Question About Eye Contact

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I know that a lot of or most of Aspies have a hard time with eye contact.

My question is:

Is it easier for you to make/sustain eye contact with people you know or are comfortable with? Or is it difficult to make/sustain eye contact with parents, siblings, teachers, or anyone else you may be comfortable with?

It is easier for me to make eye contact with people I know and am comfortable with. However, it's difficult for me to sustain eye contact with anyone, even these people. I just don't "get it," it's uncomfortable, it's confusing, it feels false, and so on.

After I found out I had Asperger's, I felt okay asking the questions that would just have been "weird" before. One of my first questions was, "Eye contact - how does it even work?" I don't understand... do you look at one or the other eye? Do you look in between the eyes? Is anywhere near the eyes okay? I don't really understand how to do it, though I can do it for brief periods, before it starts to feel or to appear "odd." I don't like doing it and won't do it for long even with people I like.
The exception is when I am angry, and use a fixed stare to try and achieve some objective - causing someone else to feel as uncomfortable as I do with eye contact, perhaps, or something else. I'm not really sure.

It's also easier for me to make good eye contact with people I know. And I find it hard to do with strangers. The reason why because I can't think of anything to say so I don't want to look at them like im retarted or something just staring at them not saying anything.

- I also make good eye contact when I am interested in what the other person is saying
- When i'm not interested I tend to avoid eye contact and just telling myself in my head will you hurry up and finish.
- And when I'm in the mood where I don't feel like talking (which happens very often) I usually avoid eye contact too.

Thank you!

I was curious because MOST of the time, my kid will look at me right in the face, but only for a few moments. But unless someone is within a foot of his face, he won't make eye contact with them. A social worker (who was trying to prove that he could make adequate eye contact) was getting closer and closer and closer to his face, and I wanted to yell at her to stop getting so close, I know he doesn't like it, but he started to take brief glimpses of her face every once in awhile (SHE TOOK UP HIS ENTIRE LINE OF SIGHT!), and she determined that this was sufficient.

Is the kind of eye contact I just described "good enough"?

I am bad at eye contact with anyone, but it is easier to maintain it with someone i know. I didn't even know i was supposed to do anything of the sort until i came to this website...lol

I had to think hard on this. It's a good question.

The more I know about communication, autism, the more thing I notice.

It's a little more comfortable with people who I do not know well by sight. I'm not used to how they look in a whole, which makes it very uncomfortable.

It is easer to sustain eye-contact with people who I know. Naturally, one knows people inside out whom one likes best. And I know I try to avoid bullies as much as possible to the point when I have trouble recognising them when faced with them again.

Overall, I try to avoid looking at people who I don't like. I don't want to look at their hands, their shoes - nothing. I don't know why I dislike it, but I just look away automatically. Maybe like 'out of my sight, out of my mind!'

I can look people that I find to be nice in the face even, I can look at their hair, their clothes... you get the idea.

But other than that - I find eye-contact with everyone but my friends and family extremely uncomfortable, because I'm spooked/strange/disgusted by the eyes. Just how eyes look like. It's like there is something underneath them, something odd. With my friends and family it's overwhelming, but not (as) spooky/strange/disgusting.

And I love to look into the eyes of one friend! For whatever mysterious reasons. Part of why I tried to get her to be my friend.

I do not find it difficult with my husband, either I don't look in his eyes at all, or I switch eye to eye.

My usual thing I do is look up at the eyes for a second, then away at something else, then back.

I don't know how to hold continual eye contact without feeling uncomfortable.

I have been told that it looks as if I am challenging or posturing when I am upset and make an effort to make normal eye contact.

My parents were very confrontational and were the 'look me in the eyes' types that used to rant and scream for hours at a time while demanding I keep silent and maintain eye contact with them...so, a big part of why I equate direct and sustained eye contact with aggression could be connected with this.

I think that the therapist's actions would be considered menacing, myself, if some person was slowly getting closer and closer while staring at my face, I would want to hit them. I wouldn't, of course, but I would want to.

ETA: Oops, so my answer is Yes, making a semblance at eye contact is much easier with someone I am comfortable with.

only time it's harder for me is when i'm mad or hurt or upset with anyone and don't want to let it immediately bubble to the surface... then i have trouble lookin at them more.

only time i look extendedly at someone really, would be my bf... but i think in conversation i do about the same... but other times, when our heads are closer together, i have no trouble at all.

