Why do you feel an aversion to faces/eyes?

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I can't do the upset eye contact either. I find this funny in a way though, because my art teacher has enormous light blue crazy eyes. And while he's friendly, I find it harder to make eye contact that isn't brief with him because his eyes are too intense. XD

If I really, really like and trust someone, I love their eyes. I can get quite entranced, staring into them, trying to communicate. It was the same with my husband and with my best friend(female). In fact, the night before he died, his eyes changed, and I didn't recognise the stranger who stared out at me, which is awful, because I loved those eyes so much.

Eyes are uncomfort, hurt, fear, anger.

Faces are confusion, bad, fear, indication.

I am just blocking all face/eye pictures that make me uncomfortable now.

For me, I can't concetrate on what someone is saying if I'm also trying to make eye contact. My whole life, I've been look at people's mouths and not even realizing that this isn't what everyone else does. I had always heard that looking into the eyes of someone you're dating is supposed to be very special. I tried this on dates and couldn't follow the conversation, so I had to stop. It makes me kind of queasy and overwhelmed when I'm looking at someone's eyes. It feels very very unatural.

I might, I don't really know, all I know is that all my life people have told me look up when I am talking to them, have made a point of the fact that I look down or away when talking to them, along with the fact that I don't speak loud enough and they can't hear me. I think it's just my hearing, which is really sensitive, so I can hear myself just fine. One weird thing that has happened to me a number of times, only with men, is that they will take their hand and put it under my chin and lift it up so I am looking them in the eye. Until that happens I'm not aware of the fact that I am not looking at them. It's really a weird thing to do, I guess it's a thing where they think it's okay in a male female sense to do something like that to a woman.

I had this problem when I was first trying to look at peoples' eyes.

For me the problem is both that eye contact is distracting if I am trying to listen to or compose speech, and that it is uncomfortably intimate. It's like looking at people naked or having sex or going to the toilet etc.

I also find that a bit of distance is useful. If I am a couple of metres away from someone I am not nearly as bothered by eye-contact, but I find it very difficult at the distance people in my culture tend to communicate with each other from.

Recently a chewing gum or breath mint company ran adverts on television where I live. The actors were made to stand so that their faces were nearly touching and have a conversation (the point I think was that their breath smelled so fresh they could get right up close). Even to me these actors looked extraordinarly uncomfortable. I know that there is research indicating many people with ASDs have exceptional visual acuity. I suspect that for some of us at least, the problem with eye-contact is due to this acuity. Because of the issue with acuity, when we make eye-contact at the distance most people converse and make eye-contact from, the effect for us is as though we were standing nose to nose (due to excessive visual detail). Being uncomfortable with eye-contact is not unique to us.

I was coached when I was younger to make eye contact. I'm okay with it now, but I still have to be very conscious of it in every conversation, which gets frustrating! Interestingly, though, I LOVE noticing people's eyes and eye color. I could tell you the eye colors of everyone I know... but making eye contact with them still freaks me out!

I generally watch people's mouths when they speak. I actually didn't notice that I did that until about a year ago, when someone asked me about it

Eye contact is just painful. I'm getting better at intentionally offering eye contact but it still hurts. I think it might be the saccades or the flux eyes are always in or something. No idea.

I only experience problems when talking to someone in a stressful situation. For example; in a crowded, noisy environment or if I am trying to multitask. The reasons are what others have posted. Too much to process. Making eye contact is just one more task to juggle, since I have to concentrate in order to do it properly. I only had someone call me on it once.

What I can not relate to is finding photographs stressful, although I can imagine one or two that might be. Has anyone seen the Maori traditional battle stare? I can't imagine a more intense facial expression. It looks like a Kabuki mask. Animals often become aggressive when stared at from close range. I have seen this happen more than once at zoos. I would never intentionally aggravate the animals, of course. Sorry if I am too much off topic.

Eyes are scary and uncomfortable.
I often find them intimidating and then I am unable to concentrate in a conversation, especially with people who have authority over me like teachers or whomever.

My biggest problem with eye contact is that I forget. I wasn't aware that people used it to show attentiveness until one of my friends yelled at me for not doing it. Making eye contact feels something like looking into the sun for me, which isn't as bad as it seems; I can look into the sun without too much pain.
I also find it difficult to look at someone and concentrate on what they're saying at the same time. If I'm conversing and I'm not looking at the person, I'm trying to make sure I actually process what they say.

If someone did that to me, I'd get really uncomfortable.

This is the same for me, if I am listening to someone I need to concentrate on listening. If I am looking into their eyes or at their face there is far too much other information flooding in that I suppose NT's can ignore where as I let everything in. Sometimes when I am talking and I make eye contact I immediately forget what I am saying because I'm overloaded with information so I become confused.

It hurts less to look directly at the sun than it does to look into someone's eyes for me, literally.

I don't feel an aversion to faces or eyes. I love faces and can recognize someone I haven't seen in fifty years, such as old classmates. When I meet someone for the first time, I get so caught up in studying their face, that I have to apologize for not hearing what they said. I often say, "I'm sorry. Could you please repeat that? I was so absorbed in your face that I missed what you were saying." Depending on the person, a judgment about me, either good or bad, is made on the spot.

Eyes I am a little more wary of. Some eyes invite you in for a moment, others have a "Posted. Keep Out!" sign about them. Angry eyes are frightening, only because they belong to a frightening person. It would be the person that frightened me, and a certain look in their eyes that makes me feel I am not safe or that my company is not wanted. When I'm having a conversation, or listening to someone in close range, I focus automatically on mouths. Like others have said, I catch myself doing this. I don't make a conscious effort to do it. But I do think, for me at least, that mouths show more expression and emotion than eyes.

Eye color has never been a problem either. I don't know why one eye color should be different than another, should elicit fear, or project anger, unless the person being affected by the eye color had an actual fearful or traumatic experience with someone, a parent or sibling say, with that eye color.

Avatar faces are fine with me. I like them, especially if they are the faces of the actual member or poster.

it is very hard to describe for me.

1. i do not feel a need to look at peoples eyes because they are not "windows to the soul" to me. they are objects like marbles in my mind.
i know it is expected that i should look at eyes, but i find them very uninformative, and i see them not in the same way as people who tell me "i should look in eyes" do.

2. when i rarely inspect a persons eyes because i am interested in what they look like, the owners of the eyes change their personalities and become hard to deal with.
they feel like i am being friendly with them when all i was doing was looking at their irises. you can never get away with inspecting a persons iris without them noticing it seems.
when they get friendly, they inevitably become disgruntled when they realize i am not interested in them.

i am not really interested in eyes much.
once you have seen one, you have seen them all.