a confused look on their face as if they were wondering why I was staring at them.

When teaching classes, I would often look most frequently at people along the front row, particularly toward the center looking for signs that they were following what I was saying. On multiple occasions, I've realized I was staring at someone and they would sometimes get up and leave in the middle of the class.

Also in restaurants. I'll be talking to someone at the table but instead of looking at them, I'm just looking past them without paying attention at where I'm looking. On many occasions, I have suddenly become aware that I was staring at people and that sometimes they were staring back. On some occasions, everyone at the table turned and stared back. Occasionally even people at nearby tables as well.

It never makes any difference if the person is male or female, whether they were young, middle aged, or old or anywhere in between, no matter how they are dressed, no matter how they look, ... . I know that people have greatly mistaken the stares as having some kind of meaning attached.

And in the vast majority of cases, I am not even aware of them until I see them staring back.

I wasn't aware I was bad at eye contact until someone, about a year ago, pointed out that I hardly ever look people in the eyes and that I often don't even look at people when I talk to them (or when they talk to me). I think my eye contact has gotten worse lately but I suspect that's not the case. I'm probably just overly conscious about it nowadays since I got it pointed out to me.

I thought my eye contact had got a lot better in the past few years, until I found out recently that what I think is eye contact isn't. I just look at people's faces. I had no idea that looking actually into one pupil is counted as eye contact, and I never, ever do that.

mine is bad too.
i have learned methods to hide the fact that i dont really make eyecontact (the well-known mouth-brow trick, but i mastered the art), that are successful in most situations.
i have asked several good friends and my psychiatrist, and all of them reported to never notice i was 'faking it' untill i told them and they started paying attention; that seems good enough for me.

as for the reason why you make better contact with your parents; i find the discomfort of actual, true, eyecontact to be inversely related to how safe and comfortable i feel around that person...

I didn't know I had problems with that until recently. After I became aware of this I noticed I tend to avoid eye contact with strangers and stare my friends.

And now, another problem... When I'm aware I'm doing that, I keep thinking of what to do and lose focus on the conversation. I'm missing a lot of what people are saying these days.

Yeah, its strange. If you have always been a certain way about something it's really difficult to see it for what it is. Since learning about AS there are quite a few things like that which it never really occurred to me to invest any thought in before. I was also going through the various traits going "touch sensitivity - not really....oh, wait...apart from getting incredibly stressed out if anyone accidentally brushes against or lightly knocks me...or if my wife and I unbuckle at the same time in the car and hands collide...or if I am in bed and my wife happens to lightly place clothes over the bit of the duvet I am under...or...or...". It was the same with the eye contact thing. I get really stressed if I accidentally make eye contact with a stranger or just someone I was not mentally prepared to make eye contact with. It is really distracting but I am quite capable of doing it if/when I need to. It is quite an odd feeling to be seeing yourself in this new light for the first time. Going to take some getting used to.

I have big problems with eye contact too - I very much tend to look away, look down, etc. I do it more so when I'm thinking deeply and often close my eyes when explaining something complicated to someone.

I've always struggled with - and probably always will - with the eye contact thing.

I remember as a kid, my Dad would constantly remind me to look at people when I talk to them because I'd order my food looking down or say hello to my relatives by looking at my hands and so on. I thought I'd pretty much gotten over it until in 10th grade, an incredibly attractive girl was talking to me about this body spray I was using and I realized, I could not look her in the eye for more than the briefest second. In fact, I could hardly look at her face; it just felt like this immense and unbearable pressure was emanating from her. I think of it like this; I so often find myself confused when looking at people's faces or eyes while I'm talking to them or being talked to, that it's almost in my best interest to just use auditory clues as to their meaning and intentions, so that's what I do. I'm at the point now where I don't even try anymore. I'm just beyond caring, I guess as it's sort of progressed from a subconscious social flaw to more of an anxiety issue.

Mine used to get after me to speak up. I often spoke so quietly that the waiters and waitresses couldn't understand me.

Speaking of waitresses and kids, I remember eating a hamburger at a restaurant in Amarillo once when I was a kid. I asked the waitress for some ketchup. She promptly bought a bottle of ketchup. So I did the natural thing and shook it to loosen the ketchup so it would flow out better. It turned out that the cap was just resting on top when she handed it to me so as soon as I shook it, the cap went flying across the room. I ended up shaking ketchup all over her and the people at the table behind me. She was highly upset about it. It didn't help any when I ignored her and just ate my hamburger as if nothing had happened.

I dont understand the point of eye contact - all your doing is lookin at the 2 small dark bits in the eyes that dont have any sparkle to them. Very few ppl sparkle at you when you look at them. They all look dead. They dont move or anything. Its weird.
Plus undivided attention on you is creepy. Its like being eyed up by a predator or something. I feel like they will move forward unexpectedly and take a bite while im trying to hold eye contact.

I think this is because whatever we naturally do seems normal to us and therefore we assume it is the standard of normalcy!

I used to have no idea I had a problem with eye contact either, and I was shocked when I discovered just how much eye contact neurotypical people make. The normal/average amount of eye contact is apparently (according to studies on it) about half the time during a regular conversation, or about two-thirds of the time in an intimate conversation, such as with a partner or close friend. This was mind-boggling and eye-opening to me, because I had no idea that was the case. I make small amounts of eye contact and assumed that was fine and normal, and no one had told me otherwise. Turns out small amounts are way NOT normal! I don't know how NT people can possibly do it as much as they do.

But, seriously, if no one ever tells you, how are you supposed to know?