Concerning eye contact

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That sounds interesting Let us know what you've found out afterwards please!^^

I have often wondered why I have such a hard time with eye-contact.
Maybe this is why:

Ugh, I have huge problems with this too. People have in the past told me that I get a really intense look in my eyes when I talk to people, and this has kind of given me a complex. Its gotten much worse in the past year. Its almost as if I have no control over my eyes, like you hear people saying to "smile with your eyes" while talking to people, but I just cant do this. I can only do relaxed eyes or "deer in the headlights" it seems.

When Im forced to talk to people, it almost seems like there is a buildup of pressure in my head while Immaking eye contact, I cant stop thinking about what they think of me, if they think I look weird etc. and my head is just constantly screaming "look away now, you're creeping them out", then Ill look away and itll say "you looked away too suddenly, look back". So I end up making repeated fleeting eye contact and turning away and looking at my hands or across the room or over their shoulder, which usually seems to put them off me pretty quickly, judging from the looks on their faces.

Ive tried looking at the bridge of peoples noses or at their eyebrows, but it doesnt seem to help, i can still see their eyes in my peripheral vision and get the same problems. I wish I could just relax

I notice you have tinted glasses in your avatar pic. Are they prescription glasses? I wonder if wearing light tinted sunglasses may help when talking to others?

I'm thinking tinted glasses would provide a "veil" , albeit translucent, but perhaps it may help to create a barrier so while you are looking at others, you won't feel that you're looking so intensely at them

Nah those are just a pair of raybans I own. It was summer when that pic was taken, I usually just wear normal glasses. I do find it much easier to be social/make eye contact when I wear sunglasses, cant really get away with wearing them in britain in the winter though

Just noticed you're from california, I think Id have shades on constantly if I lived there, you lucky thing.

I adress my difficulties with eyecontact by taking cues from the person I am talking to. I look away when the other person is looking away, and so mimic the other persons behavior. It is still uncomfortable to keep eyecontact but I have learned that it is accepted to look away frequently during a conversation. And it is a way not to get distracted from the topic by being uncomfortable about eyecontact. I have learned that the better I know people, the less I keep eyecontact. They know I mean no disrespect and that it is just the way I am. I am more conscious about keeping eyecontact when I am talking to strangers. Then it is an effort keeping a balance between not keeping eyecontact at all and staring. So I am much more comfortable talking to people I know. But talking to strangers i inevitable so I compensate by taking cues from them. Another thing I learned is that having conversation while driving a car eliminates all troubles about eyecontact. The same thing applies when working side by side whith my colleagues. We have to keep an eye on the task at hand and that makes smalltalk easier.
Before I was diagnosed I had troubles with my partner because I rarely looked her in the eye. And it got worse when we were in a fight. That really fuelled her temper. But I just felt the only way to protect myself was to look away. It was when I learned that it was an Asperger trait to avoid eyecontact I understood why I felt so uncomfortable. But at the same time I started to educate myself in the art of keeping eyecontact during conversation. I surpressed the uncomfortable feeling and concentrated on ´getting it right´. It helped that I told my family, friends and colleagues about my difficulties. It made them understand that it just was the way I am and that I meant no disrespect. And it made them comfortamble that I was so open about it. It was not necesary to mention it more than once and my troubles have become less obvious the better I got at it.
So my experience is that I problably never will have a conversation whithout being conscious about keeping eycontact, but I can learn to compensate and use the tools I have developed.

Can't speak for all cultures, but in mine, amongst the older generation, it's rude for women to make direct eye contact at men, even if they are their superiors. Very rare in the younger generation as the culture becomes more westernized.

To the latter question: no, unfortunately.

I don't like to look at people when they talk to me because I'm shy. Also, I don't really like to see mouths move sometimes. But my shyness is the real problem. And even when my Mum talks to me, she says "look at me " cause I find my eyes move to look at another thing.

According to others, I make way too much eye contact. Apparently I stare in people's eyes, and this makes them uncomfortable and makes me "intimidating".

