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MsTriste
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12 Feb 2010, 2:38 am

Do you ever notice when other people avoid looking at you?

I was in a meeting with three other people at work this week, and this one person never once looked at me. While she talked (a lot), I noticed that she was only looking at the other two. I kept watching her to see if she would look at me even once, and she didn't.

Anybody else ever notice something like this, or am I just weird?



BoringAaron
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12 Feb 2010, 2:49 am

I don't look at people's eyes very much, so I wouldn't notice.

That's a pretty picture.



MsTriste
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12 Feb 2010, 3:05 am

Thank you. My partner took it; it's sunrise at Kailua Beach in Hawaii. He photoshopped out the people :D



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12 Feb 2010, 4:51 am

I'm quite interested in eye contact when I can remember that it exists, and I've noticed the kind of thing that you have, and also I've seen it done properly - there was a guy at our youth club years ago, and he was talking to a couple of people....I joined the group and he instantly included me as he looked in turn at each person. 8) I found it very refreshing because most people in that place preferred to "clique off" in their own exclusive little circles, with no interest whatsoever in me. :evil:

But mostly I've noticed the same thing as you have - in groups an individual will talk to less than the whole group. I think I'd rather be physically excluded from the room than allowed in just to be ignored........all of the pain, none of the pleasure. If I'm physically excluded then I'm at least free to go find somebody who will include me. Why do they let me in if they're just going to ignore me?



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12 Feb 2010, 7:02 am

Only when my friends are hungover they don't look at me.


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12 Feb 2010, 7:59 am

I notice that at once, yeah. It helps me to remind myself that that can have different reasons.
- Maybe the person started talking to these two people and is simply continuing that way. It is, after all, pretty hard to give everyone in the group eye contact. And it feels artificial.
- Or maybe the person feels nervous in groups and this is his/her way of "holding on" to one or two people. Maybe these are people the speaker knows agrees with him/her, and he feels safe with them.
- maybe I am sending out "don't look at me, I'm unimportant" signals. Chiefly by not looking other people in the eye, or by the way I dress or whatever.

Or maybe they really don't care about me being there and are rude enough to let it show. I've developed a way to test this. I adress the speaker by name and ask her something. Like "Karen, do you mean etc. etc.?" If Karen only briefly answers me and then returns to the others, ignoring me, I walk away. There's no use wasting time on people who don't give a damn.



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12 Feb 2010, 9:23 am

With my eye avoidance I don't think I would notice the lack of eye contact. I am much more aware of the person who stares intently at you.

But I know well standing with a knot of people who do not acknowledge your existence, being invisible and unheard.



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12 Feb 2010, 9:53 am

Omnomnom wrote:
I notice that at once, yeah. It helps me to remind myself that that can have different reasons.
- Maybe the person started talking to these two people and is simply continuing that way. It is, after all, pretty hard to give everyone in the group eye contact. And it feels artificial.

I think the idea is that the speaker looks at everybody to check out from their faces whether they seem to be following (and agreeing or disagreeing with) what they're saying. Also to reassure each member that they're a part of the discussion. The first part I doubt I could do very well.....even one-to-one it's really difficult, so how can I hope to catch the subtle nuances of a whole group of faces? Though I might be able to notice the occasional look of confusion, dissent or agreement if the expressions were reasonably strong. The second part I seem to do OK.....I actually catch myself doing this in the music club I'm in, just a quick glance at each face whenever I say anything. Can't say I've divined anything much from their expressions, but at least they're getting that signal that I'm interested in how they feel about what I'm saying.


Quote:
- Or maybe the person feels nervous in groups and this is his/her way of "holding on" to one or two people. Maybe these are people the speaker knows agrees with him/her, and he feels safe with them.

I think you're right.....a lot of what can be taken for cliques are nothing more than people quite naturally sticking to those they feel safest with.

Quote:
- maybe I am sending out "don't look at me, I'm unimportant" signals. Chiefly by not looking other people in the eye, or by the way I dress or whatever.

Very possibly, yes. I was gobsmacked when, after telling somebody that I'd felt really isolated and ignored at a gathering we'd been to, they replied "Really? To me you just seemed to be content with your own company." I'd thought I'd been standing out like a sore thumb! More likely, I've just got so used to protecting myself from rebuffs that I don't even notice the mechanisms any more. I probably send out messages like "I don't need anything from you" all the time without even knowing it any more. I'm sure there's a lot that can be done to help with this kind of thing.....some kind of finishing school would probably know a lot about re-training people's body language.