It is hard for me to make eye contact with most people..I will try it a few seconds at a time and it kinda gives me unpleasant reverberations.
I can hardly make eye contact with my parents, but they seem pretty used to it....It is not an issue with my boyfriend, as he does not make eye contact either
So...even people I am comfortable with...I can't do it very well...i am MOST comfortable when I am not obligated to do it at all...then then i might actually make eye contact.

eye contact for me is realy hard and wont last for more then a second or 2 like were are you suppose to look.
i was talking to a indian women a while ago (i think) and she had the red spot on her fore head inbetween her eyes,
she was real easy to talk to and i had somewere to look. some times it can be very ambaresing, people can think
you are looking at some thing ellse and get the wrong idea.

anyway,
if you ever go to court your barrester will say make eye contact with the judge
if you ever have to deal with the police make good eye contact or they will think your guilty
i was asked by a customer only recently to look them in the eye so they know i am telling the truth
eye contact meens so much to people but i just can not do it

eye contact is pretty tough even with close family, and now that I have glasses I can actually see the people around me I get even more nervous to look around myself when I'm in public places because I might see someone looking at me( or I think they're looking at me).

I used to do this, too. And what's worse is if that person had a wall-eye or something... oh god. LOL. Basically, if I'm close, I look briefly at one eye, then the other and so on. Or I'll look away briefly (like I'm thinking, but actually I'm just "resting") and then back to the eyes. If I am farther away, I look at their face like a whole, like just a shape with other smaller shapes on it, not being drawn to any one of the smaller ones.



I find this is true with my son, as well. If you are talking about a game he's playing (like that social worker was - he was playing Sonic the Hedgehog), he will talk to you, impatiently, with some eye contact. If he's talking to one of us (his immediate family), he'll maintain eye contact for moments at a time.



This was all I could think about doing! I could just put myself in his shoes... like, you feel her breath on your face, smell her - ugh! I was livid. And then, he'd kind of blink at her, and she was like, "See?! See?! He can do it. Autistic kids cannot do it at all."



Wow. You guys have been extremely helpful. Thank you very much for your responses, I'd love to hear others if there are any.

I don't think so in the way you mean it. I look most at the faces of people who are strangers and people who know me well. Because strangers need eye contact before they know I'm talking to them or trying to assert my place in line, and people who know me a lot don't dislike me when I look at their eyes wrong. I don't look at people I know but who don't already definitely like me because usually they ask am I angry or say that I'm too intense or am being creepy, or they think I'm done talking and they interrupt me.

I can't really sustain eye contact comfortably at anyone, and usually only look at eyes when people aren't looking at me or I'm glancing past. But I'm not pained by it like other people here are (or I don't notice it anyway). I don't look at the eyes of someone who's that close though and insisting, it feels like they're trying to intimidate me.

Can be but not necessarily. It it quite possible to get the same response with people you know:

http://www.neuropsychiatryreviews.com/a ... ntact.html
http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... ic&t=44284

Thank you for the first link! I'll print it and give it to my autism therapist. That's quite an awesome finding.

I find sustained eye contact extremely uncomfortable but I can force myself to do it. Most of the time though I can briefly look into the eyes of the people I know almost naturally, without too much conscious effort. But in stressful situations it gets much worse, I can not sustain eye contact at all, and I end up looking anywhere but in someone's eyes. A stressful situation for me too is something as simple as going to a fast food place to order food, my brother said it was one of the first things that tipped him off to me having AS because when we would go to order food I never look at the cashiers eyes or even their face. So what your therapist did would be very unpleasant for me, as seeing some stranger is always more stressful than ordering food.

A tactic that I have seen done with my other little brother though (11 years old diagnosed with AS) is encouraging eye contact rather than forcing it. The therapist will take his chin and hold it from an arms length away (not close like the social worker with your son) and will encourage him to talk about his interests (dragons right now) but only if he looks her in the eye. He'll glance away a few times at first but she'll gently ask him to look her in the eyes and continue and eventually he is excitedly rattling away about everything related to dragons while looking her right in the eye.

I dunno seems a much better approach to me, maybe you can suggest that to the next person who tries to make your son look them in the eye as an alternative to the way it has been done, but I have no evidence that it is a better way to do it other than from my brother and from what I know I would prefer. Hope it helps!