As a child, people scared me and I was afraid to look in their eyes. (except my grandmother and sister) In particular, I could not look at my father, who was a rage-aholic. He would scream at me to look him in the eyes, but I couldn't, which would further enrage him. I didn't want to feel his horrible feelings, it was enough that he was physically assaulting me. This avoidance of looking at people in the eyes is probably one of the main things that made me targeted for abuse by others because it is perceived as fearful, and in reality, it probably is in some ways. What is it in human nature that if you show something perceived to be weak, they want to harm you? I never want to be like these people who wanted to harm me because I had already been harmed and these were supposedly "normal" people? When I see someone harmed, I want to heal it not injure it. I aspire to be a better kind of being than that.

My father realized that his rage towards me had grown out of control. I finally summoned the courage to tell him I did not want to live in his house, that I wanted my mother. I left my father at age 14 and I went to live with my Aspie mother, from whom my father kidnapped us when we were very young and I had not seen her in almost a decade. My mother had beautiful smiling green eyes. I found that I could stare at her in awe for hours, she was my goddess. I discovered through her that I could look at some people's eyes and like it. As time went on, I could look at many people's eyes if they "felt good" and I would find myself actually sensing them them through their eyes. Because of this, people would always think they must have known me from somewhere. " Have we met?" "You look familiar" My sister would tell me that I looked at them as if I knew them. I wasn't trying to do this, nor was I actually conscious of it, it just happened if I was comfortable around someone's energy, even strangers. Sometimes, it was very intimate, and I had to be careful because the natural expression of this can be perceived as sexual.

I have children. They are Aspies. From the time they were born they have all made eye contact. I nursed them and would look deep into their eyes to communicate love and they would look back the same way and smile and touch me. They are a little older now and all make eye contact with me still, in a very loving way, but I have noticed they do not like to look at strangers. I don't force it really, I just encourage it in small doses. I know they will be able to do it later.

I guess I feel that not making eye contact is a form of self defense used by Aspies who, in fact, actually feel more from it due being very highly sensitive. I also think we have a different sort of empathy/emotions that are more intense and are triggered by the deep intimacy that comes from eye contact.

I am sooo tired. Lucky you, you get to hear my delirious ramblings.

Due to being a computer nerd for a way too long time, I got a bad sight, I can't see very far which makes me stare at people wondering if I actually know them and not knowing whether they've already seen me or not. That's probably why I stare.

My son's therapist taught him this, you can look anywhere at a person's face, focus on their cheekbone, forehead, and the other person cannot tell that you are not looking them in the eyes directly.

They think you are giving them eye contact but you are really giving them 'face contact'....she demonstrated this technique, I was sitting there too, she really looked like she was giving him eye contact, she said guess where I am looking.

He guessed wrong. He couldn't tell but it looked like she was giving him eye contact from his perspective and mine.

Try it out with some friends. It really works.

Good idea. This will probably work for acquaintances.

What a heartbreaking story.
You are totally right, it's stupid to harm the weak ones. I'm always very polite to people who stand below me.
Sadly it's only out of compassion and not out of respect... Sadly I'm full of compassion, at the moment it's the feeling that touches me the most and the most often. It not even that rarely reaches a level that has a similar effect to amorous affection. To be true, I've already begun to mix up love and compassion sometimes since it became that intense... :s to be true, I wasn't able to feel love since I was 13 or 14 and used it as some kind of substitution...
The opposite happens for people who are said to be (or think to be) above me... What a pity.

I also do feel comfortable with some persons, no matter how long I've known them.
It's lovely how you care about your children! I think at a young age it's still possible to compensate some troubles that might manifest when they become older. But you are right, forcing it would probably also cause troubles. I think that the troubles a person with aspergers syndrome has are the product of what this person has not learnt automatically, and not the unmight about learning them at all. Since it's only a development disorder, and considering my own experiences autism does really only mean that it doesn't happen automatically. So if those things would be learnt systematically instead of automatically many troubles would maybe not even exist for such autists.