Quote:
Or maybe they really don't care about me being there and are rude enough to let it show. I've developed a way to test this. I adress the speaker by name and ask her something. Like "Karen, do you mean etc. etc.?" If Karen only briefly answers me and then returns to the others, ignoring me, I walk away. There's no use wasting time on people who don't give a damn.

That's clever. 8) I wouldn't be able to do that yet, because I still find it very difficult to speak at all at meetings....once my mouth has been shut for a few minutes, I can't easily open it again. And if I've been blanking out, I usually try to disguise that by staying quiet.



MsTriste
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12 Feb 2010, 11:05 am

Philologos wrote:
With my eye avoidance I don't think I would notice the lack of eye contact. I am much more aware of the person who stares intently at you.

But I know well standing with a knot of people who do not acknowledge your existence, being invisible and unheard.


Thank you. Perhaps I should have titled this post "Invisible and unheard". I've heard there are many of us who have felt invisible around others - I've had this problem my whole life of being invisible, people don't even know I exist.

So yeah, sitting in a work meeting in a small group of only four of us, and still feeling invisible is uncomfortable.

Omnomnom said: "Or maybe they really don't care about me being there and are rude enough to let it show. I've developed a way to test this. I adress the speaker by name and ask her something. Like "Karen, do you mean etc. etc.?" If Karen only briefly answers me and then returns to the others, ignoring me, I walk away. There's no use wasting time on people who don't give a damn."
Yes, yes, it felt very rude! So what I did, because once I started noticing it, and she still refused to include me, was to turn my chair so I couldn't see her. Now she's complaining that turning away from her was rude! So I'm the one being complained about, now.

Just one of the reasons it's so hard to work with a bunch of NT's.



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12 Feb 2010, 11:44 am

I've actually noticed people looking away from me. One time, before I was living on my own. I waved to him, and he looked away from me. I think he did it out of pity.


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Omnomnom
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12 Feb 2010, 12:15 pm

MsTriste wrote:
Philologos wrote:
So what I did, because once I started noticing it, and she still refused to include me, was to turn my chair so I couldn't see her. Now she's complaining that turning away from her was rude! So I'm the one being complained about, now.

Just one of the reasons it's so hard to work with a bunch of NT's.


Was that in an official meeting, or just in a chatty situation? Yeah I think that the problem with that is that her ignoring you is not obvious. So SHE can always invent excuses ("oh, I didn't notice I was excluding you!") While your ignoring her was so blatantly rude (or, if you prefer, so honest and straightforward) that nobody could possibly come up with any other interpretation except that you were doing it on purpose.

For the sakes of your own career I'd recommend sucking it up, playing the smiling game and sticking pins in a voodoo doll instead. Sometimes we have to deal with cliquey people in our jobs, can't be helped. The best you can do is remember what she's like and act accordingly if she should ever need you.



MsTriste
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12 Feb 2010, 8:04 pm

Omnomnom wrote:
Was that in an official meeting, or just in a chatty situation? Yeah I think that the problem with that is that her ignoring you is not obvious. So SHE can always invent excuses ("oh, I didn't notice I was excluding you!") While your ignoring her was so blatantly rude (or, if you prefer, so honest and straightforward) that nobody could possibly come up with any other interpretation except that you were doing it on purpose.

For the sakes of your own career I'd recommend sucking it up, playing the smiling game and sticking pins in a voodoo doll instead. Sometimes we have to deal with cliquey people in our jobs, can't be helped. The best you can do is remember what she's like and act accordingly if she should ever need you.


You are wise. Yes, her eye avoidance was not perceived by others, yet my turning away was. I really like your advice. Wish I could remember it when it's needed, such as in faculty meetings. :shrug:
Or I can order a voodoo doll on EBay which will help me remember...



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12 Feb 2010, 8:54 pm

god, yes. i get this all the time. in fact i almost started a thread about it too. someone will be speaking to two or more of us and they'll always look at the others, the humans, more, giving me the occasional glance just for good measure. just today at work, someone was informing people at the hospital's yearly "education fair" about how to access the company policy documents via our computer network. it was just me and one other girl, and it was so obvious how much more she spoke to her, even though we were essentially 6 inches from each other. i suppose because i'm just a housekeeper and the other girl was a nice, normal, fresh-faced community college-educated daddy's girl, she mattered more. but i showed her up by stating how to narrow down a search by using quotes (duh,) to which she condescendingly replied "i was JUST going to say that! very gooooood!" she may as well have patted me on the head, too. i just replied quietly that, well, i had been on computers since 1988. i hope that made them shut up and think.