Eye Contact v. Listening

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I've developed two strategies throughout college in order to compensate for my ADHD.

1. Whenever I'm receiving a lot of information at a time from an individual, I look away from them because I find watching their faces distracting from the information coming out of their mouths. Instead, I usually either close my eyes or pace around.

2. If I ever realize after the fact that I blanked out during a segment of what someone else was telling me, I ask them to repeat what they just said in order to make sure that I get that segment of the information too.

All of my friends recognize these behaviors as signs that I am paying attention to what they are saying.

However, I think both of these coping measures backfired during a recent job interview. Especially the second one. When I asked one of the interviewers to repeat what she'd just said, I just got stared at completely blankly by her. The next day, I got a message telling me that I did not get the job. I think I need ways to fix both of these techniques without sacrificing comprehension. Any ideas?

A similar issue for me was resolved by finding a position which had a phone interview.

As for interviews in person: I find it sometimes easier to tell people that I only look at them out of the corner of my eye because the picture looks more stable that way. For me, that isn't even a lie.

I have trouble with eye contact too, partly because when I grew up making eye contact in my experience was a hostile act that meant you were trying to lock eyes. Someone that wanted to beat me up would make their hostile intent clear by making eye contact and locking eyes.

Right now, if for some reason I can't make that eye contact I look at their forehead, chin, maybe their cheek so my eyes are in the right direction. My old compulsion was to look away, down, at their shirt (Man I got in trouble several times when women/girls thought I was looking down their shirt), shoes, etc.

When I was growing up, I got in fights over the eye contact thing...that, or zoning out: "Who you staring at?" It's also gotten me into trouble because in the event that I DO make eye contact with someone, it makes girls think I'm interested in them, and I'm not single. Just yesterday, I had to explain to my boss that the reason I wasn't looking him in the eye WASN'T that I was racist and/or didn't like him.