Thank You for being so kind. I always worry when I post something like this, because I am actually trying to relate it as information, but my mode of expression is unusually emotional. ( In fact, I am also an empath and able to perceive feelings quite deeply and my expression is a reflection of that, which goes against the rules of AS) In actuality, I was only perceived as being weak, but in fact, I'm not. I was downtrodden because I was a 9 year old girl VS a violent grown man. ( Whom I have forgiven, Love conquers all) I doubt any of those kids beating on me could have emotionally or mentally survived what I did. In fact, their IQ points fell about 40 below mine (I am having an arrogant moment) So, it was they who were inferior in both mentality and humanity. There were only more like them, than like me. That is all they had going for them. Those wonderful NT people who get to make all the rules and who have such compassion. lol

As an adult, I can be formidable if I have to. You know those movies where a girl vs an Ax murderer and she manages to semi conquer him but not finish the job? That's not me. Think overkill. It would be a very short movie with me in it. lol Once, I was visiting a friend in the middle of the night (girl) through an unusual chain of events. A man tried to break into her apartment by putting his hand in the door and trying to unlock the chain that kept the door latched. She was screaming and panicking. I slammed the door on his hand so many times it was broken and bloody. I am hyper alert in dangerous situations. ( I don't find it funny when people are playing and sneak up on me to grab me from behind and they don't find it funny either when they see how I react. I always feel bad about that) Once, a man tried to rob me at a gas station. He grabbed my shoulder from behind me. Big mistake. I turned the nozzle on him and sprayed gas in his face. :::blink blink::: I think that a lot of this is almost like PTSD from people bullying me and living in fear from my father and I was abducted from a party and raped by some men when I was 14. I had to jump out of a moving vehicle to get away. I am tough in my own way.

I think that compassion is, in part respect for life and humanity. You don't have to look up to and admire people who are weaker, but you should want to protect them out of respect for life. I have a tiny bit of defensive arrogance and I have had to learn the difference between pity, which is demeaning, and compassion. Nothing makes me more angry than to be in receipt of pity. ( and it is hard to make me angry, I can always see someone else's point of view, so I can treat their complaints etc, like information and also, I don't dish that power of allowing people to control my emotions if I can avoid it) Pity is demeaning, it's feeling sorry for someone because you see them as less than you. Compassion intrinsically acknowledges equal worth. That doesn't mean you think the person is as intelligent or whatever your ( or my) ego attachment is presuming, but that they are worth as much as you and therefore it's a shared empathy for an equal being. It is thought that compassion is the cornerstone of love. If you have compassion you can potentially have love, albeit unromantic, but with pity, that is not possible, because there is an element of near disgust.

You're so right about only needing to learn. I consider us as aliens from another planet. We came here with a different set of mores and cultural habits perhaps. We understand each other easily. You know what people say about my Aspie girls? Strangers come to me and say they are the sweetest and most kind children. I decided not to send them to school but to teach them at home. They do not know they are any different from anyone else. I never knew, why should they? I only tell them that brilliant people tend to have specialties and we need to be careful of what those are. ( ie obsession with types of trash trucks as opposed to archaeology...lol.) They have good manners already. I felt I would be the best teacher of the things that mattered.

Last edited by PersephoneX on 12 Jan 2012, 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You and your children look amazing, really beautiful people!
You can be so extremely proud of you and your children, but much more of you, for your life, for your character, for your success, even for your look.
I never thought about having somebody as a role model, I am me, and I know what's rational, logical and good but wow, I can't help myself, it's such a rare situation, you are better than me and I don't hate you for that, much more I deify you.
But that doesn't mean that I can't become like you, I can learn from you.
You are a fantastical person, I don't know, I've lost my words

The only thing I'm a little bit sceptical about is the thing about homeschool.
I'm sure you do it perfectly but it could be that because of your experiences you have become a little bit overprotective. To grow a character like yours it's necessary to have some experiences, of course not ones that like yours but the public and even the private schools are really important to learn how to socialise. The real function of a school is not teaching maths, english or history. To be true, those subjects are replaceable and not much worth in the long run (except of english), the real function of a school is growing a character, becoming tough, learning how to deal with arguments (I know, not a good example for me, but in fact I did also have to learn my way of handling it), selecting out your own friends etc.. I'm not a friend of any western school system. I think they impress children to become conservative robots who think in stereotypes and much more lose their liberal thinking. But it made no impression on me. And it made no impression on you. And, I can see it alone from the pictures of your children, they are as precious as you. You gave birth to them, how could it ever be different?
I think in spite of all the dark sides of the school system and schoolmates I don't know an equal substitution. But I don't know where you live and how the school there are like, if you live in the U.S. the schools there would certainly never reach the quality of an Austrian school, at least not the public schools.

You'll do it right anyway. I adore you Persephone, I adore you!^^