Lessening Eye Contact?

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Has anyone on here taught themselves to always make eye contact and then at some point they decided to go back to their natural way and not always make eye contact? I am a year on in my diagnosis and I'm at the point where I want to be more of how I was before my parents shaped me into the neurotypical they wanted me to be. Part of that is eye contact... I have become so trained that I can stare someone down when they are taking to me. It is still incredibly uncomfortable for me but I can handle it for just a few minutes.

Anyway! I'm wanting to get back to how I used to be as a real Autistic , as opposed to a fake neurotypical. How often do all of you make sure contact? Ever? Only when something is emphasized? Varies? I'm wanting to make as little eye contact as possible but not sure how I could go from constant to none. I'm sure I could gradually decrease but was winding if anyone else had attempted such a thing?

I became aware quite a few years ago that eye-contact was something of an issue with me, and went through a phase of trying to do something about it, in situations where I felt it might be required.

I don't think it was very successful - it always felt very artificial , and I had the impression that the recipient was at least as uncomfortable with it as I was.

These days I just don't bother. My default reaction is always immediately to avert my gaze in these situations. After four decades of trying, and generally failing, to adapt to the social, cultural and attitudinal expectations of society in my adult life, I am quite happy to be a misfit.

I don't think I ever was very good at it, I just didn't realize how bad I was.

Which is to say, I have made no effort to change it one way or another, however, when I was first diagnosed, I believed that I faked it fairly well, but now that I've been diagnosed for several years and become aware of my AS quirks on a day-to-day basis, I realize I actually suck at it and always have.

As a child, I never looked at others (even my peers). I stared at the floor between me and them. Lots of good movies and good friends later, I learned to look at others at least occasionally. I do that now to check that they aren't rolling their eyes or falling asleep. Since college, I have learned that I don't need to look at others' eyes, just to appear that I do. So, when I want to appear more interested in others' conversations, I look at their foreheads, ears, noses, or just past their faces to look at things behind them. It comes close without the distress of a staring contest.

Even then, however, I have had a few acquaintances who tightly grabbed my head to force me to look at them. I resented them angrily.

^ Yes, I've found the expedient of looking at the other person's nose to be quite a useful strategy in these situations. I'm grateful to the numerous posters on WP who have mentioned that.

^ if you look at someone's nose they might think there is something wrong with it...I look at the spot between their eyes instead.

True. It depends on the distance between the individuals. Across a cafe table, look at the spot between their eyes. Further away, other techniques would probably work.

That's pretty messed up. If someone did that to me I would be pissed off and have a hard time not breaking their nose. I will decide what and who I look at thankyou very much.

For eye contact I look just under the right eye, of if there is some distance I look at the face without really focusing on any part. When talking to people I prefer to have them within an 180 degree radius from my face, but without actually looking at them. Unfortunantly most standards of politeness dictate that you have to look directly at the other person most of the time, or appear rude.

I watch the lips. I'm hearing impaired, so I'm allowed
I recently had a comment on how good my eye contact was. I don't think I've looked at that person's eyes once!

It's interesting to come across your post about this, because I have been aware of this issue lately myself, and was thinking about it just the other day.

I've noticed that I've gone on an arc of a journey with eye contact.

When I was a teenager I became actively aware of how painful eye contact was to me, figuratively speaking. I became acutely aware that I couldn't stand to meet someone's eyes.

I then consciously, over the years, made an effort to change that. I realized that things went better if you confidently look someone straight in the eye, and engage eye contact in an NT way (I didn't know it to be "an NT way" back then, but that's essentially what it is and was).

So then through my 30s and 40s I believe I was a lot better at "normal" eye contact -- although having said that, I could be wrong. Maybe that was my perception within myself, but the reality to another person was that there was something still "wrong" with my eye contact. I don't know. I just know I personally believed I was now "good at it."

So the most recent part of the journey -- I think I've now once again become worse at it!! !

I've recently, actively caught myself not making the kind of eye contact I had previously learned is the amount and manner that the rest of the world mostly makes. I have some self-awareness enough to know that I've failed to "keep up the act" -- and I do feel like most of my life I've felt a pressure to not be myself because myself was "off" -- going by the reactions of other people, that is.

Now my eye contact is very poor, I've noticed. I catch myself diverting my eyes and suddenly realize, many times a day, that I diverted my eyes at a moment when an NT would have maintained contact, or even that I failed completely to make eye contact, in a way that I used to make sure I did.

I don't know whether it's a combination of feeling very, very stressed out, chronic sleep deprivation for a long time lately, or even that I got my diagnosis only months ago and perhaps I'm "growing into" accepting it. Does growing into accepting it mean that suddenly I'm allowing myself to act more spectrum-y than I used to? I don't know. It feels complicated for me. All I know is that my eye contact has become poorer and poorer lately.

Birdinflight: have the nt's noticed your reduced eye contact? Have they commented/asked about it?

No one has said anything, but then I don't think the people who know me take much notice of anything about me, lol. And the other people I found myself flinching from are strangers such as the cashiers in a large supermarket who don't know me from before.

I have to a small degree lessened the amount of eye contact I use with people. I look betwen the eyes and bridge of the nose more now, at their mouth if it's noisy, alternated with looking them in the eye; sometimes I unfocus my vision e.g. if the person I'm making eye contact with is on the other side of a room. I never understood why I found direct eye contact distracting, or why I had to learn how to do it, or actively remember to do it.
The therapist I'm visiting has not mentioned it to me yet, but her body movements to establish eye contact in sessions have become quite obvious. This week she dramatically sat forward, leaned sideways off her chair and swooped her head down to make eye contact a few times, I can't focus on the conversation and look her in the eye, I just go blank and forget what I was talking about.

Before I was diagnosed, I never really thought about eye contact. It had never occurred to me that I was “bad” at eye contact. It just wasn’t something that I noticed. It just wasn’t something that was important to me.

Then, I learned about Asperger’s. And, I learned what the “expectations” for eye contact was in our society. At the time, I didn’t realize I was bad at eye contact. But, then, I started paying attention to it. Now, whenever I am talking to people, I realize I am staring directly at their mouth. Not just when I am with people in person. But, even when I look at pictures of people. Or watch TV. I wish I had never heard the term “eye contact”. As I was MUCH HAPPIER being oblivious that I was quite poor at it.

There is one caveat to the above. And this is for job interviews. As I had read when I was young that when you introduce yourself, you should always make eye contact. So, I always had translated that to mean to simply look into their eye for a micro-second when you introduced yourself. And, then you are “good to go”. You passed. Though, I never understood why it was such an important thing.

Actually, I think the whole thing is a waste of time. But that’s just me.

This is probably not very helpful, but being homeless/socially isolated went a long way towards effacing my ingrained social mask.