No one ever said anything about (lack of) eye contact during my life, beyond occasional comments on my stare (I have a mean look that I'd sometimes intend & sometimes not). Don't usually have major issues with that specifically-my problems are things like sensory intrusions, agoraphobia, social anxiety-once I'm comfortable with an individual, I make plenty of eye contact. If you think about it, simply peering at each other's eyeballs does feel rather intimate (moreso than we commonly consider it to be)-and perhaps a little bit icky/gross.
Belle77 wrote:
Marilyn wrote:
Is the dis-like of eye contact always necessary for people with Aspergers? I'm thinking of one person in particular who has no problem with eye- contact.he actually hates talking on the phone because he says he can't see faces. He's still pretty bad at reading them when he does see them, but he has no problem looking at them.
Is this discrepency experienced by others?
I'm like your friend with hating to talk on the phone, partly because I can't see faces (I have severe phone anxiety).
Phone ringing inherently startles me & it takes at least a few minutes (usually) for me to determine whether I'm "up to" challenge of taking a particular call. I let answering machine pick up, then listen to message (though I may wait hours before doing do) & decide whether to call person back. On the phone, I can't point things out that I'm making reference to nor see the expressions of other person, so cannot gather nor convey nearly as much info. as I'd like.
Belle77 wrote:
But I don't like eye contact and am bad at reading faces, so I'm not much better face-to-face. But it's my preferred method of communication...after email, of course.
That seems contradictory
at first-yet it's similar to my interpretation of experiences.
Just because I don't necessarily know what someone's facial expression (throughout a conversation) may be designed to tell me, I still prefer being able to see it. Just because I don't know what my gestures or body language are 'saying' to someone doesn't mean I want to be deprived of those aspects to my communication.
I find eyes (in isolation from rest of face)
not to be 'full of meaning'-appearance of them doesn't seem to change much within any single individual (though I did great on that 'see the emotion in the eyes' test). I see variety in the way one's facial features move together, mostly the mouth & the eyebrows-those appear "information-rich".
Even then, it's not like I know what I'm supposed/expected to
do about someone else's motivations/intentions/mood. Might know intellectually yet feel personally unable to make self parrot artificial (not genuinely felt, originating from outside self) "nice" statements/behaviors.
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*"I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't."*